Now Available: Tomonari Nishikawa’s Sketch Films #1-5 + Clear Blue Sky
Posted March 26th, 2026 in Announcements, New Acquisitions, New Digital Files, News / Events
Canyon Cinema is pleased to announce that Tomonari Nishikawa’s Super 8 Sketch Film series (2005-2007) is now available. “As a painter carries a sketchbook and practices drawing,” Nishikawa explains, “I carried a Super 8 camera and shot frame by frame, as an everyday exercise to make animations of lines and shapes found in the public space.” The recently digitized films, which document the Bay Area urban landscape, can be rented individually or as a five-film package. Also included in this new deposit: Clear Blue Sky, Nishikawa’s painterly miniDV portrait of San Francisco’s Washington Square.
Sketch Film #1 (2005, 3 minutes, b&w, silent, digital file)
As a painter carries a sketchbook and practices drawing, I carried a Super 8 camera and shot frame by frame, as an everyday exercise to make animations of lines and shapes found in the public space. The entire film was edited in camera and hand-processed afterwards. -TN
Sketch Film #2 (2005, 3 minutes, b&w, silent, digital file)
The second film in the series, showing my study especially in apparent shapes — a shape that cannot be seen in a single frame but only through a series of consecutive frames when projected. It was edited in camera and hand-processed afterwards. – TN
Sketch Film #3 (2006, 3 minutes, b&w, silent, digital file)
The third film in the series, which starts with a sequence of paired images: a focused image and a blurred image of the same subject, which was caused by a diagonal camera movement. Later, it shows an experiment to produce an apparent depth by rotating an apparent shape. It was edited in camera and hand-processed afterwards. -TN
Sketch Film #4 (2007, 3 minutes, color, silent, digital file)
The fourth film in the series, for which I focused on colors and shapes. It was shot on Kodachrome, all edited in camera, and processed at Dwayne’s Photo. -TN
Sketch Film #5 (2007, 3 minutes, b&w, silent, digital file)
This is the last film in the series. I shot at the site of Marin Headlands County in California when I was an artist in residence at the Headlands Center for the Art. The footage shows the nature in the area, as well as the historic buildings originally built for the US Army, including batteries and the Nike Missile Site. It was all edited in camera and hand-processed afterwards.
Clear Blue Sky (2006, 4 minutes, color, sound, digital file)
The visual was recorded through, not a lens, but an adjustable slit-like opening, which was attached in front of the image sensor. I was changing the length of the slit and rotating the angle to modify the visual, as my response to the activities taken place at Washington Square, San Francisco, on a beautiful sunny day.
