Red Herione

[GeneChing]

A 1929 silent film? I've got to see this.

September 12, 2008
A little Kung Fu in the parking lot

By Patrick ConnollyDevil_music_ensemble_3

The Devil Music Ensemble scored the classic martial arts film “Red Heroine” as part of ArtsUnion in Union Square Sunday night.

At 8 p.m., about 150 people sat in front of the Independent bar, watching the three-piece play traditional Chinese folk music, while the film projected on a 20-by-30 screen.

“Red Heroine,” the story of a kidnapping, includes a flying ninja girl, a bearded man on a donkey, poor dental hygiene and more concubines than you can count.

“It's a silent film from 1929, from China,” musician Jonah Rapino said. “It's the only martial arts film from that era that still survives in it's entirety today.”

The Devil Music Ensemble, based in Jamaica Plain, includes multi-instrumentalist Jonah Rapino, percussionist Tim Nylander and guitarist Brendon Wood. The band's name is an interesting choice.

“The name comes from a George Crumb piece, who was a composer in the 60s, but it also comes from Brendan's grandma telling him, 'turn down that devil music,'” Nylander said.

The group mixed traditional Chinese instruments with guitars, violins, keyboards and percussion.

“There's an erhu, a two-stringed violin, that Jonah plays,” said Nylander, a Somerville resident. “That's the most traditional outside of the gongs. There's the big orchestra gong and the opera gong, which goes down in pitch. Then various Chinese cymbals and tuned bells.”

In it's fourth year, ArtsUnion, a project of the Somerville Arts Council, sponsored the event.

“It's programming trying to stimulate the local economy. So, we're trying to bring new people, new audiences to Union Square and hopefully they'll come back,” said Rachel Strutt, program manager of Somerville Arts Council. “Hopefully they'll buy stuff at the market and go eat at a restaurant after.”


Strutt thinks people are very excited and receptive to ArtsUnion, which receives equal funding from Massachusetts Arts Council and the city.

“A couple things Union Square has going for it are it's very culturally diverse and there's a vibrant arts community,” said Strutt. “We're trying build upon that and help cultivate that even more.”

[GeneChing]

I'm bummed out.

Red Heroine with live music from Devil Music Ensemble
Friday Sept. 19th 8:30 PM
at the 4-Star Theater
ONE DAY ONLY
No passes or discount cards
Accompanied by the Devil Music Ensemble from Boston, the 1929 Silent Kung Fu Film RED HEROINE will be screening at the 4 Star Theatre Friday September 19th at 8:30pm. Episode six of RED HEROINE, 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 in 1920s Shanghai, this lively tale about the rise of a woman warrior features the genre's then 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 maiden faces imminent rape, but is lo and behold rescued by the mysterious Daoist hermit, White Monkey. Three years later, Yun Ko reemerges as a full-fledged warrior, ready to deploy the magic powers learnt from White Monkey to avenge her grandmother's death. The score that the DME has composed pulls from the traditions of Chinese classical and folk music, as well as soundtracks from classic Kung Fu cinema, and is the only modern score made expressly for this film!

RED HEROINE (Hong Xia) 1929

Directed by Wen Yimin Studio: Youlian
Cinematographer: Yao Shiquan
Cast: Fan Xuepeng, Shu Gohui, Wang Juqing, Wen Yimin, Sao Guanyu
with Chinese and English subtitles. Silent, 94 min

Episode six of RED HEROINE (a.k.a. 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 in 1920s Shanghai, this lively tale about the rise of a woman warrior features the genre’s then-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 maiden faces imminent rape, but is lo and behold 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 learnt from White Monkey to avenge her grandmother’s death.

This “maiden of the clouds” (the literal meaning of “Yun Mei”) flies across the skies to rescue another innocent captured by the marauding soldiers. Appearing and disappearing in a puff of smoke, Yungu scurries up and down walls on a rope, runs and jumps, dodges here and attacks there. While sprinkled with anachronisms and prurient incongruities (for instance, the general’s lair is part-country villa, part-operatic stage and part-DeMille den of iniquity with bikini-clad women and bestial men), the film is never less than a robust telling of a young woman’s transformation from abject victim to resolute warrior. Her flight of empowerment noticeably leads her away from family and marriage towards a chaste omniscience in an otherworldly plane. The film’s director Wen Yimin plays the archetypal non-fighting scholar to whom Yun Mei plays matchmaker. According to Fan Xuepeng who stars as Yun Mei, her warrior garb was originally tinted, the better to be a vision in red.
—Cheng-Sim Lim

Check out the trailer

[Xiao3 Meng4]

I hope it makes it to DVD...

Heck, if you package it w/ Forbidden Kingdom, I'll have no choice but to concede defeat.

CSP

[GeneChing]

...but it's the live music that really gets me. Have you ever seen silent films to live music? It's an extraordinary experience. I saw Metropolis to a live band. I also saw Kill the Wabbit (the Wagner Looney Tunes Homage) to the S.F. Symphony. Awesome!

Again, I'm bummed I can't make it tonight, but if I was anywhere near S.F., I'd have to be at the Eleventh World Congress on Qigong and Traditional Chinese Medicine - it's a Tiger Claw Foundation project. But I need to be at practice. I missed last session because I was on assignment and I really need to sweat out some toxins. I have the edge of a cold and a good workout should be able to knock it out.

[GeneChing]

I'm excited to hear this is still playing.

August 4, 2009 / GO Brooklyn / Williamsburg–Greenpoint–Bushwick / Cinema
Classic kung fu film no longer gets the silent treatment
By Ben Muessig The Brooklyn Paper

A trio of rockers will bring some noise to a silent kung fu film during a rare screening.

The Boston-based Devil Music Ensemble will perform a live, original soundtrack for the 1929 martial arts movie “Red Heroine,” the only surviving silent martial arts movie from Shanghai’s then-burgeoning film industry.

The live accompanyment at the Aug. 9 screening will create a totally new context for the obscure fighting film by merging classical Chinese music with 1970s kung fu film stylings.

“It’s a challenge to try to bring a film to life with music,” said Jonah Rapino, who will play a keyboard, electric violin, lap steel guitar, vibraphone, and a two-stringed violin called an erhu — all tuned to traditional Chinese scales.

“People really listen because there is no dialogue, there are no sound effects,” he added. “They are keying into the music for the tempo.”

That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of action in “Red Heroine,” which tells the story of a female fighter avenging her grandmother’s death.

As if that isn’t enough for kung fu fans, a troupe of martial artists will perform before the film.

“Red Heroine” with the Devil Music Ensemble, at Automotive HS (50 Bedford Ave. between N. 12th and Lorimer streets in Greenpoint), Aug. 9, 8:30 pm. Tickets, $9.