U-M film prof offers free talk about "Abusive Subtitling" on Thursday

Abé Mark Nornes, the new chair of the University of Michigan's screen arts and cultures department, will offer a free colloquium on abusive subtitling on Thursday at 7 p.m. at the U-M Museum of Art's Helmut Stern Auditorium.

The presentation will begin with a screening of Sato Makoto's 55 minute film, "Memories of Agano."

Abé Mark Nornes will then discuss his collaboration with director Sato, wherein they subjected the film to experimental, “abusive” subtitles.

In 1992, Sato Makoto released "Living on the River Agano," a documentary that examined the impact of Minamata Disease on a rural community in the mountains of Niigata. The film was the product of Sato spending several years living with the old farmers in the area, and 10 years later, Sato and his cameramen returned to renew their friendships with the surviving farmers. On this occasion, they made another film, "Memories of Agano" (2004).

The two films posed a range of challenges to subtitlers, beginning with the remarkably thick dialect of Niigata — so incomprehensible that it is usually even subtitled for Japanese viewers. Sato didn't want his sequel to reduce its subjects to their illness, deciding that his goals could be best served by forcing spectators to listen to how people spoke rather than simply what they were saying. So he chose not to subtitle it in Japanese, and the result was a beautiful film that almost no one could understand.

This posed a novel challenge to Nornes, the film's English subtitler, who used "Agano" as an opportunity to put his "abusive subtitling" theory into practice.

Jenn McKee is the entertainment digital journalist for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at jennmckee@annarbor.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.