Criteques writings on her works

Myth of the Heart by Norio Nishijima

There is no doubt of Mako Idemitsu’s position as a pioneering woman artist in the field of experimental film and video. She is also an important precursor of feminist art in Japan, and in recent years she has become internationally famous for her series of narrative videos examining the psychological friction caused by the Japanese structure. It is necessary, however, to see her earlier films (about twenty-five 16mm films) in order to understand her video work properly.
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A Bright, Shiny, Fabricated Family Life by Hiroko Hagiwara

Mako Idemitsu’s works from 1980 on are frequently set in an uncomfortable and artificial home environment. The artificial space, sometimes oddly light and bright, sometimes cold and dark, inevitably contains a television set. It is a place where both males and females are caught up in strange parent-child relationships marked by vanity and resignation, convenience and calculation, dominance and dependence. The images on the television set inside the space show the history of the family which has led up to the present situation.
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The Seen and The Unseen by Akira Tochigi

The opening sequence of Kae has an especially strong impact. A group of art students, including Kae and Minoru, her husband to be, are having their work critiqued by a prominent teacher. The student works, which he inspects and criticizes harshly, are all represented by television sets. The teacher and students are looking at the tops of the monitors as they speak, but the screens, which we see but they do not, glow only with a uniform primary color, red, blue, etc. The actual works which are apparently under inspection are invisible. Whatever artistic expression has been created is invisible to a third party. The artists here are not capable of anything more than this. Kae, Act Like a Girl begins with this scene and follows Kae as she becomes an independent artist.
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When Desire Scatters: Thoughts on "Still Life" by Mayumi Kagawa

“It is night now; it is not night now.” What is meant by this enigmatic monologue heard at the beginning of the video? Is it the day and night time endured by women? Or is it the moment of “shadow” which appears in the gaps of everyday life? In any case, within the “still life” of a woman, seemingly as tranquil as a “still life” painting, there is a high-tension arc, unknown to men, stretching between reality and the depths of the mind.
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Will of Independent Film Maker by Tadao Sato

Mako Idemitsu is one of the most notable independent filmmakers. After getting a hold of an 8mm camera while living in the U.S., Idemitsu began making experimental films as a night school student at the University of California in 1969, and not long after, started working in 16mm. In Idemitsu’s 1972 work “Woman’s House,” the camera seems to be licking the overly pretty and seductively decorated walls and staircase inside a house. We see a group of objects that resemble breasts attached to the wall and instantly realize, via the slightly creepy image, that the maker of this film considers the conditions for being a woman to be horribly oppressive. The lack of freedom and stifling air in this rich yet closed space are hugely suggestive.
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PERFORMATIVITY IN THE WORK OF FEMALE JAPANESE ARTISTS by Yuko Hasegawa

Idemitsu, who also used video and monitors to create her narratives, took a less metaphorical approach, reconciling her roles as mother, wife, and artist using a kind of al1egorical horror, A video monitor appears in many of her works, a monitor within a monitor representing a deep psyche or alternate self: the acting is mechanical and amateurish, based on archetypal characters and clearly meant to be symbolic．
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