The Art of the Benshi 2024 World Tour, which celebrates Japan’s silent film era, will play in Los Angeles on Friday, April 19, at 7:30 p.m. at the United Theatre on Broadway and the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum at UCLA on Saturday, April 20, at 3 and 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, April 21, at 3 and 7 p.m.
The tour will bring to life the mesmerizing artistry of benshi performance. Benshi, derived from “katsudō benshi” or “movie orator,” were the captivating narrators of Japan’s silent film era. With over 7,000 benshi at their peak, these artists not only introduced films but also provided live narration, portraying characters, and articulating the on-screen action, filling theaters and enthralling audiences.
More than a century after it began, this art form returns, offering contemporary audiences a rare chance to immerse themselves in this enchanting cinematic tradition. Each program will include screenings of classic, newly restored, and rarely seen silent films from Japan and the U.S. They will showcase the individual artistic interpretations of three different benshi, performing individually as well as together in the form known as kowairo kakeai, in which multiple benshi take on the roles of different characters — a style seen only once before in the U.S. at the 2019 “Art of the Benshi” program at UCLA. Performances will be in Japanese with live music and English subtitles.
“The ‘Art of the Benshi’ 2024 tour will offer a unique theatrical experience that combines cinema and live performance that is rarely seen on this scale, even in Japan,” said Michael Emmerich, UCLA’s Tadashi Yanai Professor of Japanese Literature and director of the Yanai Initiative. “We are honored to be helping to introduce this vibrant, enthralling form to a broader audience, and we know people will walk out of these shows wanting to see more.”
Ichirō Kataoka, one of the most celebrated benshi working today, will be joined by Kumiko Ōmori and Hideyuki Yamashiro, along with a group of musicians performing both new and historical scores, for a series of five different silent film programs with a total of 18 different films across the tour.
The tour is Presented by the Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities and the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
For tickets and more information, visit artofthebenshi.org.