Event

Tetsuo: The Iron Man with live score by Lauren Bousfield & Naomi Mitchell

Tetsuo: The Iron Man, dir. Shinya Tsukamoto,
DVD with live score, 77 mins, 1989

LA-based synth mavens Lauren Bousfield and Naomi Mitchell perform a new live score to Tetsuo: The Iron Man, a Japanese cyberpunk body horror film by cult director Shinya Tsukamoto. The film has been noted for its homoerotic connotations, but less talked about are the transgendered connotations of the the main characters transition into a cyborgian being and the external and internal ramifications of this process. From the inception of mass media, trans, queer POC have been underrepresented and/or misrepresented, which has led to particular forms of QTPOC viewing, identification, adoption, and projection with characters in mass media that don't necessarily look like them. Through their modular synth-powered soundtrack, Bousfield and Mitchell lead the audience through an abstract, mind-altering, revelatory cinematic dreamscape that expands the audiences ideas of the exterior and interior excesses of gender and transitioning rarely discussed within a larger public dialogue. Akbar is a LGBTQ bar in Silver Lake that has hosted queer disco nights, drag shows, screenings and live music for over 20 years.