As suggested earlier, the best work of Iimura's middle period is characterized by increasingly formal concerns, concerns most effectively demonstrated by Film Strips I and II (1967-70). Each straddles the normal distinction between narrative and abstract film by presenting imagery which, though clearly representational, is not identifiable because of the formal effects of the processes Iimura used. What is most exciting about Film Strips II is the fact that the complex, untried process Iimura developed to make the film resulted in an experience which is not only interesting visually, but which is implicitly a powerful record of a painful time and a warning about the future. Because of the speed with which the imagery tumbles through the center of the frame at the beginning of the film, the viewer may not even realize that photographed images are involved. Instead, a pulsating center of energy seems to go through a kind of fission process. Though the imagery does grow increasingly recognizable as blacks, policemen, signs, flags, and so forth, the viewer cannot tell that as specific an event as a riot in Detroit is involved. Instead, the violent images appear to record a wide range of social and political conflicts. Scott MacDonald (Afterimage, April, 1978)
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