Duck Soup Cinema season concludes Saturday with The Dragon Painter (1919)
A few thoughts about Japanese-American actor and producer Sessue Hayakawa, new filmmakers at Project Projection, and the late Tomonari Nishikawa (1969-2025)
Click here for Now Showing in Madison, week of April 28, 2025
If you read last week’s post, you will recall that I was going to keep myself very busy. The visit from experimental filmmaker M. Woods at Mills Folly Microcinema last Wednesday was fantastic, and I was very happy that M. enjoyed his first visit to Madison. Stay tuned, because I will be keeping in touch with M. about some upcoming projects.
The UW-Cinematheque tribute to Amos and Marcia Vogel’s influential film society, Cinema 16, was very well attended on Sunday. Program curator Matt St. John provided a wonderful introduction to the films and Cinema 16, and you can access his program notes for the screening at the UW-Cinematheque website.
We’ll complete the experimental trifecta on Wednesday with the Project Projection screening of local work at Mills Folly Microcinema. I’ll have a few more words to add about that, but first I want to look ahead to the screening of The Dragon Painter (1919) at Duck Soup Cinema coming up this Saturday.
Wrapping up my second season curating Duck Soup Cinema at Overture Center
This Saturday, May 3, Duck Soup Cinema at the Overture Center will have two screenings of The Dragon Painter (1919) with live accompaniment on the amazing Grand Barton Organ. Curating the film selections for the Duck Soup Cinema series has been very rewarding again this 2024-2025 season. Over at my personal website, I posted a brief overview of silent films at the Overture Center (and what used to be called the Madison Civic Center) during Rudy Linau’s tenure as curator starting back in 1986. Rudy built up a loyal audience, and each screening I’m amazed at not only the attendance numbers, but also the age range of audiences (especially young families).
Back in October, we screened The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), and in January we screened Yes or No (1920) featuring Norma Talmadge in a dual-role performance. Retired UW-Madison film professor and early cinema scholar Lea Jacobs presented a wonderful introduction to Norma Talmadge and her career at the Yes or No screenings, which was a real treat.
I’ve had positive feedback from series regulars about the direction of Duck Soup Cinema these past two seasons, introducing films that might not have been conventional Duck Soup Cinema fare. With all of the film restoration work going on with films from early cinema, it has been exciting to track down titles that have new prints. We’ve had a mix of prints and digital files over the past two seasons, and hopefully we’ll increase the number of prints next season.
A very important resource has been the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and the associated San Francisco Film Preserve, who have their own catalog of recently restored silent film 35mm prints. Kathy Rose O’Regan at SFFP helped me secure this Saturday’s Duck Soup Cinema feature, The Dragon Painter (1919). The SFFP 35mm print of The Dragon Painter has been working its way around the country, including a screening at Music Box Theater, presented by Chicago Film Society back on April 13. See the images above from the CFF Instagram feed (@chicagofilmsociety), in which they gave a little preview of what we can expect on Saturday.
The Dragon Painter stars Japanese-American actor and producer Sessue Hayakawa (1886-1973). Hayakawa became leading man after breakthrough performances in films like The Typhoon (1914) and Cecil B. DeMille’s The Cheat (1915). He quickly became frustrated with the narrow range and stereotypical roles that he was subsequently offered in Hollywood. He was able to create his own production company, Haworth Pictures Corporation, through which he produced 23 films, including The Dragon Painter in 1919. Theater Mu, an Asian American theater company based in St. Paul, Minnesota, has posted an entertaining overview of Hayakawa’s career and cultural influence on their YouTube channel.
As with other Duck Soup Cinema offerings, there will be matinee (2:00pm) and evening (7:00pm) screenings of The Dragon Painter on Saturday. Hope you can make it!
Project Projection: New and Newer Filmmakers In Town
I know that you already have the Project Projection screening at Mills Folly Microcinema on Wednesday, April 30 at 7:00pm on your calendar. I just want to add a few more notes about why I’m looking forward to this edition of Project Projection.
I think we’re getting close establishing the groundwork to build a healthy independent and experimental filmmaking community. We have several returning filmmakers on Wednesday, but I want to point out a few filmmakers who inspire me to think about the future of experimental filmmaking in Madison.
First, two experienced filmmakers have recently moved to Madison.
Blake Barit earned his MFA in Media Study last year at The State University of New York at Buffalo, and he will be teaching at Madison College this Fall. Blake curated the recent Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie screening at Mills Folly Microcinema. Blake will screen two films, A Painted Wire and Glitch Dance.
Claudia Krogmeier earned a B.A. in Video Production from Indiana University and a PhD in Technology from Purdue University. She moved to Madison to pursue an MFA in the Department of Art at UW-Madison. She’ll be screening several short works, including a collaboration with Brandon Conventry.
We’re also screening work by young and/or new filmmakers.
Sherif N. is a junior at Madison West High, and his eagerness to learn about experimental filmmaking has led him to several Mills Folly Microcinema screenings. He shared his flicker film, flaring memories, at Project Projection last October. He’ll be screening two films on Wednesday: a minimalist meditation, It Dawned on Me, and a collaboration with photographer Chase Fritz, Transactional Images.
Vincent Mollica is a frequent attendee at film screenings around town, and this Wednesday he will debut his first film, Bob and Paul Meet… It’s always exciting to see film enthusiasts take the plunge and start to make their own films. The program note for Bob and Paul Meet… explains that the “images in the film were drawn and colored by hand and assembled using the Adobe subscription [Vincent] gets through work.” I’m looking forward to this one! Then again, I’m looking forward to all of them.
Fifteen filmmakers will share their work at the screening, and the program running time on Wednesday will be about 90 minutes. If we’re able to recruit more filmmakers, new and experienced, we can start holding Project Projection screenings more frequently. Maybe every three months instead of every six months? We also have plans to organize a screening tour for Project Projection highlights.
Let me know if you have a film or video that you’d like to share at a future Project Projection screening.
Tomonari Nishikawa (1969-2025)
I end this week’s post with the sad news that filmmaker Tomonari Nishikawa passed away last week. I had the privilege of programming an evening of projector performances by Nishikawa, along with filmmaker Madison Brookshire, at MMocA Cinema in November, 2023.
Nishikawa’s performance of Six Seventy-Two Variations, Variation 2 (2022) was particularly inspiring. He set up a film loop of black leader with a series of pulleys that provided slack so that he could grab the film at various intervals and scratch the emulsion with a utility knife. The image above shows an example of a scratched frame. The scratch would extend to the area of the filmstrip assigned to the soundtrack, so a blip could be heard 26 frames after a scratch appeared on screen due to the distance between the projector lens and the sound head / exciter lamp. Out of these basic permutations came a truly mind-bending experience as more scratches (and thus more audio blips) were added across the course of 30 minutes. While the scratched frames and the scratched sounds started out of sync, once the film strip had enough scratches, scratched frames started to sync up with different scratched blips.
At his Substack, Old New, R. Emmet Sweeney has assembled tributes to Tomonari Nishikawa from filmmakers and curators from across the film community, including Ken Jacobs, Andréa Picard, Julie Murray, Inney Prakash, and Joshua Gen Solondz, among several others. My condolences to Nishikawa’s family, friends, and colleagues.
Now Playing In Madison: April 28 to May 5, 2025
Mills Folly Microcinema / Arts + Literature Laboratory
PROJECT PROJECTION, LOCAL FILM AND VIDEO
Wednesday, April 30, 7:00pm. See notes above.
UW-Cinematheque
3 BAD MEN
COMMUNICATION ARTS SHOWCASE (Marquee Cinema, Union South)
Another opportunity to see films made locally. The 30-minute films produced by Com Arts 659, the capstone class for filmmaking, have been particularly strong the past few years. I’m confident that this year will not be an exception.
WUD Film
FRAGMENT (2024)
THE ROOM (2003)
You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!
Cinesthesia at Central Library
DEEP COVER (1992)
Wednesday, April 30, 6:30pm. If you’re not at Project Projection, then support Jason Furhman’s adventurous films series at the Central Library, 201 W. Mifflin Street. Bill Duke directs Laurence Fishburne, Jeff Goldblum, and Charles Martin Smith in this crime drama.
AMC Theatres, Flix Brewhouse, Marcus Theatres
Check the venue’s website to confirm dates and showtimes, especially after Wednesday for weekend openings and closings. I have not seen the films unless stated otherwise, and my brief notes under film titles are not reviews of the films themselves.
AMC: AMC Fitchburg 18 Theatre Flix: Flix Brewhouse Theatre Palace: Marcus Palace Cinema Point: Marcus Point Cinema
ACCOUNTANT 2, THE at Flix, Palace, and Point.
AMATEUR, THE at Flix, Palace, and Point.
AMC SCREEN UNSEEN: MAY 5 at AMC.
BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND, THE at AMC and Flix.
CARLO ACUTIS: ROADMAP TO REALITY at Palace and Point.
CHEECH AND CHONG'S LAST MOVIE at AMC, Palace, and Point.
COLORFUL STAGE! THE MOVIE: A MIKU WHO CAN'T SING at Point.
HAPPY GILMORE 2025 RE-RELEASE (1996) at AMC, Flix, Palace, and Point.
As far as I can tell, there are two days at one day at Marcus (30th), two days at Flix (28th, 30th), and three days at AMC (28-30th), which means I spent too much time trying to figure it out.
HIT: THE THIRD CASE at Palace and Point.
Indian Telugu-language action drama.
INTERSTELLAR (2014) at Palace and Point.
Fan Faves series.
KING OF KINGS, THE at Flix, Palace, and Point.
LEGEND OF OCHI, THE at Flix and Point.
M3GAN: HALFWAY TO HALLOWEEN at AMC and Palace.
This is the original M3GAN, which is much better than it ever deserved to be (yes I saw it and liked it quite a bit). The sequel comes out June 27.
MARCUS MYSTERY MOVIE at Palace and Point.
METROPOLITAN OPERA: LE NOZZE DI FIGARO, THE at Point.
MINECRAFT MOVIE, A at AMC, Flix, Palace, and Point.
MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL 50TH ANNIVERSARY (1975) at Flix, Palace, and Point.
NT LIVE: HAMLET (2015) at Point.
OCEAN'S ELEVEN (2001) is playing at Flix.
The nose plays.
ON SWIFT HORSES at AMC and Point.
RAID 2 at AMC.
Indian Hindi-language crime thriller
ROSARIO at AMC.
Horror film, directorial debut of Felipe Vargas.
SINNERS at Flix and Point.
STAR WARS: EPISODE III - REVENGE OF THE SITH 20TH ANNIVERSARY RE-RELEASE (2005) at AMC, Flix, Palace, and Point.
SURFER, THE at AMC and Point.
SURFER, THE – with NICOLAS CAGE LIVESTREAM Q&A at Point.
This has received decent reviews after it premiered in the Midnight Screenings at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. As far as I can tell the post-film livestream will only be at Marcus Point, on Wednesday, April 30, 7pm.
THUNDERBOLTS* at AMC, Flix, Palace, and Point.
I like almost everyone in this cast, but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to see it. It is time for the superhero film production cycle to wind down. Too bad that some studios like Marvel are so dependent on it.
UNTIL DAWN at Flix and Point.
Horror film starring Peter Stormare (Fargo, The Big Lebowski).
WARFARE at AMC and Palace.
WEDDING BANQUET, THE at Flix.
WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (1971) at Point.
Fan Faves series.
Looking Ahead
Mills Folly Microcinema
Details coming soon for program of animated shorts curated by Grant Phipps, Wednesday, May 23.
Thanks for all you do to make Madison a much more interesting place to watch movies, Jim!
I'm sorry I missed you last week, and glad to hear it was such a success, Jim! I worked with Rudy at Overture from 2008 to 2015, and I always appreciated his important work with Duck Soup Cinema. I love that you are carrying the torch. Please keep up the good work! Madison needs you.