talking silents available

[wgardne1@swarthmore.edu]

Hi everyone,

Speaking of Sawato Midori, last night I had the pleasure of attending a
celebration in honor of 35 years of Sawato's benshi activities, dating
back to the beginning of her apprenticeship with Matsuda Shunsui. The
celebration was held at Gakushin Kaikan in Tokyo and featured Sawato
narrating three films, the headliner Scarlet Letter (1926 dir. Victor
Sjostrom, feat. Lillian Gish), plus two shorter films, Mizoguchi's Tokyo
Koshinkyoku (Tokyo March, 1929), and a rarity on loan from the Eiga Hozon
Kyokai (Film Preservation Society), Director Saito Torajiro's "Modan
kaidan 100,000,000-en" (Modern Ghost Story 100,000,000 yen, 1929), a
comedy/ghost story featuring a parody of Ito Daisuke/Okochi Denjiro's
"Chuji tabi nikki." Interestingly, the digest version of Tokyo March from
the Matsuda Film Library seemed to be slightly different from the digest
restored a few years back by the Cinematheque Francaise-- it seems that
there are several different fragments/digests of this film in existence,
though no complete print. The reception following Sawato's benshi
performance was kicked off with remarks and a toast by Sato Tadao.

Congratulations on 35 years to Sawato Midori!

Will

P.S. In addition to the DVD's already out that Anne described, it seems
there are many more Talking Silents DVD releases in the works from Digital
Meme. Also, anyone in the Tokyo area interested in seeing upcoming benshi
performances and silent films should keep an eye on the "Monthly Focus"
section of the Matsuda Film Production Website:
http://www.matsudafilm.com/index_e.html

---------

Will Gardner
Swarthmore College
Visiting Researcher, Keio University, 2007-2008



On Sat, October 20, 2007 00:58, Anne McKnight wrote:
> 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???10?????????????????????
> ??? 	Talking Silents 1 ?????????????????????????????????????????????
> ?????????????????????
> ??? 	??????????????????????????????/????????????????????? ?????????
> ??????????????????????????????
> ??? 	?????????????????????????????????/?????? ???????????????
> ??? 	Talking Silents 2 ?????????????????????????????????????????????
> ?????????????????????PR?????????
> ??? 	???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
> ??????????????????/?????? ???????????????????????????????????????
>
> -  	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
>>
>
>