Sonic Truth
THE 57th ROBERT FLAHERTY FILM SEMINAR
JUNE 18 – 24, 2011, COLGATE UNIVERSITY, HAMILTON, NY
PROGRAMMER: Dan Streible
The audio dimension of documentary operates in several ways: as an element to confirm the fidelity of visual evidence (synch sound), as the conveyor of narrative (the voice-over), as evidentiary recording (the interview), and as a creative tool to counterpoint images. Sound recording and design can help capture a cultural environment, sculpt a sense of place, or evoke a historical period. But add music to the mix and contradictions arise - either moments of truth are powerfully underscored or the truth claims of documentary fall into question."Sonic Truth" brought together a diverse group of filmmakers working in nonfiction and hybrid media to examine the sound and musical elements of their work. Sounds heard included city symphonies and country silences, animated documentary musicals, electronica of the 1920s, roots music, telephonic voices, a Senegalese griot, window washing in Shanghai as well as excerpts from Flaherty Seminar discussion recordings dating back to 1958.
2011 Seminar Programmer: Dan Streible
Dan Streible joined NYU Cinema Studies in 2006 after nine years at the University of South Carolina. He teaches film history, documentary, and curating, and works with the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation master's program. His books include Fight Pictures (2008) and the coedited volumes Emile de Antonio: A Reader and Learning with the Lights Off: Educational Film in the U.S. Streible has also published research on the history of movie exhibition, amateur filmmaking, nontheatrical film, and moving image preservation.Since 1999, he has organized the biennial Orphan Film Symposium, bringing together archivists, academics and artists to save, study and screen neglected films. Streible has served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Moving Image Archivists and the National Film Preservation Board."Programming the Flaherty Seminar is more than just a great honor, comprising as it does connections to virtually the whole history of documentary and nonfiction film and video. It's also a humbling challenge, because 57 years in, the universe of media forms has grown to vast -- and exciting -- proportions." - Dan Streible