In 1935, acclaimed Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi released what would be his last silent film. This tradition lasted longer than anywhere else in the world in Japan because of the emergence of a particular art form related to it: benshi. These were performing artists who would narrate the film live, giving voice to every character and commenting or reading poems in between dialogues.
When I decided to make music for this film, together with Carolina Cortés and Nathalia Valdés, the idea of having a live narration was one of the starting points. The movie was projected with English subtitles but the narration is in Spanish.
The recordings presented here are from a live performance we did on March 10, 2019 in the Nieuwe Regentes Theater in The Hague, Netherlands, under the Sounds of Silence Festival.
