Wild Sounds: Program Two

In the history of film in the West, the voices of men speak, allied with reason and language. Women’s voices, meanwhile, tend to sound, though they do so across a variety of registers: in music and song, from the disembodied voices of technological devices, through the mimicry of social norms, and through the politicized voices that shape constituencies and resist oppression. Just as the technical term “wild sound” connotes a sound that’s recorded independently of the image, the wild sounds collected in this series escape social and filmic convention—charting the woman’s voice as it creates an alternative space where meaning is negotiated and generated anew.

These two screenings, curated by Chris Stults and Genevieve Yue, are drawn from a larger series organized by Flaherty NYC.

From cacophony, a clarity? Voices double back or search for a method of address in this engrossing program of short films by artists such as Carolyn Lazard, Anne Charlotte Robertson, and Martine Syms. Series cocurator Genevieve Yue and 2017 Whitney Biennial artist Cauleen Smith will be on hand to discuss the program, which features three of Smith’s works, including her recently restored Chronicles of a Lying Spirit (by Kelly Gabron). (program approx. 75 mins., video and 16mm)

In some of Columbus-native Anne Charlotte Robertson’s diary films, she later records a second, more distanced, narration overtop of (and sometimes contradicting) the more manic narration that she recorded at the time of filming. In Chronicles of a Lying Spirit (by Kelly Gabron) (presented in a beautiful new 16mm restoration by the Academy Film Archives), the voice of Smith’s alter-ego Kelly Gabron narrates her own story, countering the voice of a “classical” male narrator. Gunvor Nelson’s landmark My Name Is Oona is a hypnotic portrait of her young daughter, with a soundtrack by Steve Reich. Pedro Chaskel and Pablo Salas’s inspiring Somos + follows a political demonstration by Chilean women who rise up with a unified voice against Augusto Pinochet’s military regime.

Program lineup

A Pilot for a Show About Nowhere
(Martine Syms, 2015, 24 min., BluRay)

Get Well Soon
(Carolyn Lazard, 2015, 13.5 min., digital)

Five Year Diary, Reel 23: A Breakdown After the Mental Hospital
(Anne Charlotte Robertson, 1982, 26 mins., video)

Chronicles of a Lying Spirit (by Kelly Gabron)
(Cauleen Smith, 1992, 7 mins., 16mm)

Sine and the Canyon & Sine at the Sea (by Kelly Gabron)
(Cauleen Smith, 2010/2016, 5 mins., digital)

Entitled
(Cauleen Smith, 2008, 7 mins, video)