The Art of the Benshi 2026

The UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Yanai Initiative are honored to welcome back to the Billy Wilder Theater renowned Japanese benshi Ichirō Kataoka for a weekend of live performances timed to celebrate the new release of a Flicker Alley Blu-ray box set inspired by the national Art of the Benshi tour organized by the Archive and Yanai in 2024.

During the silent film era in Japan, film screenings were accompanied by live narrators, called benshi. Full-fledged artists in their own right, benshi familiarized and enlivened the cinema experience in Japan through expressive performances that illuminated and extended the emotional and thematic range of the works on screen. The art, today, is carried on by a small group of specialized performers who have been apprenticed by the preceding generations of benshi, creating a continuous lineage back to the original performers.

Kataoka will be joined on stage by another veteran of the 2024 tour, composer and pianist Makia Matsumura, who will accompany his original performances with original scores. Every benshi event is a unique, live experience but this weekend’s program will be especially memorable for the North American premiere of the National Film Archive of Japan’s restoration of director Teinosuke Kinugasa’s groundbreaking, always astonishing A Page of Madness on the centennial of its original release.

Programmed by Ichirō Kataoka, Michael Emmerich and Paul Malcolm. Notes written by Senior Public Programmer Paul Malcolm. Special thanks to Michael Emmerich and Elizabeth Leicester, Yanai Initiative; National Film Archive of Japan. Special thanks to our community partner: West Los Angeles Sawtelle Neighborhood Council.