Directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa
Japan | 1926 | Fiction | 71 mins | Silent
Wednesday, October 21 | 8 PM | Screening Room
Sponsored by A friend of VTIFF
Live improvised score by Matt Hagen It’s a film-festival version of our ongoing Screening Room program, Musical Silents, in which the intrepid musician Matt Hagen (and a friend) improvise a live score over a great silent film. And Teinosuke Kinugasa’s A Page of Madness is some kind of film! A janitor in an insane asylum is keeping a particular eye on one of the inmates, but the experience is not doing wonders for his own mental health. As a cinematic simulation of madness, A Page of Madness succeeds like few films before or since. With wild camera angles, masks, dances, and full sequences where the line between reality and illusion is indistinguishable, it’s so visually eloquent that it needs no intertitles. Matt Hagen’s created-on-the-spot soundtracks for these films makes each one a unique event, well worth checking out. ~SM