Wanderwelle performs A Page of Madness

An ex-mariner works as a cleaner in the psychiatric institution where his wife is a patient. Because he feels guilty? One thing’s for sure: the man is increasingly falling under the spell of his own delusions.

Director Teinosuke Kinugasa (1896-1982) based A Page of Madness (Kurutta ichipêji) on a short story by Japanese author and (later) Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata. Whereas Kinugasa had previously worked exclusively as a fiction film director for commercial studios, he now decided to adopt an experimental approach.

Dread

The result is a silent horror film that draws the viewer into the imaginings of an irrational worldview; out-of-kilter decors, unusual camera positions and strong light-and-shadow effects evoke a sense of fear and dread, as in another classic: Robert Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920), to which Kinugasa’s film is often compared.

For his independent production, the Japanese director was inspired by cinematic innovations such as Sergei Eisenstein’s pioneering editing techniques – making Kinugasa the maker of the first real Japanese avant-garde film.

In spite of its groundbreaking status, A Page of Madness disappeared completely; for years the film was believed lost, until Kinugasa found the negative by accident in his own attic in 1971.

Performance by Wanderwelle

Sound and vision collective Wanderwelle (Alexander Bartels, Phil van Dulm) has written a new score for the film and will perform this live in Eye. The makers’ imaginations were ignited by the film’s experimental horror. Unconventional percussion draws the audience into the protagonist’s shaky perception of the world, where it’s impossible to separate memory, dream and reality. Oscillating between hypnotic silence and rhythmic eruption, Wanderwelle descend into an capricious exploration of the unconscious.