Genichiro Higuchi

Silver Wheel (Bicycle in Dream) is a PR film that was produced to promote the export of bicycles. However, Matsumoto Toshio, who was an employee of the Shin-riken Pictures, which had been contracted to produce the film, asked for the cooperation of Yamaguchi Katsuhiro, Kitadai Shozo and Takemitsu Toru, at the time members of Jikken Kobo, and also invited the participation of Tsuburaya Eiji, the leading expert in the field of special effects. Therefore, this work depicts a young boy’s dreams concerning a bicycle, while making the most of the realistic and materialistic character of bicycle parts and of surreal and fantasy-like scenes. Due to the course of its production and the fresh images and music used, this was seen as being the first example of experimental cinema in postwar Japan.

This science film explores the ecology of slime molds, a type of soil microorganism, through three years of observation and filming. This masterpiece was completed at the age of 91 by filmmaker Genichiro Higuchi, who has received international acclaim for his "visual thesis" that explores the mechanism of cell differentiation in cellular slime molds. Since their birth on Earth 1 billion years ago, true slime molds have survived by adapting to a variety of environments. This film uses time-lapse photography under a microscope to capture the rhythms of true slime molds, which cannot be seen with the naked eye.