Shinsedai Special Podcast Report #2: The First Half
In this special episode, Coffin Jon and special guest co-host Marc Saint-Cyr of The Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow review the shorts and films of the first two days of the Shinsedai Cinema Festival. Screenings talked about in this episode include:
Akino Kondoh’s “Ladybird’s Requiem”
Kihachiro Kawamoto retrospective
Kenji Mizoguchi’s “The Water Magician” with musical accompaniment by Vowls
Tetsuichiro Tsuta’s “Island of Dreams”
Directly download this episode here.
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“Silent flms” were actually never meant to viewed silently. They just did not have the technology to play a recorded soundtrack synchronously. Films were always screened with musical accompaniment in the West — Hollywood films would be distributed with scores for the orchestra or pianist.
In Japan, benshi were a crossover from traditional theatre. They were particularly important at explaining the cultural context of foreign films to audiences. The benshi were more popular than directors or actors. I had the impression that The Water Magician was filmed with the benshi in mind. Did you notice that the English subtitles gave more story and dialogue information than the title cards? It was the subtitles of the benshi performance on the Digital Meme DVD.
I should add that I do agree that the soundtracks added to silent films on DVD do usually suck. I have a feeling that they don’t want to spend the money on producing a decent soundtrack.