F06 :: Feminist Film Studies

1/ Born in Nagoya, Japan/San Francisco-based. Received a BA in Cinema and Philosophy, SUNY Binghamton, 2003, and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.

2 & 3/ Filmography includes: Sketch Film #3 (2006, super 8, US); Market Street (2005, 16mm, US); Sketch Film #2 (2005, super 8, US); Sketch Film #1 (2005, super 8, US); Apollo (2003, 16mm, US/Japan); Frame Work (2003, 16mm, US). Also, an installation entitled: A Pinhole Behind Fences (2005, mixed-media, filmstrips, screen, and projectors), which can be seen here:

This was the only piece I was able to view, and based on this piece, and the description of the “Thread, Frame, and Flicker� film (described below), I’m a bit upset that I’m unable to see them; the stills from the works screened at the avant-garde film festivals, alongside the descriptions of the visuals are intriguing because Nishikawa is not only using tenets of avant-garde film in her work (exploration of space, time, non-narrative, non-linear structures), but she is also exploring the role of film itself, and manipulation of actual film to achieve new ways of representing and experiencing film.

“The Ninth Annual Views from the Avant Garde� at Film Society of Lincoln Center featured Nishikawa’s work, Market Street, which appears to be available by DVD purchase (independent marketing means), it also featured a later work from her, entitled Clear Blue Sky(2006, 4m; US) in “The Tenth Annual Views from the Avant Garde.�

Her most recent work is being screened through San Francisco Cinematheque:

Sunday, October 22 at 7:30pm
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street (corner of Third)
Tickets: 415-978-ARTS
Thread, Frame, and Flicker
Angelina Krahn and Tomonari Nishikawa In Person

The art of cinema may be ultimately optical and auditory, but its processes are chemical, electrical and material. Two young Bay Area-based film artists, Krahn and Nishikawa refract landscape and gesture through the technology called cinema and orchestrate its traces into expressive nuance and delicate visual pleasure. They will each screen a selection of their work with rent and re-sewn 16mm film, hand processed emulsions, pinhole and slit-aperture videos and pixilated films. Nishikawa is currently an artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts.

4/ As stated above, it seems that Nishikawa’s work remains largely a part of either major avant garde screenings (such as The New York Film Festival), or she is actively working to promote her own work (as in the Microcinema website), as well as using local and community-based experimental projects (like SF Cinematheque) as sites for screenings.
I stumbled upon Nishikawa’s work somewhat haphazardly: I visited a filmmaker named Vanessa Renwick’s website, whose experimental work I enjoy, and followed a link of hers to a Cinema Project site, which alerted me to a program being presented by Irina Leimbacher, a curator and artistic director of San Francisco Cinematheque, entitled, “First-Person in a Globalized World,� which was a springboard for a new program entitled Women’s Perspective in Film. An excellent jumping off point, yes? Alas, I was unable to find anything but a negative review of two short films (written by a man, with little content description to go on), and with most leads failing, I visited the SF Cinematheque website and reviewed their calendar of upcoming films, where I found the description of Nishikawa’s collaborative film.

5/ It was actually rather roundabout finding Nishikawa’s work at all, and even more difficult to determine any personal biography, beyond birth and education (no age even); also, with the exception of the short installation film, it was difficult to view any of the films I was able to find for free, or any of the actual length films at all. However, a review accompanying a screening of Apollo in an academic quarterly in the last year cited Nishikawa as a “film artist to watch,� so hopefully I will be seeing more of her work available soon.