A PAGE OF MADNESS (1926) with original score performed by NoExit New Music Ensemble

Directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa in collaboration with artists of Japan’s experimental “School of New Perceptions,” A Page of Madness draws on German Expressionism, Noh theater, and melodrama. Rapid montage, superimposition, and distorted imagery immerse the viewer in the troubled inner world of its characters. Set in a psychiatric hospital the film follows a woman who has lost her mental bearings. Her guilt-ridden husband, now unknown to her, works at the asylum as a janitor. Long believed lost, the film resurfaced in Kinugasa’s warehouse in 1971. Although roughly a third of the original version remains missing, its beauty and disturbing psychological force are undiminished.
A 2018 BBC preview of the film described it as “a balletic musing on our subconscious nightmares.” The CSFF screening features an original score by James Praznik performed by a quintet drawn from NoExit New Music Ensemble. September 19, 2026, 2:30 pm, Gartner Auditorium, Cleveland Museum of Art. $25/$22 CMA and CSFF members.