On July 12th at 5:00 PM, the «Forgotten Silent» series will screen the film «Crossroads» by Teinosuke Kinugasa—perhaps the most prominent filmmaker of early Japanese cinema—at the Grand Hall of the Illusion Cinema.
1928, 89 min., drama, jidaigeki, Japan, 16+ Director: Teinosuke Kinugasa Starring: Junosuke Bando, Teruko Sanjo, Yukiko Ogawa, Akiko Tihaya, Minoru Takase
A German rental copy of the film will be screened with Russian subtitles. The film will be presented by Alexander Simindeykin, film scholar and Head of the Analytical Support Department of the State Film Fund of Russia’s Analytical Department.
Musical Accompaniment:
• Lada Raskolnikova — multimedia artist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist;
• Evgeny Voronovskiy — musician, sound artist, instructor, and Head of the Sound Art and Sound Design track at the HSE Art and Design School.
«Crossroads» continued Kinugasa’s tradition of formal exploration, initiated in his earlier avant-garde painting, «Page of Madness.» However, this time, instead of experimenting with narrative, the director focused on the visual component—the film, as film historian Akira Iwasaki noted, possessed «astonishingly complete framing, ” and Kinugasa himself „sought to embed the maximum of his skill and sense of cinema into it.“ This specific work was the film the director took on his world tour, during which he visited Moscow, Berlin, and several other European cities. Thanks to this, „Crossroads“ (released in Germany under the title „In the Shadow of the Yoshiwara Quarter“) became the first Japanese film to be seen by a wide Western audience.
A story about a young man, Rikyu, obsessed with the courtesan O-ume; after a fight with a rival, he loses his sight and mistakenly believes he has committed murder. The protagonist hides in poverty with his devoted sister, Okiku. The girl desperately tries to earn money for her brother’s treatment and protect him from the presumed punishment. As the sister sacrifices herself for his salvation, the story moves toward a tragic conclusion, revealing the destructive power of obsession, greed, and despair.
The collaboration between the Gosfilmofond of Russia and the HSE Art and Design School has been ongoing for several years—students and faculty in the Sound Art and Sound Design program have created unique soundscapes for dozens of silent films from both domestic and international directors. Each participant determines their own creative direction—whether to focus on the plasticity of individual shots, capture the overall emotional temperature of the scenes, or perhaps even contradict the film’s pace, allowing the viewer to perceive the footage with an alternative perspective.