Heritage Space in Hanoi will screen the 1926 Japanese silent film “Kurutta Ippêji” (A Page of Madness) by Teinosuke Kinugasa on October 25, with the accompaniment of a live soundtrack (electronics improvised set) performed by Iván Ferrer-Orozco and other musicians.

A scene from “A Page of Madness”, which will be screened at Heritage Space on October 25 

“A Page of Madness” is one of the landmarks of the Japanese silent film industry from the 1920s. An extremely beautiful and revolutionary film considered lost for 45 years, a copy was discovered by its director, Teinosuke Kinugasa, inside rice cans in his old house in 1971.

Based on a story of the Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kwabata, the film takes place in an asylum where a woman is incarcerated after losing her mind and trying to kill her own son by drowning him. Her husband, a former sailor conscience-stricken for his mistreatment to her, takes a job as a custodian in the mental hospital to take care of her. Their daughter visits the hospital to announce that she is getting married, but she is afraid that if the condition of the mother is discovered by her fiancé and his family, they can void the engagement under the consideration of the time that mental illness is hereditary. The father tries to help her daughter by hiding his wife, taking her out of the asylum, but in the attempt to get closer to her and help her regain her sanity, he will also lose, little by little, contact with reality.

The live soundtrack is inspired by the former practice of accompanying silent films with acoustic instruments, and especially by the narrative art of Setsumei and the Benshi tradition on silent Japanese cinema.

Through the use of electronic media as controllers, computer and different devices and algorithms programmed by himself, Iván Ferrer-Orozco proposes an approach that transcends the musical accompaniment to create acoustic spaces and atmospheres, which take to the sound sphere both the visual elements of the real and the fantastic sequences, the violence of the fighting scenes, the editing and camera work, the time management, and specially the state of mind of the characters, represented through electronics sounds, noises and transformed samples.

With the idea of the Benshi practice on mind, the accompaniment looks to create a translation of the psyche of the characters, bringing intensity, vehemence and clarity to the film.

Iván Ferrer-Orozco, born in Mexico in 1976, is a composer, laptop improviser and electronics sideman. His music has been performed at several concert series and festivals in Europe, America and Asia. He is also very active in the field of the electronic arts as sideman, collaborating with soloists and ensembles from Spain and abroad.

The film screening will begin at 8 p.m. Tickets are VND70,000 and VND50,000 (for members of Heritage Space and students).

SGT