Zipangu Fest Present: The Ghost Cat And The Mysterious Shamisen
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Sun 19 February 2012 // 21:30
(Sun 19th Feb / 9.30pm / £5/4 or combined ticket price for both Zipangu Fest films £8/7)
(Kiyohiko Ushihara / 1938 / Japan / 74 minutes)
This incredible horror film from 1938, never before seen in the UK, and specially subtitled for Zipangufest, is one of Japan's few surviving prewar horrors, a genre that was to be suppressed by the increasing state censorship of the next few years.
A quintessential example-of-the-period "ghost cat" (bakeneko or kaibyō) movie, a substantial supernatural sub-genre based in folklore that stretches back at least as far as 1914, and featuring Japan's first scream queen, Sumiko Suzuki. Here she plays Mitsue, the possessive onna-kabuki actress betrothed to apprentice shamisen player Seijiro. When one day Okiyo, a beautiful young girl of samurai class, is led to Seijiro's house by his lost cat Kuro, she becomes besotted with him. Dark jealous passions are invoked in Mitsue, which are intensified when Seijiro gifts Okiyo his precious shamisen. The cat is the first to suffer at the end of Mitsue's hairpin, but returns from the grave to assist Okiyo's younger sister Onui avenge her sister's murder. Director Kiyohiko Ushihara employs an arsenal of dark double exposures, slow motion sequences and specially-developed lenses to convey this dark, uncanny tale.
(Kiyohiko Ushihara / 1938 / Japan / 74 minutes)
This incredible horror film from 1938, never before seen in the UK, and specially subtitled for Zipangufest, is one of Japan's few surviving prewar horrors, a genre that was to be suppressed by the increasing state censorship of the next few years.
A quintessential example-of-the-period "ghost cat" (bakeneko or kaibyō) movie, a substantial supernatural sub-genre based in folklore that stretches back at least as far as 1914, and featuring Japan's first scream queen, Sumiko Suzuki. Here she plays Mitsue, the possessive onna-kabuki actress betrothed to apprentice shamisen player Seijiro. When one day Okiyo, a beautiful young girl of samurai class, is led to Seijiro's house by his lost cat Kuro, she becomes besotted with him. Dark jealous passions are invoked in Mitsue, which are intensified when Seijiro gifts Okiyo his precious shamisen. The cat is the first to suffer at the end of Mitsue's hairpin, but returns from the grave to assist Okiyo's younger sister Onui avenge her sister's murder. Director Kiyohiko Ushihara employs an arsenal of dark double exposures, slow motion sequences and specially-developed lenses to convey this dark, uncanny tale.