Academy Award-nominated director Sam Green discusses his new documentary 32 Sounds with fellow filmmaker Steven Bognar, who won an Academy Award in 2020 for American Factory.
32 Sounds is an immersive documentary and profound sensory experience that explores the elemental phenomenon of sound. The film is a meditation on the power of sound to bend time, cross borders, and profoundly shape our perception of the world around us. The film premiered in January 2022 at Sundance and has since played continually around the world.
The film exists in several forms:
- A theatrical version with a 7.1 Surround Sound Mix;
- A live version complete with headphones for each audience member and featuring live narration by Sam Green and live original music by JD Samson
- A theatrical Headphone Experience
- And another specifically designed for a completely immersive at-home experience.
Steven Bognar opened their chat: “We approach movies with certain vague understandings of what it might be about. And I sort of went into this thinking, ‘oh, I’m going to learn about how sound works in sort of a scientific level or biological level.’ And you give us all of that, but really it’s about how sounds impact memories, impact our lives, our souls, our hearts, our grieving processes. And I cherish the film because of that because you really take us there in a super thoughtful way, you and the people who trusted you to let them film you and include them in the film.”
So how did Green getting get the ball rolling in the first place, Bognar asked.
“I read some reference to the British Library Sound Archive, and it’s this huge collection of recordings and it just kind of intrigued me, this building full of recordings,” Green answered. “Then I connected with Annea Lockwood (New Zealand-born American composer and academic) and the film really came out of that because I read a reference to her that she’d recorded the sound of rivers for 50 years. I just wrote her out of the blue. She said, ‘yeah.’ I said, ‘can I talk to you? I’m interested in sound.’ And she said, ‘sure, give me a call this afternoon.’ And I called her and she’s such a delightful person.
“If you haven’t seen the film, she is one of the main people in the film, an avant-garde composer in her eighties. She’s very delightful and she’s also incredibly smart about sound and listening…for 60 years. So she knows a lot. And so I just started having a conversation with her every week, out of pleasure and curiosity. And it’s probably the same with you [addressing Bognar]. Most films come out of something like that, just being taken with something and becoming slightly obsessed with it.”
To watch the whole conversation between Sam Green and Steven Bognar, click here
