Going. For People Who Love to Go Out.
Rooftop Films & Devil Music Ensemble: Red Heroine (Event Over)
- When:Sun 8/9 (8PM)
- Where: Automotive High School
- Address: 50 Bedford Avenue Brooklyn , NY Map
- Cost: $9
Tickets for this Event
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General Admission - $9.00
No refunds. In the event of rain, show will go on indoors at the same location. Seating is first come, first served. Physical seats are limited. This means you may not get a chair. You are welcome to bring a blanket and sit picnic-style.
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Rooftop friend ($9 General Admission ticket + $6 donation) - $15.00
Did you know that Rooftop Films is a non-profit organization? Consider making this additional $6 donation with the purchase of your General Admission ticket, and help sustain Rooftop Films during these difficult times. Additional donation is not tax deductible
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Rooftop patron ($9 General Admission ticket + $16 donation) - $25.00
Did you know that Rooftop Films is a non-profit organization? Consider making this additional $16 donation with the purchase of your General Admission ticket, and help sustain Rooftop Films during these difficult times. Additional donation is not tax deductible.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 9
RED HEROINE
The Devil Music Ensemble performs a LIVE score, accompanying the only surviving Chinese
silent martial arts film,
Hong Xia's 1929 film,
Red Heroine
OPEN BAR AFTER PARTY FOLLOWING THE SCREENING FOR ALL IN ATTENDANCE
THE DEVIL MUSIC ENSEMBLE |
TRAILER
No refunds. In the event of rain, the show will be indoors at
the same locations. Seating is first come, first served. Physical
seats are limited. This means you may not get a chair. You are
welcome to bring a blanket and picnic.
On Sunday August 9th Rooftop Films is presenting the
Devil Music Ensemble, who are performing their new original score live to the silent
martial arts film
Red Heroine (1929, directed by Wen Yimin), outside and on the lawn of the
Automotive School in Brooklyn NY (50 Bedford Ave). The show begins
at 8:30pm with a martial arts demo by a local martial arts group
and is followed by the DME at 9pm. Tickets .
This film is the only surviving extant Chinese silent “Kung
Fu” film left from the silent era!
Red Heroine is a prime example of the terrifically popular Chinese swordplay
genre (wuxia pian), often based on published novels or serials, and
an early cinema export, which was banned after the Cultural
Revolution. 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! This is a very rare performance
that showcases the combination of the ancient tradition of martial
arts, early 20th century Asian film, and 21st century music. The
DME premiered this score at the “Films at the Gate Kung Fu
Film Festival” outdoors in Chinatown Boston in September of
2008. They followed this up with a tour of the entire U.S.
performing at the Smithsonian Institute, the Pasadena Asia Museum,
the Portland Museum of Art in OR, the Oklahoma City Museum of Art,
the Chicago Cultural Center, the Bowers Museum in CA. and many more
exciting venues. In September of 2009 the DME will be travelling to
europe for a 6 week tour with Red Heroine. They will be performing
at the Europalia festival of Chinese art in Brussels Belgium, at
the 2009 European Capital of Culture Festival in Linz Austria, the
Netherlands Film Museum in Amsterdam, the Italian Cinema Museum in
Torino Italy, the Danish Film Institute in Copenhagen Denmark, and
many more venues.
The DME is three multi-instrumental musicians from Boston that have
been making their name with live original score performances to
classic silent film. Over 7 U.S. and 2 European tours, the DME have
established themselves as one of the primary American groups in
this field and are capable of tightly synced genre bending hypnotic
musical performances that can make an audience forget that there is
a live band directing the mood, emotion, and pace of the visual
imagery they are immersed in.
Formed in Boston in 1999, the DME is comprised of Brendon Wood on
electric guitar, lap steel, and synthesizer; Jonah Rapino on
electric violin, lap steel, vibraphone, erhu (2 string Chinese
violin) and synthesizer; and Tim Nylander on drums, and a variety
of Chinese percussion instruments.
Brendon Wood, from Tiverton RI, has his Bachelors of Fine Arts in
Music from the University of Mass. Jonah Rapino, from Toledo Ohio,
received his Bachelors Fine Arts in classical music performance
from Boston University. Tim Nylander, from Portsmouth NH, received
his Bachelors in Fine Arts from Harvard University.
In its short history, the DME has been a rock trio, and Eastern
European folk band, a country music review, a 40 piece modern
orchestral ensemble, a house band for live theater, a speak easy
era jazz band, and a multi-member ensemble performing live
soundtracks to silent films. Members of DME have also begun to make
their name doing soundtracks for modern film, which include
Darkon (which screened at Rooftop Films in 2007), and the Day of The
Cabbage, amongst others.
"Violinist Jonah Rapino, who also scores silent classics, has
created an evocative score on par with any Hollywood fantasy."
--Eddie Cockrell (from a recent review of Darkon in Variety
Magazine).
Rapino’s latest soundtrack project was for the Documentary
Alice, about Alice Neel, one of the most famous American portrait
painter’s of the 20th Century. Mark Holcomb of New
York’s Time out says
“…..the effect is spirited rather than incriminating
and, bolstered by Jonah Rapino’s contemplative score, as
piercingly detailed as one of Alice’s mesmerizing
portraits.”
No single description of the DME performance experience can
accurately depict this groups versatile and genre spanning
capabilities. The DME, striving to explore different sonic
territory with every new project they undertake, keeps audiences
surprised and coming back to hear and see whatever they are doing
next. To hear mp3’s or find out more about the DME go to
www.devilmusic.org.
From barns to 2000 seat performing art centers, here are a few of
the more memorable places that the DME has visited of late: The
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C.,
the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh Pa, The Museum of Fine Arts in
Boston MA, the Danish Film Institute in Copenhagen Denmark, Caixa
Forum in Barcelona Spain, The Block Museum in Chicago IL, the
Coolidge Corner Cinema in Boston MA, The Starz Film Center in
Denver CO, the Balboa Theater in San Francisco CA, the Cleveland
Institute of Art in Cleveland OH, the Dallas Museum of Art, the
Colonial Theater in Phoenixville PA, the Oklahoma City Museum of
Art in OK City OK, and many many more.
Synopsis:
RED HEROINE (Hong Xia) 1929 94 minutes English and Chinese Intertitles
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, Yun Mei 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 of the UCLA film and television archive.
Rooftop Films is a non-profit organization whose mission is to
engage and inspire the diverse communities of New York City by
showcasing the work of emerging filmmakers and musicians. In
addition to our Summer Series – which takes place in unique
outdoor venues every weekend throughout the summer – Rooftop
provides grants to filmmakers, teaches media literacy and
filmmaking to young people, rents low-cost equipment to artists and
non-profits, and produces new independent films. At Rooftop Films,
we bring the underground outdoors. For more information and updates
please visit our website at
www.rooftopfilms.com.
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