Select filmography
Tamago Stories One
The world emerges from the chaos of the tamago (egg) and emerges into the cycles of the sun to moonlight to sunlight.
The first section of an in-progress anthology of films about mechanisms, economies, and ecologies of production through the confluence of eggs, photography, and the sun.
2026
16mm, b/w, silent
03:00 min
2026 Conversations at the Edge – Kioto Aoki: Findings
2026 Prismatic Ground
2026 Dapplings by Kioto Aoki presented by Mono no Aware
Olympic Order
Following the Olympic order of gymnastics (vault, bars, beam, floor) the film reimagines a cinematic routine on each of these events.
2025
16mm, b/w, silent
12:00 min
2025 Celluloid Now
2026 Dapplings by Kioto Aoki presented by Mono no Aware
Lightly Heeled
Remnants of hand-processed textures animate a flame framed between the artists's heels.
2024
16mm, b/w, silent
03:00 min
2024 Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki at Chicago Film Society
2024 The Whole to Express at Gallery Kobo Chika [installation]
2025 Light Field
2025 Stand on Hands, Pacing in Light - films by Kioto Aoki presented by Vertical Cinema
2026 Conversations at the Edge – Kioto Aoki: Findings
2026 Prismatic Ground
2026 Dapplings by Kioto Aoki presented by Mono no Aware
2026 Labocine FESTIVITIES Issue
Double Run Eight
A 16mm film utilizing the functions of an 8mm camera to choreograph formal collisions of the four frames through forwards, backwards, and radial motion. Filmed on a Bell & Howell Double Run Eight camera, for a project activating cameras from the Rod Slemmons camera archive.
2024
16mm, b/w, silent
02:00 min
2022 Double Run Eight for Chicago Cluster Project [installation]
2022 今日も家にかえる at Gallery Kobo Chika [installation]
2023 Light Field
2023 Night School
2024 Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki at Chicago Film Society
2025 Stand on Hands, Pacing in Light - films by Kioto Aoki presented by Vertical Cinema
2026 Conversations at the Edge – Kioto Aoki: Findings
2026 Dapplings at Mono no Aware
逆立ち逆立ち : If pinholes were right side up, I would be doing handstands
An in-camera sequence of play between the filmmaker, a matte box, the body and optics. The inversion of the body is a familiar and natural state in gymnastics, where handstands (逆立ち / sakadachi in Japanese) are an essential part of the physical lexicon. Camera obscuras share a similar state: the image is upside down. In both handstands and camera obscuras, the inverted body is the correct orientation.
2024
16mm, b/w, silent
03:00 min
2024 The Whole to Express at Gallery Kobo Chika[installation]
2024 Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki at Chicago Film Society
2025 Stand on Hands, Pacing in Light - films by Kioto Aoki presented by Vertical Cinema
2025 Light Field
2026 Prismatic Ground
2026 Dapplings by Kioto Aoki presented by Mono no Aware
2026 Conversations at the Edge – Kioto Aoki: Findings
だんだん
An afternoon walk focusing on details on the ground and in the sky.
2024
16mm, b/w, silent
03:00 min
2024 Whole to Express [installation]
2024 Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki at Chicago Film Society
2025 Stand on Hands, Pacing in Light - films by Kioto Aoki presented by Vertical Cinema
2026 Conversations at the Edge – Kioto Aoki: Findings
6018|Dance
A dance film playing with the malleability of dance, movement, documentation, cinematography and choreography.
In the permanent collection of Chicago Film Society.
2022
16mm, b/w, sound
09:00 min
2022 Celluloid Now
2023 Experimental Film Series, Experiment #8
2024 Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki presented by Chicago Film Society
2025 Stand on Hands, Pacing in Light - films by Kioto Aoki presented by Vertical Cinema
2026 Dapplings by Kioto Aoki presented by Mono no Aware
Too, a System
Made during the ESS x DomDom residency, a film considering the act of framing as a system of vision.
2021
16mm, b/w, silent
03:00 min
2021 Experimental Sound Studio
2026 INT./EXT.
Countiss Countiss
A film made as part of the culminating exhibition of an artist residency at the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago observing the spatial histories of the landmarked museum building, formerly known as the Eleanor Countiss mansion.
2020
16mm, b/w, silent
03:00 min
2021 Flat Earth Film Festival
2024 Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki at Chicago Film Society
Marshmallow Branches
A brisk walk on a cool winter morning, catching the shadows of a puffy winter jacket
2020
16mm, b/w, silent
03:00 min
2021 Flat Earth Film Festival
2024 Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki at Chicago Film Society
Chair Piece
Filmed with dancer Jasmine Mendoza and cellist Lia Kohl in response to their collaborative work “Chair Piece,” which emerged from “research into dialogues of place and gesture, bodies and walls, chairs and motion.” The film is a cinematic interpretation of their piece, shifting between the camera, cello, body and chairs becoming formal and visual instruments of directed documentation between filmmaker, dancer, and musician.
2019
16mm, b/w, silent
12:00 min
2024 Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki at Chicago Film Society
2025 Stand on Hands, Pacing in Light - films by Kioto Aoki presented by Vertical Cinema
2026 Dapplings by Kioto Aoki presented by Mono no Aware
For Bucky Fuller
An homage to Buckminster Fuller, drawing on his belief that the Earth’s rotation could be felt by a body aligned with the North Star. Featuring Maggie Wong.
2019
16mm, b/w, silent
03:00 min
2023 Light Field
2023 Celluloid Now
2024 Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki at Chicago Film Society
2025 Stand on Hands, Pacing in Light - films by Kioto Aoki presented by Vertical Cinema
2026 Conversations at the Edge – Kioto Aoki: Findings
2026 Dapplings by Kioto Aoki presented by Mono no Aware
For Mt. Shamao
An interpretation of Milad Mozari and Mitsu Salmon’s site-responsive performance Mt. Shamao, commissioned for Experimental Sound Studio’s Florasonic series at the Lincoln Park Conservatory in Chicago.
Dancers: Mitsu Salmon, Jasmine Mendoza, Harlan Rosen
2018
16mm, b/w, sound
03:00 min
2025 Stand on Hands, Pacing in Light - films by Kioto Aoki presented by Vertical Cinema
2026 Conversations at the Edge – Kioto Aoki: Findings
Exploratory Convervations
A dance vignette filmed at the Lincoln Park Conservatory in Chicago and explores the ways in which bodies interact in enclosed constellations and thinking about Foucault's heterotopias. With Mitsu Salmon.
2018
16mm, b/w, silent
03:00 min
2018 Plants & Animals: On Monsters, Cyborgs and Other Hybrid Creatures
2018 Moving_Image 00:04
2025 Reflections on Practice – 21c Museum Hotel Chicago
frame, ways, inflections
A film following the movement of bodies through space for a site-specific installation at 6018|North for the show "Living Architecture," inspired by architect Bernard Cache's notion of inflections and photographer Idaka Yuichi.
2018
16mm, b/w, silent
03:00 min
2018 Living Architecture, 6018|North [installation]
2019 Revolutions per Minute Festival
2019 Light Field
2019 Moving_Image_00:05
2019 Living Architecture at Lubeznik Center [installation]
2026 INT./EXT.
Duet in C
A movement exercise where the camera as an extension of the human body and as documenting apparatus through dance.
2017
16mm, b/w, silent
06:00 min
2017 Low Residency MFA exhibition [installation]
Findings
An environmental exploration of space through bodies of light, with nods to Uta Barth, John Smith, and Maya Deren.
2017
16mm, b/w, silent
03:00 min
2017 Light Field
2018 Body as Image – Chicago Artists Coalition [installation]
2018 Parallax I at Institut für Alles Mögliche
2020 Late Capital TV
2024 Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki at Chicago Film Society
2025 Stand on Hands, Pacing in Light - films by Kioto Aoki presented by Vertical Cinema
2026 Conversations at the Edge – Kioto Aoki: Findings
2026 Dapplings by Kioto Aoki presented by Mono no Aware
Mornings in Orange
An early morning fishing excursion.
2017
16mm, b/w, silent
03:00 min
2018 Flat Earth Film Festival
2020 Late Capital TV
2024 Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki atChicago Film Society
2025 Stand on Hands, Pacing in Light - films by Kioto Aoki presented by Vertical Cinema
202 Reflections on Practice, 21c Museum Hotel Chicago [installation]
2026 Conversations at the Edge – Kioto Aoki: Findings
2026 Cluster Museum – Ann Arbor, MI
Studio Sunrise
A reflected self-portrait imitating celestial movements of the sun.
2017
16mm, b/w, silent
03:00 min
2018 Japanese Avant-garde Experimental Film Festival
2019 Light Field
2024 Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki at Chicago Film Society
2025 Stand on Hands, Pacing in Light - films by Kioto Aoki presented by Vertical Cinema
En Basilicum
A film about reaching and searching and looking and picking.
2017
16mm, b/w, silent
03:00 min
2018 Flat Earth Film Festival
when snow was coloured white and I breathed monotones
A backyard excursion playing with snow as material and colour.
2016
16mm, color, silent
03:00 min
2017 ExFest Film Festival
2024 Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki at Chicago Film Society
2025 Stand on Hands, Pacing in Light - films by Kioto Aoki presented by Vertical Cinema
On the Grand Scale of Things
A playful look at the relation between words, implied actions, and potential consequences through light, hands, and shadow.
2014
16mm, b/w, silent
06:00 min
2024 Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki at Chicago Film Society
2025 Stand on Hands, Pacing in Light - films by Kioto Aoki presented by Vertical Cinema
2026 Conversations at the Edge – Kioto Aoki: Findings
Write on Time
Poetic and cinematic interplay of words versus action, where the act of writing is presented as words, ink and light.
2014
16mm, b/w, silent
12:00 min
2015 ExFest Film Festival
Of What I Can See
A self-portrait through the artist’s eyes, glass, lenses and her cinematic instrument.
2014
16mm, b/w, silent
03:00 min
2020 Late Capital TV,
2024 Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki at Chicago Film Society
2025 Stand on Hands, Pacing in Light - films by Kioto Aoki presented by Vertical Cinema
2026 Conversations at the Edge – Kioto Aoki: Findings
2026 Dapplings by Kioto Aoki presented by Mono no Aware
Aperture
A formal investigation and durational observation of the camera’s aperture that draws attention to how we see, connecting the aperture of the still camera, the moving image camera and the human eye.
2013
16mm, b/w, silent
09:00 min
2013 SEFF Binghamton
2013 ExFest Film Festival
2024 Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki @ Chicago Film Society office
2024 Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki at Chicago Film Society
2025 Stand on Hands, Pacing in Light - films by Kioto Aoki presented by Vertical Cinema
2026 Conversations at the Edge – Kioto Aoki: Findings