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NEO-BENSHI
The latter day art of
Live Film Narration
WHERE: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, S.F.
701 Mission St. (@ 3rd)
WHEN: THURSDAY, JULY 7, performances at 7:30 & 9:30 p.m.
I have been wanting to say something about this no less than sensational and
wonderful New-Benshi poet-theatrical-film event this past Thursday evening!
Conceived and presented by Konrad Steiner, who together with Roxi Hamilton
invited several Bay Area writers (Brandon Brown, Norma Cole, Stephanie
Young, Rodney Koeneke, David Larsen and Roxi Hamilton) to re-imagine the
benshišs art at San Francisco Cinematheque, selecting scenes from films of
their choice.
For the unfamiliar as I was, WHAT is Benshi? From the flier announcement:
The Japanese term benshi means film-teller, and the profession thrived in
Korea and Japan during the silent film era. The benshi would write their own
narration for silent films which they declaimed on stage, using different
voice characterizations to switch between narrator and various actors.
At Yerba Buena - a small theater - the films were projected on the screen
above the stage while the poets with a microphone did their work from floor
level and somewhat to the side of the screen. The films for copyright
reasons could not be named in the program. No need to invite the fear - in
some cases - of Warner Bros. Attorneys in the audience waiting to slam the
poor performer with a megabuck suit for infringement of copyright.
Unfortunately I don't have the in-house program which may have taken the
legal risk and identified the films(?) which varied from a genuinely silent,
Japanese work (Norma Cole and MacGinnes) to a 30's Gene Autry quasi-modern
cowboy singing flick (Brandon Brown , Alien, a Sci-Fi flick (Stephanie
Young), Rebel Without a Cause (Roxie Hamilton), an old flick from royal
court behaving India (Rodney Koeneke), and Battle of Troy section from the
Illiad 50's era film starring Peter O'Toole, among others (You can see why I
am not a film critic - I should have asked questions and taken notes!).
The results - ringed with narrations and voiceovers - ranged from a high
level of camp hilarity to touching levels of sincerity. Similar to a process
by which I suspect many of us rewrite and critically interpret any piece of
art with the unraveling of the subliminal notations of either unconscious
negation and/or desire - the poets had a field day offered with the Benshi
form.
I don't don't have the time to go into extensive detail. But take, for
example, Brandon Brown - guitar in hand - singing and narrating along with
Gene Autry & Co.- a film robust with chase scenes on horses, narrow escapes
by young hero and heroine, a single engine Piper Cub and a Ranch Press
Conference. Brandon's Autry parody moved right along with the cowboy shtick
mounting a pastiche in which the bad guys are "the insurgents" - making kind
of light handed but darkly resonant comedy about the lawful and righteous -
including the fictions of Press Conference - having to deal with this
nuisance encircling the ever innocent Ranch.
In comparison to Brandon, Stephanie Young's refined interior monologue of (I
think) romantic and beleaguered intrigue was sandwiched between the heavily
armed woman in "Alien" trying to make her way through a building structure
through which danger lurked at every corner.
And just, O too briefly Rodney Koeneke's virtuoso enactment and faux
translation of the different voices in PYAASA (1957) - the Indian film.
(That might be the real title) - was a great parody of the voices of
authoritarian manipulation, feminine victimization, gangster braha and what
have you.
Unfortunately I could not get Mac McGinnes' voiceover use of Norma Cole's
script - perhaps the most straight on analysis of what was going in this
absolutely haunting Japanese silent film of a party in which all the guests
are wearing masks and a magician roams releasing a seeming ceaseless number
of white doves from his handkerchief.
After an intermission, Roxi Hamilton and David Larsen put on a couple of
tour-de-forces. Roxie took the "chicken" car scene in Rebel Without a Cause
and queered and Freuded the space in most intimate manner - never missing a
double entendre among "the rebels." Maybe a little overdone, but a delight
nevertheless.
Finally, David Larsen who, by education is up to his shoulders in ancient
Greece and that whole end of the world, did a knock-out parody of the
Hollywood "redneck/Hells Angels versus the Pussies" duel at the Battle of
Troy. "Old fuck-face" - sword in hand -was just that as he confronted and
cut that skinny, weak-ass taker of Helen.
Somehow, the evening reminded me of Allen's Bernheimer's Poets Theater in
the Eighties - also here in San Francisco - in the way many of those theater
performances then provided comic relief from the often didactic rigors and
of young Lang Po. New-Benshi - hardly working against a period of such
rigor - but bouncing off these films gave the writer/performers the chance
to widen the range and permission of their own emerging and strong work (and
against whatever may be the limits of the contemporary poem as a structure).
It was also great fun.
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