Toshio Matsumoto has been a pioneer of avant-garde film, documentary, and video in Japan since the 1960s, with titles including Song of the Stones (1963), Funeral of Roses (1969), Regeneration (1971), and Dogra Magra (1988), and has also published a number of photography books. A graduate of Tokyo University, Matsumoto is now a dean of the Faculty of Arts at the Kyoto University of Art and Design and president of the Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences.