Kenji Onishi
Also Known As: 大西健児, Kenji Oonishi
Biography: A central figure on the Tokyo experimental film scene and already a veteran of the international festival circuit, Kenji Onishi has made nearly 200 films since 1990, ranging from Super-8 studies of light to full-length features filled with drugs and violence. His filmmaking output spans many genres, and he has become known for a distinctive personal style that melds structural concerns with overtly sensationalist subject matter.
Department: Directing
Place of Birth: Mie Prefecture, Japan
Birthday: April 13, 1973
Adult: No
Gender: Male
Popularity:
Known For:
MAKING OF SHIROYASHA
Overview: A behind the scenes documentary of Kenji Onishi's never completed 35mm feature film "Shiroyasha", shot between 2002 and 2004.
Genres: Documentary Action Horror
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 2004-04-11
Popularity:
A Chinese Fisherman
Overview: A very rare, Super 8 film by Fujiwara Sho (pen name Fujiwara Dragon), that was screened only one time. Some scenes were later reused in one of Kenji Onishi versions of Edge Cutters and altered. There were many versions of Edge Cutters and Kenji Onishi altered them for different screenings.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 2010-01-01
Popularity:
Out of Frame (Short Version)
Overview: Out of Frame (1996) plays with your expectations and the way how we are used to “read” pictures and their framing. A woman is rubbing herself against a white wall, making the typical noises of having sex from the back, and Onishi takes his time to open the framing and then showing them in explicit positions. You don’t see the penetration but watch the rhythm of two bodies, listening to it, too. The framing by windows will allow you some rest. The man is putting on his clothes and closing the door while the woman is looking out oft he window. Onishi’s typical black inserts again, and we watch the same couple on the toilet, where he is putting her hands into hand-cuffs. After that he is showering her carefully, and she remains in hand-cuffs while they are having sex again under the shower. He is using his revolver then to free her from these metal things. And the toilet is a calm place when she comes back after strangling a young man on the street.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1996-05-26
Popularity:
Zetcho: The Acme
Overview: Zetcho is a feature shot on film, including the typical colouring of washed-out white and blue. Again Onishi brings together the couple’s problems, nature and brutalism, set against a colour-changing skyline or in small apartments. The structure of architecture and the one of nature. A cat hiding behind a car. While it all turns out to be a drama of killing and brutalism against women.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1997-04-12
Popularity:
Coming Future
Overview: Nakagawa shot “Coming Future” on the nights of December 24 and 25, 2010 in Shibuya, making it his location for an idealized Bohemia in the heart of Tokyo. Interesting interviews/discussions with Kenji Murakami, Nobuhiro Yamashita, Kenji Onishi, Tetsuaki Matsue and more... By far the most interesting sequence is with Kenji Onishi (“A Burning Star”). Wielding a super-8 camera, Onishi documents his own interview, taking random shots of street-life and buildings. He leavens his monologue with statements bordering between cliché and outré. “A movie that aims to make a message is boring.”
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 2010-01-01
Popularity:
Dear Mrs Ougi Chikage
Overview: Kenji Murakami seeks out legendary wildman director Kenji Onishi and arranges a meeting with director Yoko Oguchi. The meeting turns unexpectedly intense...
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 2006-01-01
Popularity:
Aquarium City
Overview: It is all flickering neon-light with Aquarium City (1996), a feature film of 76 minutes, using black inserts and the structure of the tatami again. Blue and grey are the most prominent colours, and a sky turning white while a young woman is using drugs and waving her hair. The needle in her arm, and we are watching from a distance while cars and motorcycles are passing the street. The possible contrasts in beauty seem to be Onishi’s theme, so after the dark street we watch another woman masturbating while sitting on a chair. But later placing the needle in the vagina of another woman. The sun is shining outside and cars continue driving. But the power is gone. And the way out is never anything else but a black hole.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1996-01-01
Popularity:
The Underground Water
Overview: The Underground Water (1996) comes as an ode to water in its forms and to that connected sounds, ice, drinking, mirroring, bathing, washing, pearling on a window, raindrops, reflecting architecture and grey trees. Dry leaves, wooden floors and a young man smoking a cigarette. Windows and doors are preparing the framing. The wind is coming up. Will it rain today? A young woman is pressing her face to a TV screen, all in blue but it is not water refreshing her. In her eyes, you see some hidden memories and dirty tennis balls lying on the street sucking up the drops of the rain.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1996-01-01
Popularity:
Hardcandy
Overview:
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1998-01-01
Popularity:
The Underground Water (Short Version)
Overview: The Underground Water (1996) comes as an ode to water in its forms and to that connected sounds, ice, drinking, mirroring, bathing, washing, pearling on a window, raindrops, reflecting architecture and grey trees. Dry leaves, wooden floors and a young man smoking a cigarette. Windows and doors are preparing the framing. The wind is coming up. Will it rain today? A young woman is pressing her face to a TV screen, all in blue but it is not water refreshing her. In her eyes, you see some hidden memories and dirty tennis balls lying on the street sucking up the drops of the rain.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1996-01-02
Popularity:
Aquarium City (Short Version)
Overview: It is all flickering neon-light with Aquarium City (1996), a feature film of 76 minutes, using black inserts and the structure of the tatami again. Blue and grey are the most prominent colours, and a sky turning white while a young woman is using drugs and waving her hair. The needle in her arm, and we are watching from a distance while cars and motorcycles are passing the street. The possible contrasts in beauty seem to be Onishi’s theme, so after the dark street we watch another woman masturbating while sitting on a chair. But later placing the needle in the vagina of another woman. The sun is shining outside and cars continue driving. But the power is gone. And the way out is never anything else but a black hole.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1996-01-02
Popularity:
SPRITE
Overview: The film heritage of Yukiyasu Shimada.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 2013-12-03
Popularity:
Zetcho: The Acme (Short Version)
Overview: Zetcho is a feature shot on film, including the typical colouring of washed-out white and blue. Again Onishi brings together the couple’s problems, nature and brutalism, set against a colour-changing skyline or in small apartments. The structure of architecture and the one of nature. A cat hiding behind a car. While it all turns out to be a drama of killing and brutalism against women.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1997-05-12
Popularity:
Squareworld (Short Version)
Overview: Squareworld has a stark, minimal narrative: a drug-addicted man kidnaps a young woman from the hills, holds her prisoner and eventually kills her and disposes of her body. We learn almost nothing about either the victim or her tormentor, and the film contains no moral judgments –Tony Rayns
Genres: Horror
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1995-10-28
Popularity:
PRAGUE
Overview: A man fingering the girl before killing her. Camera cuts to blue sky and cat. A man choking his girl. Onishi at his usual with framing, extreme close-ups, expectations and black inserts.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 2003-02-18
Popularity:
VIDA
Overview: VIDA, starring AV actress Hotaru Hazuki, is an erotic work aiming directly at the Hypothalamus. DEATH is an event that makes life emerge in a different language. The film was entirely self-developed at home
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 2008-01-01
Popularity:
Associations of Silverpencils
Overview: This is a film about a medium approaching extinction, an 8mm documentary film about a vanishing 8mm cinema. Blending two genres, the science film and the personal film, and benefiting from the participation of multiple generations of cineastes, it is a reflection upon the original cinematic experience.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 2011-01-01
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Yasuda Satoru World Trip vol.3
Overview: Yasuda Satoru, 8mm. Singing, children, sea, mountains, travel, friends. Archive and diary like footage repeated and distorted multiple times - in the end it became like a "ghost diary". R-1/3~3/3
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 2016-09-22
Popularity:
Out of Frame
Overview: Out of Frame (1996) plays with your expectations and the way how we are used to “read” pictures and their framing. A woman is rubbing herself against a white wall, making the typical noises of having sex from the back, and Onishi takes his time to open the framing and then showing them in explicit positions. You don’t see the penetration but watch the rhythm of two bodies, listening to it, too. The framing by windows will allow you some rest. The man is putting on his clothes and closing the door while the woman is looking out oft he window. Onishi’s typical black inserts again, and we watch the same couple on the toilet, where he is putting her hands into hand-cuffs. After that he is showering her carefully, and she remains in hand-cuffs while they are having sex again under the shower. He is using his revolver then to free her from these metal things. And the toilet is a calm place when she comes back after strangling a young man on the street.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1996-01-01
Popularity:
Squareworld
Overview: Squareworld has a stark, minimal narrative: a drug-addicted man kidnaps a young woman from the hills, holds her prisoner and eventually kills her and disposes of her body. We learn almost nothing about either the victim or her tormentor, and the film contains no moral judgments –Tony Rayns
Genres: Horror
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1995-10-28
Popularity:
Blue Max
Overview: Blue Max (1997) shows a woman looking out of a window, but also working with extreme close-ups: The street, her neck, the window, her knees, the floor and her toes, brought together by the sound of a passing train. Her ears, her mouth, the wall and the door. The sparkling glass of a window and the young woman on top of a naked young man and later the shadows on the wall of both of them. A telephone is ringing and the clouds in the blue sky are travelling by while it all turns into a rape. And the calmness of both of them is quite irritating when they later watch TV together. (www.desistfilm.com)
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1997-01-01
Popularity:
PRAGUE (Short Version)
Overview: A man fingering the girl before killing her. Camera cuts to blue sky and cat. A man choking his girl. Onishi at his usual with framing, extreme close-ups, expectations and black inserts.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 2003-02-19
Popularity: