New Constellations

About This Screening

New Constellations is a special presentation of three short films by Takashi Makino, a Tokyo-based experimental filmmaker widely considered to be one of the most influential Japanese moving-image artists of his generation. The presentation will include Anti-Cosmos (2022), Constellation (2025) and the world premiere of his latest piece, Imagination (2025). Live sound will be provided by Liz Harris.

“What I have done in my practice of extreme abstract expression so far has always been to produce films as devices for stimulating and amplifying the viewer’s powers of imagination, and to show these films around the world.” - Takashi Makino

Makino’s films incorporate layers upon layers of sound, image, and light to create densely-textured, hypnotic works. He has described his own work as a “creative collaboration with filmmaker and audience,” the sheer experience of it “giving birth to a new cosmos… an act of true creativity.” Liz Harris is an artist working out of the Pacific Northwest. She releases music and art editions on her imprint YELLOWELECTRIC, and kranky records, and records/produces under the names Grouper, Nivhek, Raum, Helen, and Mirrorring.

Cinema Project has followed Makino’s work for over a decade, continually intrigued by his ability to produce both profound joy and sadness in the abstract through a technical processing of the image. Of his newest work Imagination, Makino explains:

In 2022, I began working on a project I had envisioned since childhood: "a film that stimulates and develops the viewer's creativity and imagination."

It was both a philosophical question and a technical challenge: is it possible to make a film from "nothing"?

I set up my camera under a cloudless blue sky and took about 50,000 photos at the highest quality and multiple ISO settings and several lenses. I then edited the hundreds of millions of particles and flickers I obtained to form the moving images.

I also scanned unexposed films found in the ruins of Japan's oldest film developing lab, capturing organic grain that remained on the film, and then edited all of them together. 

These programs are supported by:

Regional Arts & Culture Council 

City of Portland Office of Arts & Culture