Film Festival to include screening of Japanese film Crossroads (Jujiro) with live improvised soundtrack

The St. Louis International Film Festival has grown into a major event, with dozens of screenings at several different venues, and a variety of programming including Q&A sessions with directors; evenings devoted to animation, short films and St. Louis films; and much more. This year's SLIFF, which runs from November 8 through November 18, also will include a screening of the Japanese silent classic Crossroads (Jujiro) with a live, improvised soundtrack courtesy of an ensemble of as-yet-unnamed musicians supplied by New Music Circle.

Crossroads will be shown at 7 p.m. this Saturday, November 10 at the Saint Louis Art Museum Auditorium. The 1928 film, directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa, is set in 18th-century Japan and tells the story of "a young ronin who, having killed a man in a duel over a geisha, turns to his protective older sister for help, thereby putting her in great peril. Madness, prostitution, rape, murder, blindness ensue, all captured with Kinugasa’s astonishing artistry. The expressionistic sets and costumes, moving camera, intense close-ups, and hallucinatory and subjective shots conspire to give Crossroads a haunting beauty of visual experimentation."

To open the program, NMC music director Rich O'Donnell will accompany seven silent short films made for the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts’ current “Water” exhibit, using "water-based instruments of his own devising."