About this collection

An evening-long program of seven "neo-benshi" performances, with poets and writers providing and performing new narrations to existing films. An homage to and riff on the work of Asian benshi actors who, in lieu of textual translations, performed live narrations to foreign films, with the audience drawn to the skills of the actor, this gathering of performances is presented under the rubric The New Talkies. Organized by Konrad Steiner and Anuj Vaidya, this program of seven détournements, parodies, critiques, and celebrations of cinema took place at Artists' Television Access (ATA), on Valencia Street in San Francisco.