Noto obit

[A.M. Nornes]

At 5:36 PM +0900 7/4/01, David Hopkins wrote:
I'm very curious about the comment on "May Day records" in the obituary.
I've been diligently searching for left-wing records for years, and while
there are a few, I've never seen anything that could be called a "May Day
record." I wonder if there is any more information to be had about this
reminiscence. It has always seemed odd to me that there could be left-wing
production in film but not in records, but the fossil record is quite bare
in that regard.
David Hopkins


I don't know what this means, but the reason it seems important to Noto is
that Prokino was unable to use benshi for their screenings. Most of their
screenings were legal, which meant submitting films for censorship. From the
very first attempt to show films publicly, the censors did not allow the use
of benshi narration. As a substitute, they used some records of leftist
songs and they apparently proved just as effective. Prokino writers were
clearly happy about this side-stepping of the censors. Later on, they
acquired German disks of worker songs from a student who was returning from
study abroad in Germany. I've seen nothing more specific than that, however,
I have heard that the music league within NAPF (PR?) produced their own
records.

Markus