|
February
19, 2010
Chinese
New Year Celebration
Red
Heroine (Hong Xia) with Live Musical Score by Devil Music Ensemble
dir.
Wen Yimin, China, 1929, video, 94 mins, b/w, silent w/ English
intertitles
Brendon
Wood, electric guitar, lap steel, synthesizer; Jonah Rapino,
electric violin, erhu (two string Chinese violin), lapsteel,
synthesizer, vibraphone; Tim Nylander, drums, Chinese percussion
Episode
six of Red Heroine (aka Red Knight-Errant),
the only surviving episode of the 13-part serial, is also one
of the few complete and earliest extant silent martial arts
films. Made at the height of the martial arts craze of 1920s
Shanghai, this lively tale about the rise of a woman warrior
features the genre’s characteristic blend of pulp and mystical
derring-do. A rampaging army raids a village and kidnaps a maiden,
causing the death of the young woman’s grandmother. At the general’s
lair, the captive girl faces imminent rape, but is rescued by
the mysterious Daoist hermit, White Monkey. Three years later,
Yun Mei (Yun Ko in the English intertitles) reemerges as a full-fledged
warrior, ready to deploy the magic powers learned from White
Monkey to avenge her grandmother’s death.
Devil
Music Ensemble (DME) began in 1999 as a tool to explore as many
facets of musical performance as possible. Based in Boston,
DME has been a rock trio, a Eastern European folk band, a 40
piece modern orchestral ensemble, a country music revue, a house
band for live theater; and its most recent incarnation, performing
original soundtracks for silent film.
8th
Annual Chinese New Year Celebration – The Year
of the Tiger.
|
