Cinema fans felt like they had traveled back in time when they spent the day at Okinawa’s oldest existing cinema, Shuri Gekijo on April 21st, as part of the 10th Okinawa International Movie Festival.

The day started with a performance on traditional musical instruments, including the Okinawan stringed instrument, the Sanshin. Then there was a screening of Ryukyu Cinema Paradise, a documentary on the very cinema the audience was sitting in. The 25-minute film focuses on Masanori Kinjo, the third-generation owner of the cinema that opened in 1950. Although Kinjo has a deep love for analog film, he knows he must prepare for digital projection in order to keep with the times.

There were also two screenings of silent films accompanied by benshi Ichiro Kataoka. A benshi is a person who stands in front of the movie screen and translates the inter-titles, explaining characters and even providing sound effects. Every film had them in Japan in the era before subtitles. Kataoka is one of the handful of people carrying on this tradition today, and he thrilled the audience during the Japanese film I Was Born, But... and Buster Keaton’s comedy Seven Chances. Special guest and rakugo comedian Katsura Bunshi said “it is amazing to look at the audience and see people laughing at movies that are over 80 years old.” Film critic Tetsuo Takahira was impressed by Buster Keaton’s stunts, saying they are even more amazing because it was more difficult to fake things in those days.

The day ended with a screening of Dawn of the Felines, a recent film that is a homage to the “Roman Porno” genre of erotic films of the 1970s, which were often played at Shuri Gekijo. In just a few hours, the audience could experience over nearly a century of cinema history.

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