Dragnet Girl
This year marks the 110th anniversary of the birth of legendary Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu.
In commemoration of that occasion, Nashville’s nonprofit film center the Belcourt Theatre commissioned an original score from Nashville-based electronic/ambient outfit Coupler to accompany Ozu’s silent noir Dragnet Girl. The endeavor is the second such collaboration between Coupler and the Belcourt. In 2016, Coupler premiered a Belcourt-commissioned score for the 1925 film Our Heavenly Bodies at Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory as part of Science on Screen, and the presentation went on to tour 20+ institutions, cinematheques, and arthouses nationwide.
About Dragnet Girl
The great Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu is best known for the stately, meditative domestic dramas he made after World War II. But during his first decade at Shochiku studios, where he dabbled in many genres, he put out a trio of precisely rendered, magnificently shot and edited silent crime films about the hopes, dreams and loves of small-time crooks. Heavily influenced in narrative and visual style by the American films Ozu adored, these movies are revelatory early examples of his cinematic genius. (Synopsis courtesy of Janus Films/Criterion Collection)
About Coupler
The group was founded in 2011 by Lambchop veteran Ryan Norris as a solo electronic project but over the last years has transitioned through duo lineups and swelled to an octet before settling comfortably into a trio format. Its core now is Norris along with Rodrigo Avendaño and Rollum Haas. The group is intersectional, exploring the convergences of man and machine, live and recorded, composed and improvised, stasis and flux. Humor is absent from their work. Their latest release, Gifts from the Ebb Tide, sits at the center of several other recordings that were gestating concurrently and shares DNA with each: HeCTA's The Diet, Lambchop’s FLOTUS and Coupler’s own Blue Room Sessions.
