Sonic Cinema: Daïchi Saïto (35mm)

Sonic Cinema and the Japan Foundation present the films of Montreal-based artist Daïchi Saïto, projected from his personal 35mm prints. A rare encounter with a singular voice in artist film practice, this programme highlights Saïto’s skill in bridging metaphysical concepts with sensory experience.

Born in Japan, Daïchi Saïto makes films of intense beauty and power, grounded in abstract approaches to landscape, rhythm, and perception. Produced through expressive use of optical manipulation and painstaking frame-by-frame photochemical treatments, the films in this programme carry a tactile and elemental intensity, bringing out the sensual poetry of the natural world and human subjectivity.

Drawing on Saïto's studies in philosophy, literature, and the languages of Hindi and Sanskrit, as much as the language of cinema, these are films built on a poetic dialogue of sound and image. Guided by the expressive improvised soundtracks of Malcolm Goldstein and Jason Sharp, we'll traverse exterior and interior landscapes, from the darkened primordial deserts of Saïto's most recent film earthearthearth (2021), through the stained glass forest of Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis (2009), before the torrent of memories and cool mountain vistas carries us away in Engram of Returning (2015).

Programmed by Oliver Dickens for Sonic Cinema, presented in partnership with the Japan Foundation. Sonic Cinema is a curatorial project by Oliver Dickens, exploring the intersection of sound and moving-image. It is dedicated to the memory of Louis Benassi. For the latest updates, sign up to the Sonic Cinema newsletter. Special thanks to Daïchi Saïto, Ithaca College, Junko Takekawa (Japan Foundation), Daniel Turner (ICA), and Bristol Experimental and Expanded Film (BEEF).

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