Still shot of Page of Madness, courtesy of totalfilm.com, found at http://www.totalfilm.com/features/90-second-expert-japanese-cinema

This fall, Philadelphia’s International House celebrates its100 year anniversary as a center for international residence and intercultural exchange. To kick-off the centennial program, IH is screening a world premiere of Teinosuke Kinugasa’s 1926 silent film A Page of Madness this Friday, October 22 at 8 pm with an original score by Philadelphia-based musician Gene Coleman to be performed by Coleman and five other musicians. The film and Coleman’s ensemble will then go the following day to MoMA in New York City, where they will be received as part of the museum’s eighth International Festival of Film Preservation, To Save and Project.

Made in 1926, A Page of Madness is one of two Kinugasa films ever to make it to the United States, and was thought lost after WWII until Kinugasa himself found it in a garden shed nearly 30 years later. Set in an asylum, the film tells the story of the asylum’s janitor, his wife who is also a patient, and their daughter, drawing heavily on the narrative conventions of Japanese melodrama. Until now the film has enjoyed a mostly quiet fringe popularity among film buffs, having never been released commercially and screened only a couple of times in the United States since it debuted in Japan. Coleman was lucky enough to see the film over 15 years ago at a film festival in Chicago and was immediately struck by the film’s advanced blend of western and Japanese aesthetic principles, and immediately wanted to create a score for it. For him, as for many other fans of the film, Kinagasa’s work embodies a sea change in Japanese cinema towards a more mixed aesthetic of Japanese and Western film culture. Much like IH, Madness was considered to be ahead of its time: both were precociously progressive, and each paved the way for different methods of intercultural dialogue in the 20th century.

To evoke this kind of intercultural blend, Coleman not only wanted to write a score for A Page of Madness, but wanted specifically to create music that blended voices from both Japanese and Western music. To do this, he has brought on one of his main collaborators from Japan, shakuhatchi jazz musician Akikazu Nakamura, as well as one koto player, a string trio of viola, cello, and double-bass, and Coleman himself on the bass clarinet. While the string trio adheres to a more or less fixed score for the film, Coleman and Nakamura have built in particular sections for improvisation. In fact, Coleman and Nakamura each correspond their instrument to the principal actions of one of the two main characters. As Coleman points out, this kind of instrumentation “underscores the dualistic nature of the film,” teasing out the juxtaposition between Western and Japanese artistic premises that color the film’s cinematography. The result is a kind of open dialogue between the past and present, Western and Japanese culture, blurring the harsh distinctions that often divide these oppositional realms by filling the space between them with music.

By using music as a kind of temporal, spatial, and generic go-between, Coleman and his collaborators enliven and embody International House Centennial theme: movement. Such an appropriately broad anchor evokes a wide range of International House accomplishments and principles: open cultural exchange, artistic collaboration, cross-community involvement, social progress, and most importantly a strong sense of open borders.  Such principles have made International House only grow in popularity and influence since its founding in 1910, now with over 20 residencies and cultural centers worldwide. If their premiere of A Page of Madness is any indication, their dedication to developing intercultural events and programs for communities across the globe will only continue to grow and evolve in their next hundred years.

General Information:

This project is commissioned by the International House Philadelphia (IHP) for the Movement program and is co-presented by the Philadelphia Film Society as part of the 2010 Philadelphia Film Festival and supported by the Japan Foundation through the Performing Arts JAPAN program.

Free admission members above Adventurer level; $15 Internationalist + Adventurers; $17.50 students + seniors; $20 general admission. In advance at www.ihousephilly.org, 1.866.468.7619 or two hours before showtime at The Ibrahim Theater Box Office.

For more info about the musicians:

Gene Coleman

Akikazu Nakamura

For more info about A Page of Madness:

Youtube clip

Also check out this book recommended by Gene Coleman, written by Yale Professor Aaron Gerow

For more info about the premiere at MoMA, click here.