Ryo Orikasa

Directed by Japanese filmmaker Ryo Orikasa, this animated short was inspired by Henri Michaux’s book of poetry and drawings of the same name, about his experiences with mescaline. The film explores the limits of language and perception, creating connections between sound, meaning, shapes and movement.

I try to set this work – a film using texts, or a film-book – between watching and reading. This film is dedicated to J.L. Borges, a great artist, who had translated The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde at his early childhood, became one of the greatest writers of the 20th century and continued to publish the works by dictation even after losing his eyesight.

Yoshiro Ishihara (1915–1977), who burst upon the scene of Japanese modern poetry in the mid-1950s, is now remembered as a “poet of silence.” He said, “A poem is an impulse to resist writing.” This film is an attempt to seek out the landscape from his poem.

The moment the first gleam of sunlight trickled in gently stirring the folds of a shallow sleep… that was when the graffiti appeared. The film brings a prose poem by Makoto Takayanagi to life, read here by the poet himself.