Let’s get straight to it, before we divert you
How much is the ticket? basic CZK 250 | students and seniors CZK 180 | free admission for DOX Club members
DOX Centre for Contemporary Art
Poupětova 1, Praha 7
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Kwaidan (怪談, now written in the more modern transcription kaidan) is a Japanese expression for strange (the typical meaning of the first character 怪, which on its own, read as ayakashi, can be translated as “ghost” or “spirit”) and frightening stories, originally from China, which have enjoyed extraordinary and enduring popularity to this day, especially in Japan.
Today the anthology film Kwaidan (1964) is considered one of the finest and most visually impressive classic Japanese horror films. World-renowned director Masaki Kobayashi 小林正樹 created the film based on Japanese folktales, with impressive music by “the Japanese Zdeněk Liška”, Tōru Takemitsu 武満徹. One of the most expensive films of its time, Kwaidan is a cinematic omnibus consisting of four ghost stories from books by Lafcadio Hearn. In 1967 the film was released in Czechoslovakia, where it was screened in two parts: The Black Hair and Hōichi the Earless.
In 2024, on the occasion of Jan Švankmajer’s 90th birthday and the 120th anniversary of Lafcadio Hearn’s death, K-A-V-K-A published the latest Czech edition of Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, translated by Petr Holý and featuring collages by Jan Švankmajer. Lafcadio Hearn (who went by the Japanese name Yakumo Koizumi 小泉八雲) was born on the Greek island of Lefkada. He lived in Japan from 1890 to 1904 and published a number of books on Japanese themes, which influenced contemporary thinking about Japan at a time when Europeans were hungry for Japonisme.
The DOX Centre will be screening the part of the film titled Hōichi the Earless.
Director: Masaki Kobayashi 小林正樹
Japan, 1964 (total duration 183 min.; Hōichi the Earless 75 min.)
The film will be screened in the original Japanese with Czech and English subtitles.
The evening will also include a reading of “The Story of Mimi-Nashi-Hōichi”, as translated by Petr Holý, as well as a discussion between Aňa and Ester Geislerová and Petr Holý, curators of the GA-I-SU-RA exhibition.
The event is part of the accompanying programme for the exhibition GA-I-SU-RA.
Collaboration: Pavel Rajčan, Terryho Ponožky
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