Get your tickets before May 31 at the early bird price of $18 (regular $25).
A janitor at an asylum tries to persuade his wife — an inmate — to escape with him, but she doesn’t want to go. This experimental horror film was conceived and directed by former kabuki female impersonator Teinsosuke Kinugasa, co-written with Nobel prize-winner Yasunari Kawabata, and performed by Kinugasa’s avant-garde experimental group. This silent film masterpiece explores multiple facets of mental health through a disorienting array of avant-garde and Expressionist techniques; it’s empathetic, yet raw and direct.
SOMNUS will deepen the experience of the film through a brand new multi-instrumental live score. Never shying away from boundary pushing territory, the composition will use percussion, strings, synthesizers, electronics and world instruments that will echo the extremes, dissonances and nuances of mental health experience that the film portrays. This event will provide an environment to facilitate a cathartic and reflective sonic and film experience.
About SOMNUS
Formed as a duo to explore and experiment with sonic compositions to accompany visual media, artists Anju Singh and Harlow MacFarlane use SOMNUS as a gateway to expand their solo composing and sound practices into other realms, bringing together the unique sound environments each artist creates.
A Page of Madness remains one of the most radical and challenging Japanese movies…. Kinugasa deploys a battery of expressionist distortions and otherwise stylised images to plunge his audience into ’irrational’ experience…
Tony Rayns, Time Out Film Guide
Media Partner
Teinosuke Kinugasa
Masuo Inoue, Yoshie Nakagawa, Ayako Iijima, Hiroshi Nemoto, Misao Seki
Japan
1926
Book Tickets
Sunday June 16
Indigenous & Community Access
Guest: SOMNUS
Anju Singh
Anju Singh is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, video and sound artist exploring texture through the use of extended/experimental techniques, electronics, musical and non-musical materials, and processing. Her works are process-based, bringing contrasting themes and concepts together. A core process in her practice is using methods of deconstruction and reanimation to repurpose and contextualize materials in new compositional environments.
Anju has presented across Canada, in Europe, Brazil, Mexico, and the United States in a variety of spaces including Fylkingen in Stockholm, Sweden; Send + Receive Festival in Winnipeg; Vancouver Jazz Festival; Polygon Gallery; New Forms Festival, and most recently in Copenhagen, Denmark. Anju’s sound and video work has been commissioned and presented by Canadian League of Composers, re:Naissance Opera, and Vancouver New Music.
Anju’s music and composing journey has brought her into the world of film scoring, most recently with the score she composed for director Jessie Anthony’s documentary film OSWÉ: GE Our Land, Our River, Our Way, a film exploring the lack of clean drinking water available for Six Nations of the Grand River.
Harlow MacFarlane
Harlow MacFarlane’s music and sound art, born out of a passion for the otherworldly, has evolved from the forgotten corners of the mind into a wide rage of evocative textural soundscapes. As an artist, musician and film composer, he can often be found somewhere between the hyper modern and natural beauty of the Vancouver, British Columbia area.
Drawing from a diverse palette of analog synthesizers, found objects, and field recordings, MacFarlane creates aural tapestries that transcend the boundaries of conventional electronic and acoustic music. From the surreal and haunting to the lush and entrancing, each piece draws listeners into an immersive, wholly realized world.
Working as a solo artist and collaborator, he has performed and produced music for over two decades. Since the mid 90s, MacFarlane’s various musical projects have released critically acclaimed albums for both North American and European record labels, allowing him to travel abroad to perform for devout fans. His revered work is considered a fixture within several unique musical sub-genres. Recently, MacFarlane was responsible for the score to the award winning Canadian film, The Unseen.
Credits
Screenwriter
Yasunari Kawabata, Minoru Inuzuka, Banko Sawada, Teinosuke Kinugasa
Cinematography
Kohei Sugiyama
Editor
Umeko Numazaki
Art Director
Kasaku Hayashi, Chiyo Ozaki
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