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Benshi
were Japanese performers who provided live narration for silent films (both Japanese films and Western films). ''Benshi'' are sometimes called or . Role The earliest films available for public display were produced by Western studios, portraying brief scenes of everyday life, often less than a minute long. The first were thus hired to provide greater value for the high ticket prices charged by theaters relative to other public entertainment, while also giving technical and cultural context to the audience. The operation of the projector itself would be described before the showing, and then explanations of Western culture would accompany the film with the standing to the side of the screen. This commentary was as much part of the theater-going experience as the film itself. In one instance, a was able to avoid government censorship of The Kiss by describing kissing in Western culture to be as casual a greeting as a pat on the back. As film plots became longer and more compl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Midori Sawato
is a Japanese benshi or katsuben (silent film narrator). Life Originally from Tokyo, Midori Sawato graduated from the Department of Philosophy, Hosei University. She first decided she wanted to become a benshi in 1972, when she saw the silent film '' The Water Magician'' by Kenji Mizoguchi. She was particularly impressed with the performance as benshi of the man who would become her teacher, Shunsui Matsuda. After studying under Matsuda, Sawato made her debut in 1973. She is an active benshi who has garnered high praise through her wide variety of activities and performances in Japan and overseas. Of the ten benshi working in Japan (), Sawato is considered the most famous. Her repertoire of over 500 films includes genres as varied as contemporary cinema, historical movies and western films, for which she provides well-formed interpretations of the work. She has received many awards, including the Award for Excellence in the field of Dramatic Performance at the Agency for Cult ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cinema Of Taiwan
The cinema of Taiwan ( zh, t=臺灣電影 or ) is deeply rooted in the island's unique history. Since its introduction to Taiwan in 1901 under Japanese rule, cinema has developed in Taiwan under ROC rule through several distinct stages. It has also developed outside the Hong Kong mainstream and the censorship of the People's Republic of China. Characteristics Taiwanese directors In recent years, Taiwan's film industry has received recognition due to a number of internationally respected filmmakers, such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, and the Malaysian-Chinese Tsai Ming-liang. Important Taiwanese directors from the 1990s include Chen Kuo-fu, Tsui Siu Ming, and independent producer Huang Ming-chuan Lai. Influence of the government From the late Japanese colonial period to martial law in Taiwan, the development of Taiwanese film was dominated by the official camp studio development. The film produced during that stage was mainly news footage taken by the government-run studi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sound Film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before sound motion pictures became commercially practical. Reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve with the early sound-on-disc systems, and amplification and recording quality were also inadequate. Innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using the technology, which took place in 1923. The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid-to-late 1920s. At first, the sound films which included synchronized dialogue, known as "talking pictures", or "talkies", were exclusively shorts. The earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound included only music and effects. The first feature film originally presented as a talkie (although it had only limit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silent Film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized Sound recording and reproduction, recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when necessary, be conveyed by the use of intertitle, title cards. The term "silent film" is something of a misnomer, as these films were almost always accompanied by live sounds. During the silent era that existed from the mid-1890s to the late 1920s, a piano, pianist, theatre organ, theater organist—or even, in large cities, a small orchestra—would often play music to accompany the films. Pianists and organists would play either from sheet music, or musical improvisation, improvisation. Sometimes a person would even narrate the inter-title cards for the audience. Though at the time the technology to synchronize sound with the film did not exist, music was seen as an essential part of the viewing experie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neo-Benshi
Neo-Benshi is the practice of producing live alternate voice-overs for movies. The art form’s acknowledged starting point is in Korea, Japan, Taiwan and other East Asian nations during the silent film era. ''Benshi'' is a Japanese word referring to the oral "interpreter" who performed a live narrative accompaniment to silent movies, in lieu of showing intertitles with dialogue, etc. In Korean, the practice is known as ''pyônsa''. Currently, it is finding a resurgence among experimental poets in the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles. Movietelling Movietelling is a reinstatement, or retelling, of the film narrator practice(s). Long time practitioner and one of the foremost scholars on the subject of live film narration, Walter Lew, coined this phrase with the intention of reviving and revamping what he considers to have been an international practice, finding its roots throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States. In January 2008, Lew, along with several poets and video ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Film
The has a history that spans more than 100 years. Japan has one of the oldest and largest film industries in the world; as of 2021, it was the fourth largest by number of feature films produced. In 2011 Japan produced 411 feature films that earned 54.9% of a box office total of US$2.338 billion. Films have been produced in Japan since 1897, when the first foreign cameramen arrived. '' Tokyo Story'' (1953) ranked number three in ''Sight & Sound'' critics' list of the 100 greatest films of all time. ''Tokyo Story'' also topped the 2012 ''Sight & Sound'' directors' poll of The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time, dethroning ''Citizen Kane'', while Akira Kurosawa's '' Seven Samurai'' (1954) was voted the greatest foreign-language film of all time in BBC's 2018 poll of 209 critics in 43 countries. Japan has won the Academy Award for the Best International Feature Film four times, more than any other Asian country. Japan's Big Four film studios are Toho, Toei, Shochiku and Kadoka ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vanilla Yamazaki
is a katsudō-benshi, voice actor, an actress, a choreographer, and a tarento born January 15, 1978, in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan and raised in Ōta, Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, .... References 1978 births Japanese television actresses Living people Voice actresses from Sendai Japanese voice actresses Japanese choreographers 21st-century Japanese actresses {{Japan-tv-actor-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musei Tokugawa
was a Japanese benshi, actor, raconteur, essayist, and radio and television personality. Musei (as he was called) first came to prominence as a benshi, a narrator of films during the silent era in Japan. He was celebrated for his restrained but erudite narration that was popular among intellectual film fans.Dym, Jeffrey A.Tokugawa Musei: A Portrait Sketch of One of Japan's Greatest Narrative Artists" ''In Praise of Film Studies: Essays in Honor of Makino Mamoru''. Eds. Aaron Gerow and Abé Mark Nornes (Kinema Club, 2001). He concentrated on foreign films such as ''The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari'' at high-class theaters like the Aoikan and the Musashinokan, but also performed Japanese works such as Teinosuke Kinugasa's experimental masterpiece '' A Page of Madness'' (1926). As the silent era ended, Musei switched to storytelling on stage and on radio, and also began acting and doing narrations in films. He was also famous for his essays, humorous novels, and autobiographical writing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cinema Of Korea
The term "Cinema of Korea" (or "Korean cinema") encompasses the motion picture industries of North and South Korea. As with all aspects of Korean life during the past century, the film industry has often been at the mercy of political events, from the late Joseon dynasty to the Korean War to domestic governmental interference. While both countries have relatively robust film industries today, only South Korean films have achieved wide international acclaim. North Korean films tend to portray their communist or revolutionary themes. South Korean films enjoyed a "Golden age" during the late 1950s, and 1960s, but by the 1970s had become generally considered to be of low quality. Nonetheless, by 2005 South Korea became a nation that watched more domestic than imported films in theatres due somewhat to laws placing limits on the number of foreign films able to be shown per theatre per year, but mostly due to the growth of the Korean entertainment industry which quadrupled in size ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aoikan
The was a movie theater in the Tameike section of Akasaka in Tokyo, Japan. It existed from the mid–1910s as a high-class foreign film theater, featuring ''benshi'' such as Musei Tokugawa. After the Great Kanto earthquake, it re-opened in October 1924 with a new, modern design created by prominent avant-garde artists. Seisaku Yoshikawa was in charge of architectural design, Yasuji Ogishima did the sculptural reliefs on the front of the building, and Tomoyoshi Murayama was a Japanese artist, play writer, novelist and drama producer active during the Shōwa period in Japan. Early life Murayama was born in the Kanda Suehiro district of Tokyo. His father, who was a medic in the Imperial Japanese Navy, died wh ... designed the interior. Murayama also did the cover illustrations for the theater's pamphlets in the first few years. Film scholars such as Kenji Iwamoto have noted this theater's significance in Japanese cinematic modernism of the 1920s and 1930s. References ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musashinokan
The is a long-standing movie theater located on the east side of Shinjuku Station in Tokyo, Japan. Originally started as the Musashinokan in May 1920, it quickly became Tokyo's premiere independent high-class theater showing foreign films. The theater program featured top-level film criticism and a committee of the managers and of film critics such as Akira Iwasaki helped program the films shown there. It was also famous in the silent era for the erudite benshi narration of Musei Tokugawa. On occasion, it also showed Japanese films such as Teinosuke Kinugasa was a Japanese filmmaker. He was born in Kameyama, Mie Prefecture and died in Kyoto. Kinugasa won the 1954 Palme d'or at the Cannes Film Festival for '' Gate of Hell''. Biography Kinugasa began his career as an onnagata (actor specializing in ...'s '' A Page of Madness''. When it was rebuilt in 1968 as part of a multi-purpose building, occupying the seventh floor, it changed its name to the Shinjuku Musashinokan. Its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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