talking silents available

[Anne McKnight]

Hi,
following on Sarah's riff about sound, and Sawato Midori, I happened  
to notice that Matsuda is coming out with a couple more DVDs that  
look great, with Mizoguchi titles first, doubly narrated by a benshi  
contemporary to the film, and then one contemporary to us--
Here is some info in Japanese and English about imminent releases--

2007年10月リリース予定
■ 	Talking Silents 1 溝口健二監督作品『瀧の白糸』・ 
『東京行進曲』
※ 	『瀧の白糸』は、弁士/松田春翠と澤登 翠のダ 
ブル音声となります。
※ 	『東京行進曲』は、弁士/澤登 翠　です。
■ 	Talking Silents 2 溝口健二監督作品『折鶴お千』・ 
『唐人お吉』（PR映像）
※ 	『折鶴お千』は　オリジナル音源（弁士／松井 
翠声）と弁士/澤登 翠のダブル音声となります。

-  	Talking Silents 1 Taki no Shiraito (The Water Magician) and Tokyo  
Koshinkyoku (Tokyo March), directed by Mizoguchi Kenji
* 	Taki no Shiraito (The Water Magician) has an option to select  
between the narration by Matsuda Shunsui and Sawato Midori
* 	Tokyo Koshinkyoku (Tokyo March) features benshi narration by  
Sawato Midori
- 	Talking Silents 2 Orizuru Osen (The Downfall of Osen) and Tojin  
Okichi (a PR fragment), directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
* 	Orizuru Osen (The Downfall of Osen) has an option to select  
between the original sound (by benshi Matsui Suisei) and Sawato  
Midori's narration


http://www.matsudafilm.com/matsuda/indexj.html
http://www.matsudafilm.com/matsuda/indexe.html

Enjoy!
Anne


On 19-Oct-07, at 9:29 PM, batgirl at tkb.att.ne.jp wrote:

> Dear KineJapanners,
>
> [Following on Markus's vibrant, vital postings on the Yamagata  
> International Documentary Film Festival earlier this month, I  
> wanted to add a few reflections on the festival as well. I thought  
> I'd wait until after the heady fervour of the festival had died  
> down, and yours truly had been able to recoup enough sleep and gain  
> some kind of perspective on the films and events to write  
> coherently about them. In retrospect, may be that writing amidst  
> the wild rush would have made for a better posting, but here goes  
> nonetheless.]
>
> A week after the festival, some memories to add to the rich  
> description Markus gave us. The first one is perhaps prosaic: this  
> year's festival was marked by the omnipresence of lines--to get  
> into screenings, to get into Komian, or even to get tickets to get  
> into screenings later on in the day. The lines for some films at  
> the main competition venue wound their way down the stairs from the  
> sixth floor nearly to the ground floor. Muse and the Forum, the  
> venues for the Asian competition and the science film and postwar  
> Germany series, distributed tickets for each day's screenings  
> around 9:30 each morning, which meant line-ups outside both  
> theatres--in some cases halfway around the block--from 8:30 am (not  
> as long after Komian had closed as some may have liked). Muse and  
> Forum are on opposite sides of the downtown area, which made for a  
> lot of people dashing back and forth between the two early in the  
> morning every day, including people jumping into cabs to make sure  
> they'd arrive in time. A normal scene for other festivals, to be  
> sure, but an interesting twist for Yamagata--and hopefully one that  
> will serve as a visual expression of viewer/community support for  
> the festival, useful for arguing for the importance of continuing  
> it in whatever form in years to come.
>
> The science film series was one of the toughest programmes to get  
> into, and had some complete gems, both Japanese science films and a  
> programme of UFA docs from the 1930s now at the National Film  
> Center. Many of the programmes were organized by theme, with work  
> from different decades. Some of the newer films were clearly chosen  
> to fit specific themes, rather than to point to new and exciting  
> directions in science documentary filmmaking (I'm thinking of one  
> recent space exploration doc that was essentially a plug for  
> renewed funding from the Japanese government using on-screen  
> testimonies from "foreign" (i.e. Euro-American) scientists about  
> Japanese leadership in astrophysics research), but the overall  
> comparison of science film style and ideas of "what science is"  
> that the thematic programmes afforded made for a thought-provoking  
> programme.
>
> Two more highlights of this year's programming not yet mentioned,  
> both related to sound:
>
> 1) One of the last afternoons of the festival, Sawato Midori gave a  
> spell-binding performance of Oh! Furusato (Ah, My Hometown), a 1938  
> Mizoguchi film shot in Yamagata, accompanied by cello and keyboard.  
> What made the performance so amazing (not that Sawato-san isn't  
> always so) was that the film itself no longer exists, so the three  
> performers were recreating it entirely through sound, as the  
> audience "watched" a black screen. One can only hope that more  
> "Sawa-Talkies" (as the event was dubbed) are produced soon!
>
> 2) The last screening of each day in the main international  
> competition venue was preceded by a broadcast of the NHK radio  
> programme "Soundscape", a short recording of environmental sounds  
> from a specific place in Japan (all the installments presented at  
> YIDFF were from sites in Yamagata Prefecture). The recording of  
> Hijiori Hot Springs was eerily evocative, with everything from the  
> rushing of water in the river to the sound of geta striking the  
> pavement. Another magical moment in the dark, amidst the often so  
> visual swirl of the festival.
>
> On the topic of sound, I'd be curious to hear: how was Kikuchi  
> Nobuyuki's talk on sound? I didn't have quite as strong a reaction  
> to Pedro Costa's talk as Markus, though not getting to the actual  
> topic of "sound" until the 80 minute point, and starting off by  
> announcing a lack of preparation, struck me as extremely  
> unprofessional. I thought that what Costa was trying to say (again,  
> this is not about sound, but in general) was not that you can't do  
> anything with amateur equipment, but that it's a problem that the  
> film industry (including festivals, producers, etc.) would have you  
> think so. In other words, it's a structural problem that impedes  
> entry to filmmakers who aren't already connected within the funding  
> structure. Nothing new, of course, and Costa is in a relatively  
> comfortable position so can say this, so I wish that if this is  
> indeed what he meant, he'd been able to express this more directly-- 
> and if only someone in the room had connected this comment to the J- 
> Pitch series that Fujioka Asako organized to teach younger  
> filmmakers exactly how to deal with exactly this problem.  
> (Apparently, and unfortunately, his comments did send shock waves  
> through many of the younger filmmakers in the room--I'd be curious  
> to hear how the comments were translated as that could also have  
> had something to do with it.) At the end of the talk, Costa also  
> gave some concrete examples of how sound can drive a scene,  
> illustrated with clips from In Vanda's Room and Colossal Youth,  
> that made me wish he'd started off with these, rather than the  
> rambling statements that Markus described.
>
> Maybe it was just the conversations that I was privy to, or the  
> films that I saw (for example, I didn't make it out to the 8mm  
> screenings), but despite the sound-specific programming, there  
> seemed to be less discussion about issues of medium, for example  
> sound and editing, the boundaries of the genre of documentary, or  
> the relationship and positions of DV and film, than in earlier  
> years. Are we at a moment in which the flexibility of what might be  
> defined as "documentary" has become more accepted, at least in the  
> communities of people who participate in the Yamagata festival,  
> whether as filmmakers, movie-goers, programmers, jurors or critics?  
> The discussions can certainly be hackneyed, but as Kidlat's  
> performance and the International Competition jury statement by  
> Hasumi at the closing ceremonies indicates, it just seems  
> irresponsible to say that DV has arrived, and bury the discussion.
>
> As the jury choices may indicate, there also seemed to be less work  
> that asked questions about medium and mediation, at least in the  
> international and Asian competition films. (Unfortunately, I missed  
> Kidlat's screening, which seems from Markus's posting to have been  
> a wonderful and rare moment of complete engagement with the geo- 
> politics of these questions.) Was this the result of programming  
> decisions? Of the kind of work that was submitted to the two  
> competitions, i.e. the pool of work from which the programming  
> teams had to choose? Of a larger trend in the worlds of documentary  
> (whatever those might be)? A massive question, obviously, but I'm  
> curious, and would be curious to hear if other KineJapanners have  
> noticed a similar turn away from these questions.
>
> Sarah
> ______________________________________
> Sarah Teasley
> Department of Art History
> Northwestern University
> s-teasley at northwestern.edu
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/attachments/20071019/1cd3f64a/attachment.html