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Barbican Will Screen Japanese Silent Animation With Live Music on June 5
posted on by Andrew Osmond
On Saturday June 5, the Barbican in London will present a screening at 3 p.m. called "Early Japanese Animation." This will include several short Japanese animated films from the 1920s and 1930s, set to live electro-acoustic music by the Guildhall School's Electronic and Produced Music Studio, and narration by a benshi (narrator).
The films that are featured are The Pot (1925) by Sanae Yamamoto; Ubasuteyama (1925) by Yamamoto; Rhythm (1935) by Shigeji Ogino; Diseases Spread (1926) by Yamamoto; The Blossom Man (1928) by Yasuji Murata; Two Worlds (1929) by Murata; Propagate (1935) by Ogino; and A Day after a Hundred Years (1933) by Ogino.
The event is described on the Barbican website:
"Very few of the earliest animated films from Japan survive - after being screened alongside live action features, films were often sold on from cinemas to smaller mobile venues where they would be broken down and sold as single frames."The films that have been preserved in archives offer a fascinating glimpse into the beginnings of a rich history of Japanese animation which continues to this day, soundtracked by the Guildhall School's Electronic and Produced Music Studio."
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