Midi Onodera

A filmmaker initiates a dangerous and threatening game when a woman responds to her ad in a tattoo magazine.

In October 1984, peformance artist/filmmaker extraordinaire, Jack Smith was coaxed out of his New York apartment for a five night run of performances held at the Funnel Experimental Film Theatre in Toronto, Canada. The performance, entitled: “Brassieres of Uranus” consisted of a number of local artists on stage creating brassieres out of plastic flowerpots. The event culminated on Halloween with the finale “Dance of the Sacred Foundation Application” performed to the music of the Seven Veils. This footage is one of the few remaining film documents of this memorable event.

The Displaced View traces a personal search for identity and pride, within the unique and suppressed history of the Japanese in Canada. Through an examination of the emotional and cultural links between the women of one family, the processes of the construction of memory and the re-construction of history, are revealed. Utilizing an innovative combination of experimental, dramatic and documentary forms, the film emerges as a deeply moving and compassionate love letter. Just as the official history of the Japanese Canadians has been thrown into question, so does the film’s fictionalized narrative, question documentary as truth.

a renovatio n is a document of labour

Confusion, underlying meaning and unspoken truths are often associated with the dialectic of sexual communication. Mingled with the intensity and unpredictability of a “one night stand,” they generate unique sensations – mixed emotion, risk, and excitement. The film employs formal devices in a manner that is exceedingly simple, yet very effective. Its subject matter, sexuality and communication, gains depth and poignancy through the artist’s decision to shoot the film’s three scenes for projection in a “double screen” configuration.

a short video by midi onodera

a short video by midi onodera

a short video by midi onodera

Black-and-white images of waves dissolving over stills of gravestones, old fences, boats on the shore, and a voice meditating on the joys of celibacy.

a short video by midi onodera

Abandoned by her lover, a young woman finds comfort and safety in her basement apartment. Mundane routines, a diet of junk food and the warmth of the television insulate her from the pain and betrayal of her ill-fated relationship. Eventually, The Basement Girl emerges - transformed and ready to “make it on her own.”

Step-printed images of a “home” - a suburban house, no people in sight - combine with a children's story, told in saccarine tones, about the country mouse who discovers that "there's no place like home." A gently told tale of alienation.

Nobody Knows is a short poetic video that eloquently hints at a few inner thoughts of a solitary young woman. Shot in 2 toy camera formats, the Lomographic 35mm Supersampler and the Intel Play Digital Movie Creator, Nobody Knows embraces alternative photography in both the celluloid and the digital realms.

Ostensibly searching for an emotional connection with her aging father, the woman contemplates her own inherited culture and familial touchstones. Her North American pop culture sensibility fuses with a distorted Japanese perspective to create a surreal interpretation of a “Japan of the imagination.” This fictional landscape is peppered with invented Japanese myths, ruminations on memory loss, the temporal space of digital photography and the ghosts of inherited imagination.

The intermittently heard voice-over talks about a woman's self-awareness - being unable to know if she has really changed or not. The images are esoteric and hard to interpret: young women in black in various urban settings, something moving rhythmically. A personal, yet intriguing film.

A work exploring the nature of vision, framed within two circular ‘windows’ that mimic the apparatus of binocular vision. The film is accompanied by a string of observations on eyes, blindness and acts of looking.

a short video by midi onodera

Videos on youtube which are 'lonely' (without many views) are compiled in the hope of making friends.

North American portrayals of Japan perpetuate the myths of Americanized culture, distorting and misrepresenting traditional values.

“Ville Quelle Ville?” reflects a satirical view of city life, commonplace and redundant. Urban life is portrayed as a series of rituals: coming of age in an environment shaped by generations, obscured by the constant barrage of everyday life. The film randomly touches upon key events familiar to everyone in North America, a melting pot of human experiences. As in any city there is an aspect of alienation, here displayed through the eyes of a young woman caught in the web of her own daily existence.