Film Categories: Sound Art + Music

  • Messengers

    A poetic exploration of three subterranean telescopes in remote regions of Canada, Japan, and Antarctica that reveal a new way of perceiving the universe from within. Underground, we are dreaming into the earth.

  • Both, Instrument & Sound

    Both, Instrument & Sound employs tension as an aesthetic strategy, to explore solidarity, collective struggle, and the transformation of these values under neoliberalism. The film follows the life of Tony over 3 years as he describes his process of political activism from the 1970s onwards, which cannot be disentangled from his friendships and his lovers. The film’s score – co-written with musicians, the film’s cast and crew – sonically explores different interpretations of tension—both in response to Tony’s narration and to the musicians’ existing approaches to tension as a musical, cinematic, scientific, and political experience. Everyone translates, performs and remixes…

  • Finding Another Entrance, Trying the Same Door

    ‘Finding another entrance, trying the same door’, is an experimental animation that considers drawing, perception, and agnosticism. Abstract images are accompanied by an artist statement-like voiceover which considers these themes. This text, which is written in a personal voice, wrestles with the feeling of uncertainty and hesitation, while recognizing the limited guarantee of leaving these states.

  • His Romantic Movement

    “His Romantic Movement” presents images of a trip to the Florida Keys. It reenacts the drama of going on the road, Kerouac style; but what it really depicts is the dream of freedom turning sour. “His Romantic Movement” re-presents the male-band on the road living it up, taking drugs, drinking in the sights, and just travelling, significantly, to the Florida Keys. But it does not simply depict these activities, and in doing so reproduce that myth. By depicting members of the band as ugly and vicious, it deconstructs the myths of the male-band and conveys an uneasiness with that celebration…

  • Horseplay

    A half-horse, half-man pursues a young woman who turns herself into the same figure. Using a spare animation style, Straiton deals with a mythological subject that reveals his personal sense of humour. A beautiful film, set to original music, that is stunning in its simplicity.

  • Hot Pepper

    “Hot Pepper” plunges the viewer deep into the music of Clifton Chenier and its sources in the surroundings of rural and urban Louisiana. The great French accordionist mixes rock and blues with his unique version of Zydeco music, a pulsating combination of Cajun French with African undertones. In addition to scenes of Clifton belting it out at sweaty dance halls, the film winds his music through the bayous and byways of the countryside and into the streets and homes of his people.

  • Huey Lewis and the News: Be-Fore!

    “Huey Lewis and the News: Be-Fore!” follows one of the world’s top rock-and-roll bands of the 80s and a crew of fifty technicians to the Bahamas for the making of a music video for their number one hit single, “Stuck With You” for their album, “FORE!” Blank takes us behind-the-scenes for an off-beat look at what happens when a song is transformed into visuals and musicians are transformed into actors. Hidden in the straightforward reportage are sly comments on the MTV machine, sexism in the media, and the business of rock-and-roll. Best of all, Huey Lewis and the News maintain…

  • I … Dreaming

    Music by Joel Haertling and Stephen Foster. This is a setting-to-film of a “collage” of Stephen Foster phrases by composer Joel Haertling. The recurring musical themes and melancholia of Foster refer to “loss of love” in the popular “torch song” mode; but the film envisions a re-awakening of such senses-of-love as children know, and posits (along a line of words scratched over picture) the whole psychology of waiting. (SB)

  • I Smiled Too

    Inspired by natural rhythms and daily thoughts. A playful poetic gesture of images and audio.

  • Iconography of Venus, The

    A look at private and public images of women and their “place” in society. The act of being placed on a visual pedestal of unrealistic proportions and its accompanying expectations. The operatic soundtrack written by the filmmaker is performed by Suzanne Palmer. “Photographs of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, the Venus de Milo and Venus of Willendorf achieve their stunning resolution in the Louvre where a crowd waits for the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa to break into speech, to recover the distance betweeen her sitting and the time of our approach. What we watch with the filmmaker is not…