Neo-

Benshi were Japanese performers who provided live narration for silent films (both Japanese films and Western films). ''Benshi'' are sometimes called or . Role The earliest films available for public display were produced by Western studios, portraying ...

is the practice of producing live alternate voice-overs for movies. The art form’s acknowledged starting point is in

Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

and other

East Asian East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea a ...

nations during the silent film era. ''

'' is a Japanese word referring to the oral "interpreter" who performed a live narrative accompaniment to

silent movies A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...

, in lieu of showing

intertitles In films, an intertitle, also known as a title card, is a piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of (i.e., ''inter-'') the photographed action at various points. Intertitles used to convey character dialogue are referred to as "dialo ...

with dialogue, etc. In Korean, the practice is known as ''pyônsa''. Currently, it is finding a resurgence among experimental poets in the

San Francisco Bay area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

and

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

Movietelling

Movietelling is a reinstatement, or retelling, of the film narrator practice(s). Long time practitioner and one of the foremost scholars on the subject of live film narration, Walter Lew, coined this phrase with the intention of reviving and revamping what he considers to have been an international practice, finding its roots throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States. In January 2008, Lew, along with several poets and video artists, began shadoWord productions, an organization dedicated to the practice, as well as the evolution, of Movietelling.

External links

Linh Dinh Linh Dinh (Vietnamese: , born 1963, Saigon, Vietnam) is a Vietnamese-American poet, fiction writer, translator, and photographer. He was a 1993 Pew Fellow. He writes a column for '' The Unz Review''. Biography Dinh came to the US in 1975, live ...

on David Larsen an
neo-benshiDa Benshi Code
with films of neo-benshi performances

References

Performing arts Filmmaking Benshi {{filmmaking-stub

Movietelling

See also

External links

References