Mako Idemitsu is a Japanese media artist known for creating experimental video art and film works.
34 Facts About Mako Idemitsu
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Mako Idemitsu had strained relationships with both her father and mother.
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Mako Idemitsu was disinherited by her father after choosing to live in California.
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Mako Idemitsu stated that her father held a Confucian attitude towards women and embraced a patriarchal view of gender roles, which led to the belittling of his wife and daughters.
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Mako Idemitsu said that he acted in ways that denied them individuality and independence.
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Mako Idemitsu has two sons, Osamu and Shingo, from her marriage with Sam Francis.
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Mako Idemitsu attended Waseda University in Tokyo from 1958 to 1962, where she studied Japanese history at the Faculty of Letters.
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Sam Francis 8.
Mako Idemitsu considered her undergraduate education to be under stimulating and often frustrated with what she believed to be misogynistic comments made by her professors.
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Mako Idemitsu participated in many extracurricular events, such as the university's Contemporary Literature Society, and was highly politically engaged, joining in student demonstrations against the US-Japan Security Treaty of 1960.
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Mako Idemitsu attended Columbia University in New York from 1963 to 1964.
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Mako Idemitsu had hoped to live in New York City, and had to convince her father to support her graduate studies.
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Mako Idemitsu enjoyed the multicultural environment of New York and the freedom she had, attending different art events by herself, without the legacy and baggage of her family's ties with the Japanese art scene.
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Mako Idemitsu did not manage to stay in New York beyond her graduate studies and left for Europe soon after her student visa expired.
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Mako Idemitsu lived in Santa Monica, Los Angeles from 1965 to 1972.
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Mako Idemitsu was introduced to Sam Francis, through her father's acquisition of his work, and she married him in 1966.
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Mako Idemitsu found that even among the hippies and the liberated counterculture of the 1960s in California, male chauvinism was inescapable, different in nature from that of her homeland, but chauvinism nonetheless.
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Mako Idemitsu became interested with the Women's Liberation Movement, and understood how film documentation was crucial for the awareness of their activities; her interest in 16mm film cameras ensued.
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Mako Idemitsu was very aware that her works would not be as legible to English-speaking audiences who did not know the Japanese language and culture, even if they showed interest in the work's visual aesthetics.
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Mako Idemitsu returned to Japan with Francis and her sons in 1973, originally planning to stay in Japan for a year.
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In 1974, when Francis returned to the United States, Mako Idemitsu chose to remain in Japan.
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Mako Idemitsu began to establish her practice without the label of being Francis' wife in Tokyo, getting involved with other video artists such as the members of Video Hiroba.
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Mako Idemitsu worked extensively with Yoshimitsu Takahashi to develop her films.
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Mako Idemitsu was involved with Japanese art historians, in particular Kaori Chino, a feminist art historian who encouraged her to write and publish her autobiography.
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Mako Idemitsu first started to work in the United States initially with 8 mm film and then moved onto 16 mm film.
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Mako Idemitsu became interested in capturing the mood, quality, and interplay of light and shadow.
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Sam Francis 26.
Mako Idemitsu's work has often been typified as being inspired by melodramas and diary narration.
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Mako Idemitsu showed how the modern family in Japan was oppressing the identities of Japanese women.
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Mako Idemitsu interviewed 5 people about how they viewed Francis; Taeko Tomioka, Toru Takemitsu, Shuzo Takiguchi, Jiro Takamatsu, and Sazo Mako Idemitsu.
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Mako Idemitsu portrays her frustration with alienation and surveillance by interrupting each domestic scene with a televisual eye.
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Mako Idemitsu proposes photographs by her collaborator, Akira Kobayashi, to construct an eerie found-image video.
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Mako Idemitsu portrays the struggle for housewives to be filial, care for her family's need and pursue their own creative ambitions.
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The moving images show Mako Idemitsu holding one of her children, a baby suckling, mother and child looking at each other, and the baby's innocent smile.
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However, Mako Idemitsu insists that this Western type of cradle looks like a coffin, reminding people that "in the midst of life we are in death".
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Mako Idemitsu's work has been included in programmes for film festivals such as the Image Forum, Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Singapore International Film Festival.