Kohei Ando

Kohei Ando (born February 1, 1944) is a Japanese experimental filmmaker, videographer, director, cinematographer, screenwriter, executive producer, and Professor Emeritus of Cinema at Waseda University. He is credited as one of the earliest figures in the rise of video art in Japan during the 1960s and 1970s, and a pioneer in Japanese experimental filmmaking.

Ando's rich artistic output is heavily influenced by his Waseda University education, participation in Shuji Terayama's avant-garde Tenjo Sajiki theatrical troupe, and interests in film, literature, and theater. He is celebrated as one of the first Japanese directors to employ image processing and video feedback with newly available video technology into the filmmaking process.

Throughout his career, Ando has created a diverse range of films whose narrative structures and visual designs are markedly different from one another, from the abstractionism of ''Oh! My Mother'' (1969) to the fusion of Western Art History and Japanese culture in ''Whispers of Vermeer'' (1998).

As a filmmaker and video artist, Ando's career is largely defined by his multidisciplinary nature in which he actively engaged in several projects that overlapped between his participation in Tenjo Sajiki, employment at the Tokyo Broadcasting System, and pursuit of independent filmmaking.

As of 2021, Ando's most recent film is a 2003 documentary on the French Post-Impressionist painter Henri Rousseau. Soon after his completion of the documentary short, Ando assumed teaching and advisory positions at his alma mater Waseda University in which he taught Cinema and launched the Kohei Ando Film Laboratory production company.

He is a member of the International Committee of the Directors Guild of Japan, and he serves as the Programming Advisor of the Tokyo International Film Festival. Provided by Wikipedia