JP 1926, D: Kinugasa Teinosuke, A: Inoue Masao, Nakagawa Yoshie, 71′, silent, DCP
Ichiro Kataokoa and Reiko Emura adding a live score to A PAGE OF MADNESS
We present the Japanese silent classic A PAGE OF MADNESS, which is live scored and told by Ichiro Kataoka and Reiko Emura. Emura plays and improvises on the piano, while Kataoka performance as a so called “Katsudô-Benshi”. In Japan, a Katsudô-Benshi (abbreviation: Katsuben) was a regular feature of cinematic culture and accompanied silent film screenings as a narrator until well into the 1930ies. In this, the speaker not only tells the scenes, but also renders dialogues of occurring characters with different voices, giving them a vocal presence, and delivers an interpretation of the film’s plot. So, there can be no talk of a Katsuben being a neutral narrator. During the 1920ies and 30ies, going to the cinema was not only contingent on being interested in the shown film, but also – so the hope – on the captivating art of narrating and the virtuoso use of his or her voice.
At the heart of the early avant garde film A PAGE OF MADNESS, which was considered as lost until 1971, there are nameless characters caught up in a whirlwind of insanity: The caretaker of a mental home wanders through the gloomy corridors of a prison-like institution and keeps ending up at a cell of a very specific inmate – the one of his wife. When their mutual daughter appears in the institution to report to her mother about her forthcoming marriage, more plotlines are initiated, telling of the family’s past on different time levels, including telling why the mother is in her delusional condition. The film’s visual intensity feeds on a sheer inexhaustible stock of ideas: double triple, sometimes quadruple exposures of the material, plus an associative montage that is not random but rigorously following a form, setting the viewers in the disoriented, psychotic conditions of the characters. The chilling and ghostly images, the Noh-masks and the dances create a discomforting rupture of perspective, making it unclear who belongs on which side of a locked cell door. In its depiction of subjective, mental and emotional disarray one of the most fascinating mental hospital films to this day.
Before the screening, Ichiro Kataoka, Dr. Shiro Yukawa (University of Bonn) and Florian Höhr (Nippon Connection Festival Frankfurt/Main) will present and discuss examples from the “Kataoka Records Project”. In 2012, Kataoka handed over his collection of 3900 Japanese shellac records to the University of Bonn, which is being digitalised and systematically filed ever since. It is a unique collection worldwide, consisting of records from the years 1915 to 1950, that mostly come from the Japanese film and entertainment culture.
| Thu 10 Sept | UT Connewitz |
| 7:30 pm 9 pm | Kataoka Schallplattenprojekt Performance in Japanese with English subtitles A PAGE OF MADNESS regular: 10€ / reduced 12€ |
Ichiro Kataoka acquired his degree at Nihon University College of Art and started training with Midori Sawato in 2002. Today, he is the most known Katsuben of his generation, making an appearance with his performances internationally. As a benshi, Kataoka took part in various films and works as voice-over artist for animation and video games. 2020, he published the monograph Katsudō Shashin Benshi: Eiga ni Tamashii wo fukikonda Hitobito (The story of film narrators: people that breathed life into cinema).
Reiko Emura was born in Sendai, Japan. After studying composition at Tokyo University of The Arts, she came to Germany and studied song interpretation at Karlsruhe University of Music under Mitsuko Shirai and Hartmut Höll. She has played own compositions with the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and others. She has played with conductors like Maxim Shostakovich, Kenichiro Kobayashi and Robert Hanell.
F 1980, D: Marie-Claude Treilhou, A: Ingrid Bourgoin, Martine Simonet, Michel Delahaye, 77′, OV with English subtitles, DCP
Simone Barbès works the evening shift with her colleague at a porn cinema in Montparnasse. In the hall, there are continuous activities, rhythmically consisting of guests criss-crossing the room, opening and closing doors and the disco funk sound of the cinema halls. Everything here shines in an artificial yellow, red and blue. The cinematic world of the film has the qualities of a big stage. Various worlds are presented to us, having in common that all are secure spaces reigned by the pleasure principle. Like in VARIETY, SIMONE BARBÈS OR VIRTUE soon leaves the cinematic context and plunges into the big city, for instance into a lesbian cabaret bar, where Simone assumes to find a friend.
| Fri 9 Sept | Luru Kino in der Spinnerei |
| 10 pm | CINEMA SPACE & DESIRE regular: 6,5€ / reduced 5,5€ |
US/BRD/GB 1983, D: Bette Gordon, A: Sandy McLeod, Will Patton, Luis Guzman, Nan Goldin, Richard Davidson, 97′, English OV, 35mm
Christine has financial problems and tries out a box office job in one of the numerous porn cinemas in New York City. There, she sits around screened in her pay booth, picks up impressions of the audience and smokes inside the lobby, while groans are echoing from the halls. Just when her life seems stable for once, her friend increasingly grows apart from her, all the more when she begins to admit her initially subliminal curiosity, immersing more and more into the porn world.
VARIETY is a film about solitude and desire, which inverts the perspective of classic US narrative cinema – the male gaze and women being looked at – at the same time.
| Fri 9.09. | Luru Kino in der Spinnerei |
| 8 pm | CINEMA SPACE & DESIRE Feminist film double with introduction regular: 6,5€ / reduced 5,5€ |
FR 2021, D: Bertrand Mandico, A: Elina Löwensohn, Christophe Bier, Ekaterina Ozhiganova, 37′, OV with English subtitles, 35mm, German premiere
Added to that comes DEAD FLASH, a crepuscular, surreal and sensitive trip. We see a succession of glam images: beat-up figures are wandering through dreamlike landscapes, until an (apelike) apparition of a model plays martyr and demiurge together with her photographer at a photo shooting. In a world of moving surfaces, they attempt to achieve something like grace.
| Thu 8 Sept | Luru Kino in der Spinnerei |
| 8 pm | Subsequent to Neptune Frost regular: 6,5€ / reduced 5,5€ |
RW/US 2021, D: Saul Williams & Anisia Uzeyman, A: Cheryl Isheja, Bertrand Ninteretse, Eliane Umuhire, Dorcy Rugamba, 105′, OV with English subtitles, languages: Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Swahili, French, English, DCP
In this afro-futurist vision, a mixture of sci-fi parable, punky costume musical and an offbeat romance with a queer twist, the directing duo Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman leads us in the mountainous jungle of Rwanda, where a collective of hackers tries to overthrow an authoritarian regime.
The labyrinthine narration is kept together by structures of dreams and political statements, in addition to that repeatedly songs by Williams that are like manifestos and with their portentous drums and mourning chants form the powerful, emotional heartbeat of the film. The exuberant costumes intertwine local myths and high-tech. NEPTUNE FROST wants a lot and is a lot, among other things an exuberant, anti-colonial call to arms.
| Thu 8 Sept | Luru Kino in der Spinnerei |
| 8 pm | With Dead Flash following regular: 6,5€ / reduced 5,5€ |
