Photo by Mr. Tsunao Sakaguchi

Macoto Tezka (he spells it that way), the son of Tezuka Osamu, the master of manga and creator of Astro Boy, has been making films since he was only 17 years old. In September, his long-awaited, mega-budget film Hakuchi (The Innocent), premiered at the Venice Film Festival, confirming his reputation as one of Japan's hottest young filmmakers. Tezka is a relative anomaly in the Japanese filmmaking arena, having successfully managed to carve out a commercial cinematic career alongside his experimental film interests.

His latest project in experimental cinema, the cunningly entitled Jikken Eiga (Experimental Film), was completed at the beginning of the month, just days before its premiere at London's Institute of Contemporary Art cinema.

Japan's tradition of avant-garde or experimental cinema has its roots in 1960s American underground cinema. But these days the American alternative film movement is in decline and Japan is one of only a few countries in the world where non-commercial cinema is still growing and thriving. Many believe the movement owes much of its success to Tokyo's Image Forum, a former filmmakers' cooperative specializing in alternative cinema, which started life in the seventies as the Underground Center. In 1977, after a series of disputes about film ownership and distribution, the original cooperative reshaped to become Image Forum, and began organizing workshops, a repertory program, video distribution, a magazine and, later, an annual festival for the experimental film scene. Tezka is one of many well-known and up-and-coming filmmakers to have been helped by the Image Forum.

While Japan's commercial film industry is booming, with the help of government and private funds, the experimental scene has largely had to survive on filmmakers' own money and enthusiasm. Nakajima Takashi, Image Forum Program Director, says that the filmmakers rarely get funding; they use their own money to make their works. There is support from the Japanese government for films, but not experimental ones.

Tezka is similarly disillusioned by the government's lack of support for the industry, but also for the arts in general. "The Japanese government don't put much into art education, and when I came to London I realized that," he says. "Japanese schools teach that art is for a limited number of people and, while young people have the enthusiasm to make artwork, they have a feeling of crisis because of that."

Nevertheless, it was during Tezka's schooldays that he got the bug for alternative cinema. "My first experience of experimental cinema was when I was in elementary school. I liked Hammer Horror movies," he explains. "I started going to art cinemas and I saw films more shocking than horror at those cinemas. I was interested in both types of cinema, so now I am making both feature and experimental films." Tezka's interest in experimental and commercial cinema has led to a fusion of the genres in his mind, which, he says, is not accepted by purists in either field. "I am not separating work that is experimental or commercial," he explains. "In my mind there is some kind of mixture, but the technical or production staff want to separate them." However, he believes there is a fundamental difference between the commercial and alternative fields with regard to the film's emphasis. "In the commercial field the techniques are more important but in the experimental field the important thing is to express emotion," he states.

Tezka says that he found this issue particularly problematic while working on Jikken Eiga because his commercial staff had difficulty adapting to the experimental concept. "At first the commercial staff put too much care on technique, and I had a difficult time explaining the emotional side," he says. "They thought the actors were like dolls to put in places and arrange. After three or four days the technical staff realized actors and actresses have emotions and so they changed their way of shooting from that point." He smiles and laughs. "What I regret is that no-one realizes what the concept of experimental film is-not even me!"

Whatever the concept is, the Experimental Movement's increasing success at home and overseas indicates that the filmmakers must be getting something right. The Image Forum Festival is a worthy case in point. The Festival has mushroomed from its humble local beginnings in Tokyo in 1987 to a truly national and international event reaching as far as London. This year's competition received a record 471 Japanese entries, of which a selection is now being shown in London. Tezka's own Narakuei is also being showcased as part of a retrospective of the most important historical works in Japanese avant-garde film.

So, the future looks bright for the new generation of alternative filmmakers in Japan, and prospects for the Image Forum itself seem equally rosy. It will be moving from its current base in Shinjuku to custom-built premises in Shibuya in the summer of 2000, with four floors of offices, cinemas and a workshop, and the powers-that-be hope that the new Forum will show a more diverse and accessible series of experimental programming to attract a new audience into arts cinemas. "The films will be different, to draw a wider audience, as most people coming now are filmmakers," says Nakajima. "In our thirty-five seat theatre, more than half [of the audience] make their own films." But he reassures all dedicated experimentalists out there that, "in the new workshop theatre we're going to preserve the experimental program." That's good news because, as a curator at the Image Forum showcase in London said, "It nurtures the needs of filmmakers and helps experimental film to grow and develop. There's nowhere like it in the world."