Chairman, Mr. Junichiro Takeda
I have been filmed and directed movies on living organisms through a microscope from more than 50 years.
In 1968, I established this company, ICAM CO., LTD. with my comrades to direct a new scientific film called “The Beginning of Life.” It was the first film in the world that recorded a course of development from one fertilized egg to morula stage. We filmed live state, not on a dead or artificial state. This movie acclaimed by the world famous magazines, such as Time Life, Paris Match and Der Spiegel. Our films recording the dynamic living scenes have been received high evaluation from many eminent persons and renowned organization all over the world. This is our starting point.
We have done our best to make of films of the facts of life, so that one can see exactly how living cells and tissues move and how they work in vivo under the microscope. We collect live movement of mucous-ciliary cells of airway, villi of small intestine and alveoli of lung and every tissue in the body under the microscope. Most of these films recorded living and moving cells and tissues was the first one in the world, and we won many prizes of world film festivals.
Claude Bernard, a French physiologist of the 19th century, said, “Nothing is more beautiful than to look at the development of the heart.” I completely agree with him on the matter that watching life with a great impression is the best way to understand life. Our films recording living phenomenon made surprise and moved even scientific researchers in the forefront.
We presented a film 40 years ago, in which we first showed that a dysentery bacillus, an enteric pathogenic bacterium without flagella, begins to swim fast as soon as it invades into a cell until when it was thought to be non-motile. At that moment in the Japan and U.S. Medical Conference, the attendees watching the film took their breath away and were very shocked. It is the true pleasure for us, who were concerned such scientific films. The mechanism of this phenomenon has been established recently, and it is the host cell’s cytoskeleton as named a bacterial comet tail, which forms behind the invaded bacteria and moves the bacteria.
The people who using our films help us to be honour and refine our specialties, and we have been growing up as the unique and unrivaled life sciences film produces in the world. I take pride in a moment when we stimulate the most advanced scientists and their work together. We give a pride and sympathy to the people involved in manufacturing medicine and medical treatment, and we want to encourage people struggling against diseases.
We, ICAM, will produce scientific films to meet new discoveries and moving sight of life and to convey the warmth and beauty of life to the world.