Starring: John Cage, Luciano Berio, Knud Victor Directed By: Miroslav Sebestik Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Binding: DVD Format: Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC Label: Facets Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 1 Release Date: August 17, 2004 Running Time: 121 minutes Theatrical Release Date: 1992
Description: Some of the world's most daring composers and musicologists probe the nature of sound and hearing in this unique documentary. The sounds of a rabbit sleeping, the rhythms of a tugboat on water, and the music inspired by industrial machines are among the sounds explored. Includes insights from John Cage, Luciano Berio and Knud Victor.
A DVD to open your mind and your ears. As a conductor of contemporary music and artistic director of Aguava New Music Studio I sought this DVD as matter of professional curiosity and I found myself totally captivated and enriched by it. It reveals the many ways in which we can engage sound: not only in music--and especially in the contemporary works that sometimes baffle us--but the sound of the complete world. The commentaries by composers, musicologists, performers and pedagogues incite us to dissolve the frontiers of perception between sound, space, our minds, our cultures...Multiple levels of perception can all be accessed towards giving meaning to what we hear, and in a way, understand our own life through music. It is wonderful.
nice collection of interviews, but... I give this three stars based on an opinion and preference. The quality of the film, the direction and linear connection of interviewees is nice. However, in an attempt to present a Modernist crosscutting from one to the next (always cutting off the composer in mid-sentence), the film becomes...annoying. Simply put, I do not care for the system or process of the filmmakers: I just want to hear what the composers have to say, and the interruptions are annoying.
The one person, however, that's allowed to speak his heart is John Cage, and for that reason I commend the director (he talks about the nature of sounds vs. music, traffic vs. silence).