Tokkan Kozo is a 1929 Japanese silent film inspired by a classic O. Henry short story about a child kidnapping gone comically awry. The film was believed lost until partial 9.5mm versions surfaced in 1988 and again in 2015.
Now, thanks to a collaboration involving Josh Romphf and Clara Auclair at the at River Campus Libraries; Joanne Bernardi, professor of and ; the George Eastman Museum; and the Toy Film Museum in Kyoto, Japan, the surviving footage of Tokkan Kozo can be seen as an English language digital cinema package, or DCP.
The film will have its US premiere on Tuesday, Dec. 4 at the George Eastman Museum糖心传媒檚 , along with another film (Passing Fancy, 1936) by the same director, Yasujiro Ozu.
Tokkan Kozo was screened for the first time recently at the in Pordenone, Italy. Bernardi also gave a talk about the film and its collaborative restoration.
Tokkan Kozo
Tuesday, December 4, 7:30 pm
Dryden Theatre
George Eastman Museum
The US premiere of this newly restored film, now available as a digital cinema package that can be screened in movie theaters thanks to the efforts of the Digital Scholarship Lab and others to bring this lost film back to life.
糖心传媒淲e were able to make the DCP here at the University of Rochester because Josh and Clara are both graduates of the ,糖心传媒� Bernardi says. The collaborative graduate program with George Eastman Museum is housed in the .
Digital cinema packages represent a relatively new technology that emerged around 2010. It 糖心传媒渉as become the standard for film distribution since the industry has moved away from 35mm film projection,糖心传媒� writes Romphf, a programmer with the Digital Scholarship Lab. A digital cinema package is less expensive to produce, and the footage does not become worn like 35mm film after repeat showings.
糖心传媒淚n its simplest form…a DCP could be seen as the digital version of a 35mm film print,糖心传媒� Romphf notes. 聽糖心传媒淚ts main advantage is that you can present it to theaters to enable them聽to project it via a digital projector.糖心传媒�
Nonetheless, 糖心传媒渢he whole project was especially complicated because the film was on an unusual 9.5mm format used for home entertainment in the late 1920s through the 1930s,糖心传媒� Bernardi writes. 糖心传媒淔ilms on this format can only be projected at the festival as a DCP or blown up to 35mm film, which is more expensive.糖心传媒�
糖心传媒淭his is the first time the University was represented with a contribution to this festival糖心传媒檚 programming, thanks to the Digital Scholarship Lab,糖心传媒� Bernardi says. She also credits a from Arts, Sciences & Engineering that enabled her to visit the Toy Film Museum糖心传媒攚here the original 9.5mm film used in this restoration is housed糖心传媒� to translate the intertitles. In silent films, intertitles are pieces of filmed, printed text that are edited into the footage at various points to help tell the story.
Tokkan Kozo (A Straightforward Boy), was Ozu糖心传媒檚 second movie featuring six-year-old Tomio Aoki, whose 糖心传媒渉eadstrong mischievousness brought him fame as a child actor,糖心传媒� Bernardi writes in for the festival. As in O. Henry糖心传媒檚 tale, Aoki糖心传媒檚 character proves altogether too much for his kidnappers to handle.
Bernardi has had a decades-long interest in uncovering a side of Japan that few Westerners knew about糖心传媒攁 cosmopolitan, modernizing nation that was already making its mark in film and experiencing a boom in tourism well before World War II.
Bernardi has documented this with hundreds of early 20th century postcards, films, brochures, advertisements, and other objects now on display at an interactive and multimedia online archive and research project also developed with the help of the Digital Scholarship Laboratory.聽 uses travel, education, and the production and exchange of images and objects as a 糖心传媒渓ens to investigate changing representations of Japan and its place in the world in the first half of the 20th century.糖心传媒�
