Japan’s silent movie culture is still going
petertasker.asia
petertasker.asia
Some movie theaters in Uganda also have live commentary and translation, provided by "video jokers". You can hear such commentary by VJ Emmie in the famous Ugandan action movie "Who Killed Captain Alex?", which you can watch on the Official Wakaliwood Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEoGrbKAyKE
Despite the very low budget, the movie is surprisingly entertaining, and the commentary makes it even better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_Captain_Alex
On the more lighter side of things:
> Throughout the film, a panpipes cover of the Seal song "Kiss from a Rose", as well as a piano cover of the ABBA song "Mamma Mia", can be heard.
I'm really surprised silent movies/tv isn't more common. Many diverse nations have a need for language agnostic entertainment and it's trivial to syndicate such media throughout the world. Papua New Guinea for example struggles to accomodate all of it's languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Papua_New_Guinea . Silent media is helpful there to provide a common point of connection across the nation (they used Mr Bean as a mascott for awareness during covid).
I don't think I can name a single cartoon in the last 30 years that is aimed at children and mostly follow a silent formula.
See eg https://www.netflix.com/sg/title/81154166
> Weren't 1940s animation shorts aimed at adult cinema goers?
Tom and Jerry were invented in the 1940s, but eg the 1960s episodes used the same format. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_and_Jerry for a timeline.
See https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MimeAndMusicOnly... for many more examples, though far from exhaustive.
As an 'intermediate example': Pucca has dialogue, but also very strong visual story-telling that means you can understand what's going on without the dialogue.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Animation/Pucca says:
> Pucca became popular worldwide because it relies on visual and gag humor rather than language, much like The Pink Panther, the Road Runner and other pantomime cartoons. Though the series has since picked up dialog, translation has worked well enough and the series remains mostly silent. Both show leads, Garu and Pucca, are Heroic Mimes, though they do laugh, sigh and make other sounds.
Interesting comment.
I gave it some thought. One place you can see the dynamics and opportunity for a language agnostic entertainment like you describe is YouTube or TikTok. There are plenty of videos across all kinds of categories that are language free or nearly so.
Yes, people all around the world know Mr Bean, but they know it as something British and foreign. Look at how many British shows get adapted for the American audience despite almost complete absence of a language barrier.
The last point is more controversial and political. But a common language for places like Papua New Guinea is probably far more important than trying to adapt everything for every tiny linguistic community. Even people who speak very common languages of advanced economies such as German or French are at great disadvantage if they don’t know English. It is very unlikely that someone is going to translate a graduate textbook into Ipili, or share a post how they got into YC in that language, or even share a video on YouTube how they fixed their pipe at home.
The General is a silent film that you can show to any modern audience, and they'll love it. I actually did this once in a movie Meetup.
Dramas are more hit-or-miss and benefit more from some effort at acclimatization, I think—that is, I think the average viewer is likely to bounce off even the very-good ones without putting some time & work into getting used to the medium.
http://rick.stanford.edu/stanford_theatre.html
they were closed for a LONG time.
I'm sad I didn't go see a benshi film when I was in Tokyo a few months back.
I wonder if there is a connection to the rakugo tradition? Seems like it could be an offshoot.
Most big cities have a 1-2 day annual silent film festival, and several small events throughout the year. There are even new silent films being produced, mostly as university projects.
Since these performances are noted as including ad-lib commentary and anachronistic (to the film) references, seems like MST3K is pretty close, though they comment over talkies.
[edit] I’ve also been to a couple showings with people who were on the production calling out jokes and commentary over it, and have been at film festivals where live-riffs or commentary were done by some set of podcasters or another. I’m in a trash-tier city so these are rare, but I bet they can be found in major US cities on a pretty regular basis, if you’re not picky about the sort of movie you’ll be seeing.