Squeaky Wheel's Silent/Sound Film Screening of Kuretta Ippeiji ( A Page of Madness)

Squeaky Wheel's Silent/Sound Film Festival is co-sponsored by the Burchfield Penney Art Center, funded in part by the Andy Warhol foundation for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and is presented as part of M&T Second Fridays at the Burchfield Penney. This event begins at dusk.

Kuretta Ippeiji (A Page of Madness) is a 1927 film directed by Japanese filmmaker Teinosuke Kinugasa. The film is the product of an avant garde group of artists in Japan known as the Shinkankaku-ha (or School of New Perceptions) who tried to overcome naturalistic representation. The story, derived from Nobel Prize winning novelist Yasunari Kawabata, follows an asylum janitor whose wife lives among the patients. An asylum visit from their daughter sparks a series of flashbacks and subplots that trace the family history to their current predicament. The film director, Teinosuke Kinugasa is a pioneer of Japanese film and was a recipient of the prestigious Palme d’Or in 1954 at the Cannes Film Festival for his film Jigokumon (The Gate of Hell).

“A Page of Madness shows mental illness with much empathy towards human suffering, with its opaqueness, its violence and paralysis. The mental images show not only nightmares and hallucinations, of both the sane and mentally ill characters, but also imaginations of restored integrality, of beauty, and laughter.” - Jasper Sharp, Midnight Eye, Visions of Japanese Cinema (2002)

Biography for the Performing Sound Artist:
J.T. Rinker (b. 1974, Alexandria, VA) writes acoustic music, electronic music and live interactive music and works in other media such as film, video, machine vision and robotic arts. His work is informed by and often combines elements from these various fields. His work was recently shown at the Hi-Temp Fabrication gallery during Beyond/In WNY 20120: Alternating Currents and the recent Burchfield Penney Art Center exhibition, The Eyes of the Skin: Art and the Senses.

J.T. has received his B.M. in Music Composition from East Carolina University where he studied with Mark Taggart and Otto Henry. His continued studies led him to the University of North Texas, studying with Joseph Klein, Jon C. Nelson and Phil Winsor and working at the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia (C.E.M.I) In 1999 he received a M.M in Music Composition from North Texas. J.T. received his Ph.D. in Music Composition at the University at Buffalo. His teachers include Jeff Stadelman, Cort Lippe and Marc Bohlen.

J.T. is Managing Director of the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music at the University at Buffalo and an an adjunct instructor in the Department of Media Study teaching courses in Media Robotics. A strong supporter of the rich arts community in Buffalo, J.T. serves on the Board of Directors at Squeaky Wheel/Buffalo Media Resources and volunteers at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center.