• White page. At the top, there is a black image with the words

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    Event listing. Underground International: Kurt Kren and Tomonari Nishikawa, curated by Patrick Harrison and Megan Hoetger, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, California, November 2018.

  • Black-and-white nature scene with shadows that make it difficult to discern. There appears to be some snow and bare trees.

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    Still. Kurt Kren, 31/75 Asyl, 1975. 16mm film; black/white; silent; 8:00 minutes. Courtesy of sixpackfilm, Vienna.

  • River with red bridge. There is green vegetation on the river banks. Several bars are out of focus, in the forefront of the photograph.

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    Still. Tomonari Nishikawa, Ten Mornings Ten Evenings and One Horizon, 2016. 16mm film; color; sound; 10:00 minutes.

  • Three people are sitting underneath the projection of an image. The person on the left is holding the microphone and gesturing towards the screen with their left hand. The image shows square paper with squares hand-painted in different colours. Each square has a number inside.

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    Left to right: Megan Hoetger, Patrick Harrison, Tomonari Nishikawa. Post-screening discussion documentation. Underground International: Kurt Kren and Tomonari Nishikawa, curated by Patrick Harrison and Megan Hoetger, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, California, November 2018. Photographer unknown.

  • Square paper with squares hand-painted in different colours. Each square has a number inside.

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    Kurt Kren, editing score for 31/75 Asyl as reproduced in Kren’s self-published No Film book. Courtesy of San Francisco Cinematheque, California.

  • Square paper with a hand-drawn timeline chart. The lines have different colours and some of them are marked with numbers.

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    Kurt Kren, editing score for 31/75 Asyl as reproduced in Kren’s self-published No Film book. Courtesy of San Francisco Cinematheque, California.

  • Square paper with a hand-drawn timeline chart. 29 lines appear, in 7 different colours, which appear as blocks.

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    Kurt Kren, editing score for 31/75 Asyl as reproduced in Kren’s self-published No Film book. Courtesy of San Francisco Cinematheque, California.

  • Square paper with several hand-drawn column graphs.

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    Kurt Kren, fragment of a score as reproduced in Kren’s self-published No Film book. Courtesy of San Francisco Cinematheque, California.

  • A moving train is arriving to the platform. There is some reflections in the image, perhaps from double exposure.

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    Still. Tomonari Nishikawa, Tokyo - Ebisu, 2010. 16mm film; color; sound; 5:00 minutes.

  • Three people sit under a screen. The person on the right is holding a microphone to their mouth. The other two people look towards them. There is an open laptop in front of the person on the left, and a low table with a water jug and glasses in front of the person in the middle.

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    Left to right: Megan Hoetger, Patrick Harrison, Tomonari Nishikawa. Post-screening discussion documentation. Underground International: Kurt Kren and Tomonari Nishikawa, curated by Patrick Harrison and Megan Hoetger, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, California, November 2018. Photographer unknown.

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    Tomonari Nishikawa, Into the Mass, 2007. 16mm film double projection; color; silent; 6:00 minutes.

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    https://vimeo.com/117525500

    Tomonari Nishikawa, sound of a million insects, light of a thousand stars, 2014. 35mm film; color; sound; 2:00 minutes.

  • BAMPFA event listing 

  • Tomonari Nishikawa filmmaker website 

  • Kurt Kren filmmaker website 

“Through the alternately contemplative and psychedelic works of Kurt Kren, a pioneering Austrian filmmaker, and Tomonari Nishikawa, a contemporary Japanese filmmaker living in the US, we explore the social and material undergrounds in which avant-garde film has been embedded, from a co-op basement in 1970s Amsterdam to the irradiated soil of present-day Fukushima. In their films, space and time compress and distend as the dis/junctures between the human eye and camera eye are explored, excited, exploited, excoriated. The seams burst open. The differences between reality and experience, apparatus and nature deliriously dissolve.”

Underground International was conceived as a cinematic duet to highlight the intergenerational convergences and transcontinental connections animating the structural filmmaking tradition. The program included films from Austrian filmmaker Kurt Kren⁠⁠(opens in a new tab)⁠ (b. 1929; d. 1998) and Japanese filmmaker Tomonari Nishikawa⁠⁠(opens in a new tab)⁠ (b. 1969), as well as a conversation between Nishikawa and co-curators Patrick Harrison and Megan Hoetger.

Program realized by invitation of the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive⁠⁠(opens in a new tab)⁠, California on 7 November 2018. Special thanks to Patrick Harrison for the curatorial dialogue, and to Tomonari Nishikawa for a lively post-screening discussion.

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Falter, Stumble, Plunge: Kurt Kren's Structures

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In Terms of Performance

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