Matsumoto Toshio (松本俊夫)
“If Matsumoto wasn’t born, Stanley Kubrick wouldn’t have his masterpiece, A Clockwork Orange “. As we can see, Toshio is one of the important pioneers to redefine the connection between Avant-garde and documentary.
The starting point
Before the 1950s, the content of the documentary emphasised the importance of the “shot subject”, socialism and politicalism, as known as Italian neorealism. By contrast, Toshio considered that the neorealism was not able to capture the mindset of people at that time, instead of, a documentary should explore more about the condition of mind to fulfil the lack of soul and mood. Hence, his earlier artworks referred to actual social cases, but the contents of the cases were masterly concentrated on the perspective of himself. In 1960-1670s, with the development of television and social media, Toshio paid more attention to the communication between media and the people.
Toshio’s style has always full of multiple digital materials. It seems to imply social complication and the rapid development of the human being.