Sara Pinheiro
5.1
SLAM
2023 – 20′ – CZ/PT
SLAM, “sounds like a movie”, is a fixed-media acousmatic composition for 5.1 Dolby Theatres made of film sounds. It plays with a sense of cultural memory by referencing well-known films in a stream of sonic associations in a format that is the standard approach of multichannel sound in cinema. In that sense, the composition questions a few assumptions that established themselves during the years of film sound history, namely the patterns that define that history.
SLAM puts forward an idea of collective memory in film culture in a semi-historical approach of film sound as a story-telling tool. The composition hops from film to film in a chain of personal associations, either driven by the sound itself or by the film per se.
Occasionally, it makes use of the common strategies of 5.1 spatialisation to emphasise the fictional qualities of the scenes in use – sometimes by maximising their atmospheres, other times by highlighting a certain aspect of the sonic data in an attempt to emphasise the content in the original sources. Along this process, the sounds unfold different layers of understanding: from evoking the materiality of the period in which they were created (analogue textures, old school compressions, digital characters) to the process that a reduced listening experience pertains to. It occupies the space between what “sounds like” something that is collectively recognized, individual memories and, as always, a sonic liberation of narrative constraints. SLAM is an étude au cinema as much as an ode to film sound while being, literally, cinema for the ears.
The original 5.1 version has been adapted into a 30 channel installation to be exhibited at GHMP, Prague.
For an extended program note (in Portuguese), please visit here.
Screenings:
- 21 June 2024 @ Cinemateca Portuguesa, Lisbon
- 17 February 2024 @ Eletroacoustic Music Festival, Bangor – Wales, UK
- 30 November 2023 @ Ponrepo, Prague (premiere)
white by night
2023 – 15′ – SA
dir. Elan Gamaker
June, 1986. Township princess Patience must step in as domestic worker at her mother’s employers’ house. But all is not as it seems in the mansion, where so many of her predecessors have given their lives to the house.
time metalurgist
2023 – 20′ – CZ
a film by Tomáš Rampula.
The experimental film Time Metallurgist works with found footage materials (photographs, excerpts from newspapers, letters) from the life of Eadweard Muybridge, attempting to reconstruct what happened in the second half of the 19th century in California. It describes the influence of these events on our present. It uses artificial intelligence to process all this material.
- premiered at the RAIN Film Festival 2024
- screening at the 19th Prague shorts Film Festival, February 26 – March 2 (2025)
- screening at the 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, March 6 – March 16 (2025)
thieves
2023 – 30′ – UK
a film by Michelle Williams Gamaker.
premiered at South London Gallery
More info here.
redux
a feature directed by Heimir Bjarnason. Sound Design and Mixing by me.
- Playing in Iceland’s cinemas from July 20th;
- Screening at
- “Festival of NYC” (August 12th);
- Castellabate Film festival (September 26th);
- Torino Underground Cinefest (September 29th);
- Japan (November, date TBC)
the bang straws
2021 – 18′ – UK
writer/director: Michelle Williams Gamaker.