32 Sounds
AN IMMERSIVE FILM BY SAM GREEN
WITH MUSIC BY JD SAMSON
Sound and music have long been essential elements in the work of documentary filmmaker Sam Green, perhaps known best for co-directing the acclaimed 2002 film The Weather Underground about the radical titular political activists. His more recent output has been decidedly experimental, such as the “live documentary” A Thousand Thoughts which profiles the legendary Kronos Quartet through an inventive mix of archival footage and new interviews with group members, while Green and the string quartet perform in front of the audience.
Big Ears is thrilled to present his latest endeavor 32 Sounds, a spirited and fascinating exploration of the science of sound—how it all works and how it impacts us. As with his other live documentaries, Green will preside over this event providing narration while JD Samson performs the score in real time. As Lindsay Zoladz wrote in a recent New York Times review, “With the narrator and musicians seated in front of the movie screen, proudly displaying their processes, the effect is as though one has unscrewed the top of a traditional documentary to expose its busily whirring component parts.”
Audience members will be given headphones to get a fuller sonic picture of what Green is exploring with the work, and among the interview subjects are an employee of the British Library Sound Archive, Princeton physicist Edgar Choueiri, and the brilliant composer Annea Lockwood, whose work will be celebrated in a separate Big Ears concert. As Variety has written, “Full to bursting with humor, emotion and curiosity, 32 Sounds is a uniquely mind-expanding plunge into a dimension of the human experience so many of us take for granted, a rare and rewarding sonic journey with the potential to enrich our lives.”
