Library’s Cinema Cabaret Remixes Iconic Films

In its ongoing quest to both and expand its traditional role in the community, the Mill Valley Public Library’s this week proves that its intent is to be nothing if not diverse.

On the heels of in January and a in February, the library’s main room will serve as a platform Friday evening for Cinema Cabaret, a hybrid performance in which writers read alternate scripts or verses over scenes from muted films.

For Friday’s event, performers will narrate over scenes from two iconic films, Blade Runner and Rosemary’s Baby, with satire, commentary and poetry. There will also be an ensemble performance over scenes from Serial, the film based on Cyra McFadden’s quintessential Mill Valley satirical novel of the same name.

“Some are very funny and some are very thought-provoking,” said Erin Wilson, the library staff who helped put the event together, about Cinema Cabaret-style performances. “They often highlight something that is almost a subtext of the film already. And the performers often almost even sync up wit the actual movie characters so it really does tie in with what’s happening on screen.”

The First Fridays' edition of Cinema Cabaret is being curated and produced by Los Angeles-based poet and translator Jen Hofer and San Francisco-based filmmaker Konrad Steiner. It features performances from Bay Area poets Ron Palmer and Dana Teen Lomax, as well as Los Angeles area writers Tisa Bryant and Jennifer Nellis.

The format was spawned from the Japanese benshi tradition of narrating plots, dialogue and commentary as a live soundtrack over silent films. Over the past decade, the form has evolved in the U.S. to include narrative and non-narrative styles that incorporate live music, satire, lip synching, multi-voiced performance, collage and voice-over commentary, among others.

Steiner was first exposed to the benshi tradition in Berkeley in 2002, while Hofer saw the style as a way to respond to the media’s coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The pair first worked together for the Small Press Traffic Poets’ Theater Festival in San Francisco in January 2007, and have co-curating shows in Los Angeles, Buffalo and the Bay Area since then.

Hofer said the Cinema Cabaret style of performance challenges the audience to reconsider the films on a variety of fronts.

“It’s vertiginous to relinquish control as film-telling asks us to do, but it seems to me that the kind of listening - to timing, to rhythm, to visual shifts, to the movements of another body and another story - this form requires provides an important model, politically and ethically, as well as artistically,” she told Wilson for the library’s Centennial Blog.

For Friday’s night’s performance, the narrators will stand off to the side of the movie screen and take turns narrating different scenes from the films. The writers didn’t coordinate their scripts, so there may be overlap between them and different takes on the same scene.

Steiner said Serial “itself is such a great farce that we felt it needed very little intervention in order to read as satire or commentary.

The 411: The event is free and is limited to those 15 or older. Pre-registration is required to secure a seat. The hour-long show begins at 7 p.m. Registered guests may enter the library at 6 p.m. for a wine reception. To register, visit the library’s website or call (415) 389-4292, ext. 203.