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Project Website: http://slought.org/content/11359/
Please join us on Friday, April 20, 2007 from 10pm-12am at Slought Foundation for "Nighttime Cinema Re-imagined: Kwaidan & Ensemble N_JP ." Join us for green tea and Japanese beer, then stay up a little later than usual for this dynamic fusion of film and live music. Contemporary experimental Japanese musicians with Ensemble N_JP, including Taku Unami (live electronics), Marina Peterson (cello), Ryuko Mizutani (koto), and Gene Coleman (bass clarinet), will play original compositions to accompany selections from the film "Kwaidan" (1964), a collection of chilling tales of ghostly visitation. This concert at Slought Foundation is part of Soundfield's Transonic + Crosswork series, and has been organized in conjunction with the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia and Bowerbird.
"A masterpiece of filmmaking artifice and mood-setting atmosphere, Kwaidan consists of four ghost stories adapted from the fiction of Greek-born Lafcadio Hearn (a.k.a. Yakumo Koizumi, 1850-1904), who assimilated into Japanese culture so thoroughly that his writings reveal no evidence of Western influence. So it is that these four cinematic interpretations--perhaps more accurately described as tales of spectral visitation--are sublimely Japanese in tone and texture, created entirely in a studio with frequently stunning results. There are painterly images here that remain the most beautiful and haunting in all of Japanese cinema, presented with the purity of silent film (showing) the otherworldly effect of director Masaki Kobayashi's meticulous imagery. When viewed in a receptive frame of mind, Kwaidan can be intensely hypnotic. Each of the four stories find their protagonists confronted by spirits that compel them to (respectively) make amends for past mistakes, maintain vows of silence, satisfy the yearnings of the undead, or capture phantoms that remain frightfully elusive. As each tale progresses, their supernatural elements grow increasingly intense and distant from the confines of reality. With careful use of glorious color and wide-screen composition, Kwaidan exists in a netherworld that is both real and imagined, its characters never quite sure they can trust what they've seen and heard. Vastly different from the more overt shocks of Western horror, the film casts a supernatural spell that remains timelessly effective." --Jeff Shannon
Plot Synopsis: This film contains four distinct, separate stories. "Black Hair": A poor samurai who divorces his true love to marry for money, but finds the marriage disastrous and returns to his old wife, only to discover something eerie about her. "The Woman in the Snow": Stranded in a snowstorm, a woodcutter meets an icy spirit in the form of a woman spares his life on the condition that he never tell anyone about her. A decade later he forgets his promise. "Hoichi the Earless": Hoichi is a blind musician, living in a monastery who sings so well that a ghostly imperial court commands him to perform the epic ballad of their death battle for them. But the ghosts are draining away his life, and the monks set out to protect him by writing a holy mantra over his body to make him invisible to the ghosts. But they've forgotten something. "In a Cup of Tea": a writer tells the story of a man who keep seeing a mysterious face reflected in his cup of tea. For more information:
This program is made possible in part through the generous sponsorship or support of Sound Field NFP, Bowerbird, and the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia
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Film Still from Kwaidan (1965)