Edo Avant Garde. A Linda Hoaglund Film. 2019. 83 minutes.
Virtual Screening:
Friday, February 19, 5pm - Friday, February 26, 5pm
(A link to view the film will be emailed to registered participants on February 19, 2021.)
Online Filmmaker Discussion:
Tuesday, February 23, 4pm
Edo Avant Garde is a film revealing the untold story of how Japanese artists of the Edo era (1603 - 1868) set the stage for the "modern art" movement in the West.
During the Edo era, bold artists innovated abstraction, minimalism, surrealism and the illusion of 3-D. Their originality is most striking in images of the natural world depicted with gold leaf on large-scale folding screens. To capture the dynamism, scale and meticulous details of the art, Hoaglund worked with Japan's Academy Award-winning cinematographer Kasamatsu Norimichi to film masterpieces in museum and private collections across the U.S. and Japan.
Linda Hoaglund is a bilingual film director and producer who has subtitled 200 Japanese films and translated works by Japan's most esteemed artists. In 2014, she completed The Wound and The Gift, a film about rescued animals told through an ancient Japanese fable. Previously she created a trilogy of feature documentary films relating to the Pacific War and postwar U.S.-Japan relations: Things Left Behind (2012) explores the transformative power of photographs of clothing left behind by those who perished in Hiroshima, taken by Ishiuchi Miyako, winner of the 2014 Hasselblad Award. ANPO: Art X War (2010) tells the story of resistance to U.S. military bases in Japan, through a treasure trove of paintings, photographs, film clips and interviews with the artists who created them. She also produced and wrote Wings of Defeat (2007), about Kamikaze pilots who survived WWII and tell the truth about a military that could not accept defeat. She recently competed her new film, Edo Avant-garde.
Presented in partnership with Spurlock Museum and co-sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Japan House, and Krannert Art Museum.
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EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
Edo Avant Garde Website
- K-12 Educational Modules on Japanese Art of the Edo Era (Module I - Introducing the Edo era: Why did Japanese artists create so much innovative art? Module II - How Japanese Buddhism and Shintoism influenced Edo era art; Module III - Why do Ōkyo’s puppies look so cute? The significance of Edo period artists observing nature to create art)
- Artists and Works Featured (with links to museum collections and high-res images)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign