An overly-confident samurai looks for unsuspecting victims on which to try out his new sword but neither his targets nor his weapon prove willing to play along. The Dull Sword is the oldest known surviving example of moving image anime, simply drawn but highly expressive in its satirical take on period genre conventions.

Precocious children often take center stage in the works of Japanese master Ozu Yasujirō (I Was Born But…, Good Morning) with this fragment of a silent comedy short offering an early glimpse of his felicity with childhood. Trouble abounds for a pair of kidnappers who underestimate the energies of their young abductee who quickly challenges their patience for the job. This version includes seven more minutes than the previously known extant  versions thanks to a newly-discovered print. 

This charming example of stop-motion collage tells the story of a ceremonial dancer who encounters a demon serpent in the hills while on his way home after performing at a  harvest festival. He escapes the encounter and returns with a group of villagers to destroy  the creature but its spirit has the last laugh. Produced by studio Chiyogami Eiga-sha, The Golden Flower suggests the rich variety of styles being explored by early Japanese  animators.

The elements of director Kenji Mizoguchi’s mature style are evident everywhere in this  galvanizing melodrama adapted from a novel by Kyōka Izumi. High angle shots and  sweeping camera movements lend a distinctly modern dynamism to the story of a woman  (Takako Irie) who sacrifices everything she has to ensure the future of a young man  (Tokihiko Okada) who captures her imagination. Irie delivers a powerful, moving  performance as a theater performer whose good deed leads to tragedy as Mizoguchi  (Ugetsu, The Life of Oharu) interrogates the shifting strata of Japanese society. Of course,  benshi played an essential role in the original release of The Water Magician in Japan but  the benshi of a generation later played an equally important role in the film’s restoration in  2006.

An overly-confident samurai looks for unsuspecting victims on which to try out his new sword but neither his targets nor his weapon prove willing to play along. The Dull Sword is  the oldest known surviving example of moving image anime, simply drawn but highly expressive in its satirical take on period genre conventions.

Only the final reel of this samurai melodrama from director Daisuke Itō survives today which is enough to suggest the enormity of the loss. An Edo-set story of samurai brothers who fall in love with the same woman, it culminates with a ferocious sword fight between the spurned brother and an army of warriors, as action-packed a film fragment as you’re ever likely to see.

Star Denjirō Ōkōchi and director Daisuke Itō helped remake the chambara genre in the late 1920s, infusing it with visual flash and mythic power. Sadly, the films of theirs that survive exist mostly in fragmentary form. Such is the case with Blood Spattered Takadanobaba. In this brief scene, the rōnin Yasube comes home drunk to a letter from his uncle requesting assistance fighting off a band of villainous samurai. Yasube races to his uncle’s side and joins the battle already in violent progress! So that audiences can experience more directly how a benshi’s specific style can influence a film, Blood Spattered Takadanobaba will be repeated over the course of this series with a different benshi narrating each time.

Star Denjirō Ōkōchi and director Daisuke Itō helped remake the chambara genre in the late 1920s, infusing it with visual flash and mythic power. Sadly, the films of theirs that survive exist mostly in fragmentary form. Such is the case with Blood Spattered Takadanobaba. In this brief scene, the rōnin Yasube comes home drunk to a letter from his uncle requesting assistance fighting off a band of villainous samurai. Yasube races to his uncle’s side and joins the battle already in violent progress! So that audiences can experience more directly how a benshi’s specific style can influence a film, Blood Spattered Takadanobaba will be repeated over the course of this series with a different benshi narrating each time.

Tsumasaburō Bandō, one of Japan’s earliest screen idols, plays a masterless samurai, forced to become a gangster’s bodyguard in this dazzling jidaigeki (period drama). Japanese film critic Junichiro Tanaka praised it in the pages of Kinema Junpo in 1952, particularly its bravura, climactic chase scene, in which the “cinematic beauty of light, shadow, and movement flows into the screen along with Tsumasaburo’s sword fighting.”

Billed as the “the first ever Japanese production of its kind,” Sanji Goto holds a fascinating place in international film history. After training as an actor with Thomas Ince, director Kisaburō “Thomas” Kurihara returned to Japan to make films for export to the U.S. beginning with this slapstick comedy. Iwajiro Nakajima, “the Japanese Charlie Chaplin,” stars as an guileless janitor who journeys to the States on the chance of inheriting a fortune. Sadly, the film survives only as a fragment.

The first star of the Japanese screen, Matsunosuke Onoe plays the title character, a shape-shifting ninja who battles his enemies with an arsenal of magic, which includes transforming himself into a giant toad. Based on a famous folktale, Jiraiya the Hero was one Japan’s earliest “trick films” and survives today as a fragment featuring a series of loosely connected fight scenes.

Diana Serra Cary, better known by her screen name, Baby Peggy, was only 19 months old when director Fred Fishback cast her in a series of comedy shorts in 1921 alongside Brownie the Wonder Dog. By the following year, she was one of the biggest child stars in the world. In Our Pet, discovered at auction in 2016 by master benshi Ichirō Kataoka, Peggy is awakened from sleep by a series of burglars who quickly find themselves, in over their heads, Home Alone-style.

With a scenario devised by Japanese novelist (and later Nobel Prize winner) Yasunari Kawabata with contributions from other members of the radical literary movement known as Shinkankakuha, director Teinosuke Kinugasa crafted this visionary masterpiece that was thought lost for almost 50 years. Wracked with guilt, believing his wanton cruelty drove his wife insane, a husband becomes a janitor at the asylum where she’s incarcerated so he can care for her. When he comes to fear her illness may prevent their daughter from getting married, he gradually loses his own grip on reality. Replete with fantastical images, super impositions and rapid montage, the film subverts any sense of narrative coherence even as Kinugasa builds, according to critic Chris Fujiwara “an atmosphere of astonishing intensity.”

An overly-confident samurai looks for unsuspecting victims on which to try out his new sword but neither his targets nor his weapon prove willing to play along. The Dull Sword is the oldest known surviving example of moving image anime, simply drawn but highly expressive in its satirical take on period genre conventions.

One of seven films written and directed by Charlie Chaplin on the National Film Registry, The Immigrant follows the Tramp’s delightfully slapstick comic misadventures from the deck of a steamship sailing by the Statue of Liberty to the streets of America where penury and romance follow in short order. Working with essential onscreen collaborators Edna Purviance and Eric Campbell, Chaplin reworked the storyline and gags on the fly during production to craft this iconic comedy.

Based on a contemporary set novel by Yanagawa Shun'yo, Not Blood Relations was adapted to the Japanese stage with multiple film versions to follow, including director Naruse Mikio’s take in 1932. Director Inoue Masao also stars in this 1916 adaption which follows the destruction of a businessman and his family as mounting scandals reawaken lingering hatreds and induce new crimes. This surviving fragment features three sequences from the original film, including its denouement. 

The rediscovery of The Oath of the Sword in 2016 and its subsequent restoration by the Japanese American National Museum and George Eastman Museum brought a lost film back to the screen and illuminated a long overlooked facet of early film history. A tragic tale of ambition and love betrayed, it was produced by a Los Angeles-based company founded by Japanese immigrants and featured Japanese actors in the lead roles, making it the earliest known Asian American film production.  

A vengeful ghost takes center stage in this rarely seen, early Japanese horror film shot in Okinawa and Hawaii. An immigrant story gone wrong, it stars Okinawan native Seizen Toguchi, who also wrote the script, as a husband who emigrates with his wife from Okinawa to Oahu where they find work on a sugarcane plantation. When she contracts leprosy, he abandons her and flees back to Japan only to be driven mad, years later, by her spirit, transformed into the serpent of the title. A seminal genre work with roots in Okinawan folklore, The Vindictive Snake is the oldest known narrative film shot in Okinawa.

The Perkins sisters are a study in contrasts: Dolly thrives in the rural setting of the family farm, while Dora chafes against it and restlessly dreams of a move to the big city. Following an argument with her father, Dora leaves for the beckoning metropolis, sparking a storyline replete with deception, bigamy, madness, and finally, reconciliation. Norma Shearer who plays Dolly would soon become a major star at MGM under the guidance of legendary producer Irving Thalberg. “A wild tale, wildly done on the screen,” as per Variety’s review at the time, Man and Wife is silent melodrama at its most satisfying.

Pete the Pup, a.k.a. Pal, the Wonder Dog, the beloved American Staffordshire Terrier that starred in Hal Roach’s Our Gang comedies from 1924-1930, takes center stage in his own light-hearted story of love and betrayal. When his owner Joe (Joe Cobb) develops a young crush on Clarabelle (Annette De Kirby), Pete feels left out, becoming so dejected that he decides to end it all—to the delight of the local cats and kittens. Of course, Pete’s never in any real danger and a climatic race to the rescue ultimately set everything right.

In this rags-to-riches tale, an orphaned and destitute Baby Peggy (a.k.a pioneering child star Diana Serra Cary) enlists the aid of a mischievous performing monkey to seek restitution for an elderly violinist. After an epic chase, she is adopted by a wealthy couple—then steals the spotlight at the evening social.

Based on a contemporary set novel by Yanagawa Shun'yo, Not Blood Relations was adapted to the Japanese stage with multiple film versions to follow, including director Naruse Mikio’s take in 1932. Director Inoue Masao also stars in this 1916 adaption which follows the destruction of a businessman and his family as mounting scandals reawaken  lingering hatreds and induce new crimes. This surviving fragment features three sequences from the original film, including its denouement.

The rediscovery of The Oath of the Sword in 2016 and its subsequent restoration by the Japanese American National Museum and George Eastman Museum brought a lost film back to the screen and illuminated a long overlooked facet of early film history. A tragic tale of ambition and love betrayed, it was produced by a Los Angeles-based company founded by Japanese immigrants and featured Japanese actors in the lead roles, making it the earliest known Asian American film production.

In this rags-to-riches tale, an orphaned and destitute Baby Peggy (a.k.a pioneering child star Diana Serra Cary) enlists the aid of a mischievous performing monkey to seek restitution for an elderly violinist. After an epic chase, she is adopted by a wealthy couple—then steals the spotlight at the evening social.

Star Denjirō Ōkōchi and director Daisuke Itō helped remake the chambara genre in the late 1920s, infusing it with visual flash and mythic power. Sadly, the films of theirs that survive exist mostly in fragmentary form. Such is the case with Blood Spattered Takadanobaba. In this brief scene, the rōnin Yasube comes home drunk to a letter from his uncle requesting assistance fighting off a band of villainous samurai. Yasube races to his uncle’s side and joins the battle already in violent progress! So that audiences can experience more directly how a benshi’s specific style can influence a film, Blood Spattered Takadanobaba will be repeated over the course of this series with a different benshi narrating each time.

Precocious children often take center stage in the works of Japanese master Ozu Yasujirō (I Was Born But…, Good Morning) with this fragment of a silent comedy short offering an early glimpse of his felicity with childhood. Trouble abounds for a pair of kidnappers who underestimate the energies of their young abductee who quickly challenges their patience for the job. This version includes seven more minutes than the previously known extant versions thanks to a newly-discovered print. 

The first star of the Japanese screen, Matsunosuke Onoe plays the title character, a shape-shifting ninja who battles his enemies with an arsenal of magic, which includes transforming himself into a giant toad. Based on a famous folktale, Jiraiya the Hero was one Japan’s earliest “trick films” and survives today as a fragment featuring a series of loosely connected fight scenes.