JAPANESE GIRLS AT THE HARBOR (MINATO NO NIHON MUSUME)

Showings

Castro Theatre Sun, May 5, 2019 10:00 AM
Film Info
Director:Hiroshi Shimizu
Cast:Michiko Oikawa
Yukiko Inoue
Ureo Egawa
Ranko Sawa
Year:1933
Country:Japan
Total Run Time:77 min.
Format:35mm

Description

Musical accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald and Sascha Jacobsen
“A knockout,” says the Village Voice. “Shimizu’s stunning tale of passion, crime, and decadence [is an] exhilarating triumph of ... experimental style [and] also a precious portrait of the great port city of Yokohama.” Two childhood friends grow up to follow two dramatically different paths in this late-era silent from director Hiroshi Shimizu that spoke to a generation of Japanese trying to negotiate tradition and modernity, youth and adulthood, respectability and happiness, home and away. By the time he made Japanese Girls at the Harbor, Shimizu was about halfway through his total output of 160 films and quite rightly one of the country’s greats. As Kenji Mizoguchi later said comparing himself and Yasijuro Ozu to their fellow Shochiku studio director: “People like me and Ozu get films made by hard work, but Shimizu is a genius.”

Print courtesy of the National Film Archive of Japan

 

Introduction by Hisashi Okajima

 

Copresented by BAMPFA, Center for Asian American Media and Japan Film Festival of San Francisco

Additional Information

 

Musical accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald and Sascha Jacobsen
Conductor, composer, pianist, and violinist Guenter Buchwald is a pioneer of the renaissance in silent film music. He has accompanied silent films for thirty-eight years with a repertoire of more than three thousand titles and has conducted orchestras worldwide from Iceland to Romania, Tokyo to Zurich. In great demand as a composer, he has scored silent films as varied as Suzuki and Ota’s What Made Her Do It?, René Clair`s Paris qui dort, Chaplin´s Pawn Shop, and Murnau’s Nosferatu. A soloist known for his virtuoso improvisation, he has appeared regularly at film festivals in Berlin, Bonn, Bologna, Zurich, Pordenone, and Seattle. He is a lecturer at the Film Science Institute at the University of Zurich and resident conductor of the Freiburg Philharmonic Orchestra for Silent Film in Concert. He is cofounder of the Silent Movie Music Company and is musical director of Bristol’s Slapstick Silent Film Festival in England. He made his first appearance at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in 2013.

Bassist Sascha Jacobsen draws on a variety of musical styles from classical to jazz and Argentine Tango. He has performed with Kronos Quartet, theatrical greats Rita Moreno, Mandy Patinkin and Patti LuPone, musicians Bonnie Raitt, Randy Newman, and Raul Jaurena, among many others. Jacobsen is in demand as a performer, composer, and arranger, with commissions by the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, Berkeley Youth Symphony, and SF Arts Council among others. He is also a dedicated teacher and has coached students at numerous arts and music schools in the Bay Area. Jacobsen is the founder of the Musical Art Quintet, which performs his original compositions, and plays bass in the group. SF Weekly writes, "Classical training and a taste for evocative melodies underpin this sound."