Director Linda Hoaglund discusses the film “Edo Avant-Garde" with curator Rachel Saunders, in conjunction with the special exhibition “Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection.” "Edo Avant-Garde" (2019) reveals the story of how Japanese artists of the explosively creative Edo period (1615–1868) pioneered innovative approaches to painting that many in the west associate most readily with so-called modern art of the 20th century. Through groundbreaking interviews with scholars, priests, art dealers, and collectors in Japan and the United States, the film explores how the concepts of abstraction, minimalism, and surrealism are all to be found in Edo painting. The film’s exquisite cinematography and outstanding original soundtrack, composed in response to individual paintings, present a remarkable immersive experience of some of Japan’s most celebrated and yet least-filmed paintings, many of them outside traditional museum and gallery settings. Simultaneously dynamic and mesmerizing, at its heart “Edo Avant-Garde" offers a unique opportunity to look closely and see differently. TAKE A CLOSER LOOK: + “Edo Avant-Garde“ is available to stream through the Pacific Film Archive at the Berkeley Art Museum (BAMPFA). Please click here for further details: https://bampfa.org/event/edo-avant-garde. + Learn more about the film and access a rich collection of educational resources, curated by director Linda Hoaglund and her team: https://www.edoavantgarde.com/. + Take a virtual tour of “Painting Edo” via Google Arts & Culture: https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/harvard-art-museums + Discover more about the special exhibition “Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection:" https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/paintingedo. SPEAKERS: + Linda Hoaglund is a bilingual filmmaker born and raised in Japan. The daughter of American missionary parents, she attended Japanese public schools and graduated from Yale University. She has directed and produced five feature-length films about art and the relationship between Japan and the U.S., including “Wings of Defeat” (2007), “ANPO: Art X War” (2010), “Things Left Behind” (2012), “The Wound and The Gift” (2014), and most recently “Edo Avant-Garde" (2019) + Rachel Saunders is the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Curator of Asian Art and is responsible for the Japanese collections at the Harvard Art Museums. She earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2015 and is a specialist in medieval narrative and sacred painting. Saunders has recently curated the exhibitions “Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection” (2020) and “Prince Shōtoku: The Secrets Within” (2019). ---- "Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection" was made possible by the Robert H. Ellsworth Bequest to the Harvard Art Museums, the Melvin R. Seiden and Janine Luke Fund for Publications and Exhibitions, the Catalogues and Exhibitions Fund for Pre-Twentieth-Century Art of the Fogg Museum, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, the Thierry Porté Director’s Discretionary Fund for Japanese Art, and the Japan Foundation. The accompanying print catalogues were supported by the Harvard Art Museums Mellon Publication Funds, including the Henry P. McIlhenny Fund. Related programming is supported by the M. Victor Leventritt Lecture Series Endowment Fund, Harvard University’s Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, and the Department of History of Art and Architecture Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund for Art and Architecture. All film clips, video stills and photographs from "Edo Avante Garde" courtsey of Linda Hoaglund. Recorded Tuesday, February 9, 2021. © President and Fellows of Harvard College. Video: Rachel Saunders and Linda Hoaglund. For questions related to permission for commercial use of this video, please contact the Department of Digital Imaging and Visual Resources at am_divr@harvard.edu.