I WAS BORN, BUT… (W/ LORI GOLDSTON)

Cellist LORI GOLDSTON provides live accompaniment to Yasujirō Ozu’s blithe portrait of the financial and psychological toils of one family, as told from the rascally point of view of a couple of stubborn little boys who throw a tantrum when they discover that their father isn’t the most important man in his workplace. For Keiji and Ryoichi, the daily struggles of bullies and mean teachers is nothing next to the mortification they feel when they realize their good-natured father’s low-rung social status. Reworked decades later as Ozu's Technicolor comedy GOOD MORNING, it's a poignant evocation of the tumult of childhood, as well as a showcase of expertly timed comedy editing.

Inspired by the work of Charlie Chaplin and Ernst Lubitsch, Shochiku Film Company’s young director Yasujirō Ozu would quickly blossom into one of Japanese cinema’s signature talents, tackling contemporary subject matter with a quietly thorny comedic sensibility. This was Ozu’s breakout film, setting the stage for his subsequent career as the great chronicler of 20th century Japanese family life. Playing like a dream fusion of the anarchic fun of Hal Roach’s OUR GANG with the sorrowfully wistful childhood insight of Keisuke Kinoshita’s TWENTY-FOUR EYES, I WAS BORN, BUT… remains Japan’s most treasured silent film.

Classically trained and rigorously de-trained, possessor of a restless, semi-feral spirit, LORI GOLDSTON is a cellist, composer, improvisor, producer, writer and teacher from Seattle. Her voice as a cellist, amplified or acoustic, is full, textured, committed and original. A relentless inquirer, her work drifts freely across borders that separate genre, discipline, time and geography.

“Coming of age, as Ozu shows us, is an experience without clearly identifiable points of origin or closure; it’s meant to be struggled with, argued for and against, debated with, resisted and seduced by, repudiated and advocated for. In I WAS BORN BUT…, it’s an experience that sticks.” - Ricky D’Ambrose, Slant Magazine

“One of Yasujirō Ozu’s most sublime films.” - Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Chicago Reader

“It invites comparisons to Jean Vigo, but has charm and physical grace and density that eluded the Frenchman; it surpasses Vigo’s schoolboy anarchy with its sad, Olympian intimations not only of the spirit but of the closing in of the culture upon it, of the absolute necessity of compromise and the denial of animal will.” - James Stoller, Moviegoer

“That it is a small masterpiece, perfect in design and execution, almost goes without saying, but the film’s profundity and its charm go hand in hand.” – A.O. Scott, The New York Times