March 9, 2004
Contact: Susan Gwynne
(805) 893-2098
e-mail: gwynne-s@sa.ucsb.edu

The Grey Automobile / El Automóvil Gris—a one-of-a-kind evening of theater and film—is performed at UCSB Campbell Hall

Summary Facts:

• The Grey Automobile / El Automóvil Gris
• A fascinating film screening and live performance
• Features one of Mexico’s greatest silent films El Automóvil Gris
• Also features Japanese, Spanish and English narrators and a piano player
• Presented as part of the Inaugural Santa Barbara Latino CineMedia Festival
• Thursday, April 15 / 8 pm
• UCSB Campbell Hall
• General: $15, UCSB students: $10
• Tickets/information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535

UCSB Arts & Lectures and the Santa Barbara Latino CineMedia Festival present the astonishing film-meets-theater experience The Grey Automobile / El Automóvil Gris on Thursday, April 15 at 8 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. Enrique Rosas’ The Grey Automobile (1919)—one of Mexico’s greatest silent films—chronicles the real life turn-of-the-century Grey Automobile Gang of bandits that wore military uniforms to gain access to the homes of the wealthy. A fascinating fusion of crime melodrama and documentary (the lead detective on the case, Juan Manual Cabrera, plays himself), the film even features footage of the actual gang’s execution.

The film screening, however notable, is only half of the show. Three actors and a piano player from Mexico City’s Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes provide very animated sound. In addition to speaking the characters’ lines, the performers sing, dance and comment on the action in English, Japanese and Spanish. These narrators function in a way similar to the Japanese tradition of the silent era’s benshis, interpreting actors who helped Japanese audiences understand American and European films. Benshis soon developed their own performance tradition, not only creating dialogue, but commenting upon the action or using it as a place to begin their own flights of fancy. The most famous benshis were stars, with names listed above the film’s leads, and the tradition proved so important to the Japanese that they continued to make silent films well into the sound era to accommodate benshi-loving audiences.

Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert writes about The Grey Automobile, “By the Marx Brothers out of Gilbert & Sullivan, the event is slapstick, surrealist, charming and light-hearted. I avoid clichés like ‘You’ve never seen anything like this before,’ but the fact is, you haven’t.”

The presentation of The Grey Automobile is an intriguing mix of theater and film, international traditions, and modes of expression. As the film progresses, the actors comment and give unique voices to each of the film’s characters, playing with language, treading the fine and fascinating line between correct interpretation and misinterpretation generated by the encounter of two distant and very different cultures. A Mexican pianist also accompanies the film, creating original compositions from a battery of Japanese and Mexican silent film.

The Grey Automobile is directed by renowned theater director Claudio Valdés Kuri, whose work has been acclaimed at festivals around the globe, from Brussels to Barcelona to Bogotá. Actress Irene Akiko Iida, born to Japanese parents living in Mexico City, has been a long-time performer with Japan’s legendary Takarazuka company. Enrique Arreola, recognized as one of the best Mexican actors of his generation, has performed in over 30 plays to date, many as a member of the National Theater Company of Mexico. Actress Sofía González de León is a multifaceted artist, recognized internationally as an actor, singer, composer, writer and dancer. Pianist Ernesto Gómez Santana has participated in long runs of several music theater productions and has performed with well-known instrumentalists and singers such as Lourdes Ambriz, Lucía Gómez Santana, Jesús Suaste and Encarnación Vázquez.

The Grey Automobile is coming to Santa Barbara from performances at the Overlooked Film Festival at the University of Illinois at Urbana, Lincoln Center in New York, and Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center.

In a statement about the unique evening, its director Claudio Valdés Kuri wrote: “The role of the benshi was rendered obsolete with the introduction of ’talkies.’ Now, however, we recognize the benshi-accompanied silent film as a contemporary genre—one that unites film, theatre and music—indeed, a truly interdisciplinary art form. The Grey Automobile is a project that will introduce the art of the benshi, out of Japan through the interpretation of a Mexican silent film classic. It represents a reunion of two distant geographies of thought: the strict and traditional Japanese and the spontaneous and memory-less Mexican. This disparate narrative style is only the project’s point of departure; it is where languages, histories and habits meet and clash, and where interpretation and misinterpretation share the same level of importance—all in the search for ‘something’ universal.”

The Grey Automobile is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures as part of the Inaugural Santa Barbara Latino CineMedia Festival. The event is supported by Arts International with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, North Carolina Arts Council and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Tickets are $15 for the general public and $10 for UCSB students.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
Susan Gwynne at (805) 893-2098.