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June 5 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm

The Dragon Painter on 35mm at Japan Society

On drum set and vibraphone, Shun Ishiwaka shows off his mastery in this film-screening “concert,” enlivening the silent movie The Dragon Painter, a quirky story of a brilliant, reclusive painter obsessed with the myth of a dragon princess.

Starring Japanese matinée idol Sessue Hayakawa, the first actor of Asian descent to become a leading man in Hollywood and Europe, and self-financed by the actor’s production company Haworth Pictures Corporation, The Dragon Painter is a rare example of a silent-era American production with an almost entirely Asian cast. Hayakawa’s move into self-financing his films, motivated by his desire to better represent his culture and introduce more authentic depictions of Japanese characters in film, would result in this remarkable 1919 feature. Hayakawa portrays a brilliant reclusive painter obsessed with the tale of a dragon princess, becoming enraptured with his mentor’s daughter Ume-ko (Tsuru Aoki, Hayakawa’s wife) who he believes may be the princess incarnate. Far from an authentic vision, The Dragon Painter inhabits a dreamy fantasia of the Land of the Rising Sun—a fable that succeeds in its outright beauty and romanticism, imbued with the Japonisme and exoticism of its time.

A pre-performance lecture on Sessue Hayakawa begins at 6:30 pm.

Frame from The Dragon Painter

Japan Society

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333 East 47th Street
New York, CA 10017 United States