Sound Abounds at Strange Truth 2024
Director Sam Green will present a live performance of his film 32 Sounds to kick off Strange Truth 2024. Photo courtesy of ArKtype.
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Now in its 15th year, the film series begins March 27 with a live film performance by Oscar-nominated director Sam Green.
One of the most poignant moments in Sam Green’s documentary 32 Sounds, a film chock full of them, is delivered in the smallest package: a now-extinct Hawaiian songbird. Among the film’s many sonic vignettes, a recording of the haunting yet hopeful melody of the sole remaining Moho braccatus’s mating call perfectly encapsulates the Oscar-nominated director’s intent for his 2023 film. If there’s one thing Green wants us to do, it’s stop, listen, and carefully consider our relationship to sound — and also our own mortality.
Green’s film, which Rolling Stone hailed as “the greatest documentary you’ve ever heard,” will kick off the 2024 edition of the John B. Hurford '60 Center for Arts and Humanities Strange Truth film series at Bryn Mawr Film Institute on March 27. Through a wide range of vignettes — sounds from within the womb, underwater recordings captured by experimental composer Annea Lockwood via submersible microphone — viewers, who are provided a set of noise-canceling headphones upon entry, are guided through Green’s engaging sonic landscape by the director himself who's on hand to provide live narration.
“During film’s silent era, there would be narrators. So we’re back to something that’s very old but is being reconceptualized for the present moment when streaming can bring everything into our homes,” says John Muse, assistant professor of visual studies and one of Strange Truth’s organizers. “What should leave home for? We should go out to see a live performance. Sam’s film bridges that live performance and movie-going experience.”
In addition to 32 Sounds, Strange Truth includes Alison O’Daniel’s The Tuba Thieves (2023) and Ludovic Bonleux’s Toshkua (2023). Discussions with all three filmmakers will follow the screenings, and Muse says they’ll engage with students in several classes the following day.
O’Daniel defies categorization with The Tuba Thieves as she explores the impact on students and school communities following a string of tuba thefts from Southern California high schools. The director, who identifies as Deaf/Hard of Hearing, prioritizes her storytelling through that lens to generate a heightened sensitivity to sound.
While two of 2024’s three films focus on our connection to sound and connect neatly to the Hurford Center’s yearlong Sonic Worlds programming, Toshkua follows a Honduran woman named Mary on her numerous trips from Honduras to the U.S. border in search of her son, a migrant kidnapped in Mexico. Meanwhile, Francisco, a leader in Honduras’ Pesh people, confronts the devastation of the country’s rainforest and the dwindling number of those who speak his language.
“Sometimes we find a way of uniting all the films under one umbrella,” Muse says. “But I'm less interested in trying to do that as the years go on. I just want great films where the makers can come and be with us, and I want excited faculty who can work with them in the classroom.”
As Strange Truth, which former Visiting Senior Lecturer Vicky Funari initiated, returns for its 15th year, Muse says the series is much more than a sequence of screenings. While the compelling content is what helps drive audience participation, the organizers also search for films that show how the medium is being tested or challenged. And because Strange Truth prioritizes bringing filmmakers to campus each year, Muse says Bi-Co students learn that pathways into film, whether as a creative or professional pursuit, can be as varied as their subjects.
“The metric for success is showing students that filmmakers are people who have found ways into livelihoods that students here should think are possible. They’re not some other breed of human,” Muse says. “We want students to be enthusiastic, smart, and above all, literate viewers of moving image media. But I get really excited when they find a way to make a living for themselves in the vicinity of film.”
Strange Truth runs consecutive Wednesdays from March 27 to April 10. Screenings are free for all Tri-Co students, staff, and faculty. In addition to Muse, the 2024 edition of the series is organized by Visiting Assistant Professor of Visual Studies Matt O’Hare; Associate Professor and Chair of Spanish Aurelia Gómez De Unamuno; and William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English and Hurford Center Director Gus Stadler.
