Midi Onodera is a Japanese-Canadian

filmmaker Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, castin ...

. Onodera's works feature a collage of formats, from 16mm to

Hi8 The 8mm video format refers informally to three related videocassette formats. These are the original Video8 (analog recording) format and its improved successor Hi8 (analog video and analog audio but with provision for digital audio), as well as ...

video and

digital video Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises ...

to 'low end' digital toy formats, and address individual, collective, national and transnational identities.

Early life

Midi Onodera grew up in an all-white mainly Jewish neighbourhood. Her grandmother came to Canada over 80 years ago, and speaks a rare combination of Japanese from the Meiji Period and English. In her last years of college she was enrolled full time in independent study, which allowed her full access to equipment available at the school. She was inspired to start her career as a filmmaker after receiving a negative criticism from her professor in her final critique who stated that she was going against the traditions of painting by writing on the canvas and telling stories.

Education

Career

Onodera was born in Toronto, Ontario. Her work is short and feature-length

films A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

and videos, and is exhibited internationally. She created over 25 independent short films as well as a theatrical feature film and numerous short videos. Beginning in 2006, Midi created almost 500 short videos for various projects. She has published two essays on mobile cinema for

Jump Cut A jump cut is a cut (transition), cut in film editing in which a single continuous sequential shot of a subject is broken into two parts, with a piece of footage being removed in order to render the effect of jumping forward in time. Camera posit ...

. Feminist film scholar Judith Mayne writes that Onodera's film ''Ten Cents a Dance (Parallax)'' (1985) "is less concerned with affirmative representations of lesbian experience than with explorations of the simultaneous ambivalence and pressure of lesbianism with regard to the polarities of agency and gender." Mayne notes that this film "almost caused a riot" at the

Frameline Film Festival The Frameline Film Festival (aka San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival) (formerly San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival; San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival) began as a storefront event in 1976. The first ...

in San Francisco. Film scholar Catherine Russell has analyzed Onodera's "movie-a-day" project, which consisted of 365 short videos shot primarily on a "VcamNow" toy digital camera. Russell described the videos as being "like a surprise package or candy to unwrap, taste, and dissolve in your mouth--or in your hand as the case may be." She argues that "the project articulates another spatial and temporal world, which is that of digital media--a fragmentary, networked, omnipresent world in which the subject is infinitely disperse." Performance artists

Tanya Mars Tanya Mars (born 1948) is a performance and video artist based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Biography Mars was born in Monroe, Michigan in 1948, and has lived in Canada since 1967. She was married once, and has one daughter. Mars is also known as ...

, called her "a thoughtful, daring filmmaker at a time when there was very little diversity in Canadian art". Midi Onodera has also been a panellist, jury member, guest speaker, and lecturer for over 50 different film organisations, institutions and Universities around the world. Some of her most notable appearances are, a Guest Speaker for a Canadian Cinema class at Meiji Gaukin University in Tokyo, Japan in 2008, a jury member for the 200
Toronto Arts Council
and a panellist for various discussions for the

Winnipeg Film Group The Winnipeg Film Group (WFG) is an artist-run film education, production, distribution, and exhibition centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, committed to promoting the art of Canadian cinema, especially independent cinema. While specializing in short ...

in 2015. She currently works for MAC Cosmetics as a media consultant, director and producer.

Filmography

* ''Untitled'' (1979) * ''Contemplation'' (1979) * ''Reality-Illusion'' (1979) * ''A Film'' (1980) * ''Filter Queen'' (1980) * ''The Bird That Chirped On Bathurst'' (1981) * ''Home Movies'' (1981) * ''Food Trilogy'' (1981) ** ''What's For Lunch Charley?'' ** ''One Burger, Hold the Pickle'' ** ''Aprés Diner'' * ''Endocrine'' (1982) * ''One If By Land, Two If By Sea'' (1982) * ''Idiot's Delight'' (1983) * ''Home Was Never Like This'' (1983) * ''Ville Quelle Ville'' (1984) * '' Ten Cents A Dance'' (1985) * ''Made In Japan'' (1985) * ''After Car Crash, Woman Kills Two'' (1985) * ''The Dead Zone'' (1985) * ''The Displaced View'' (1988) * ''Then/Now'' (1988) * ''

General Idea General Idea was a collective of three Canadian artists, Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal and AA Bronson, who were active from 1967 to 1994. As pioneers of early conceptual and media-based art, their collaboration became a model for artist-initiated ac ...

'' - Artist's Profile (1989) * ''

David Cronenberg David Paul Cronenberg (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation ...

'' - Artist's Profile (1990) * ''Heartbreak Hoteru'' (1990) * ''A Performance by Jack Smith'' (1992) * '' Skin Deep'' (1995) * ''the basement girl'' (2000) * ''Slightseer'' (2001) * ''Nobody Knows'' (2002) * ''Alphagirls'' (2002) * ''I have no memory of my direction'' (2005) * ''365 SHORT VIDEOS'' (2006) * ''First Bloom'', shortlisted at

Filminute Filminute is the international one-minute film festival dedicated to presenting, promoting and awarding one-minute films. Filminute was founded in 2005 and the inaugural festival ran in September 2006. Filminute looks for films that deliver a w ...

2007 (2007) * ''A Movie a Week'' (2009) * ''The Coyotes Must See the Moon...'' (2017) * ''Down the Drain'' (2017) * ''NUTS'' (2017)

Awards

References

External links

* *
Midi Onodera
in

Women Make Movies Women Make Movies is a non-profit feminist media arts organization based in New York City. Founded by Ariel Dougherty and Sheila Paige with Dolores Bargowski, WMM was first a feminist production collective that emerged from city-wide Women's Li ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Onodera, Midi Living people Canadian contemporary artists Canadian experimental filmmakers Canadian television writers Canadian video artists Women video artists Canadian women artists Lesbian artists LGBT film directors LGBT artists from Canada Women experimental filmmakers Canadian women television writers Artists from Toronto Film directors from Toronto Writers from Toronto Canadian people of Japanese descent Canadian Film Centre alumni 1961 births Asian-Canadian filmmakers Canadian women film directors Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts winners