10 best things our critics are watching this week Neal Justin, Jenna Ross, Chris Hewitt, Chris Riemenschneider and Jon Bream, Star Tribune The Underground Railroad Barry Jenkins, who directed Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, isn t about to take it easy. The Underground Railroad is just as thought-provoking and soul rattling as his film work. Adapted from Colson Whitehead s award-winning bestseller, the 10-episode series takes place in an alternate universe in the 1800s where slaves can board an actual freedom train rumbling below Deep South plantations and creepy carnivals. Initially it s quite confusing and conductor Jenkins rarely slows down to let you catch up. But those who get on board will be rewarded by what s certain to be one of the most discussed series of the year. Begins streaming Friday on Amazon Prime (Neal Justin)
Dedicated to Ankersmit s friend and collaborator Maryanne Amacher,
Perceptual Geography is a wild trip into inner space, finds Daryl Worthington
“When the ‘events’ of May ’68 took place, suddenly everything went quiet. The masses had their fill of the ‘underground,’ and freedom had been expressed on the streets,” writes François Bayle in an essay in
Spectres: Composing Listening. Tracing the history of experimental music in France, he recalls the French protests of 1968 “sweeping away any desire to come back into an auditorium to listen to a concert of electroacoustic music.”
It was a temporary blip. Thomas Ankersmit’s
Perceptual Geography is acutely visceral, brilliantly dynamic electroacoustic music – it even had its live premiere on the Acousmonium, the diffusion system designed by Bayle. When more forces are competing for our attention and our time increasingly enclosed, the piece’s rendering to CD and mp3 also provides a conduit to a temporary, p
Written by Andrea Domanick, produced by Rosalie Atkinson
May. 10, 2021Hollywood MORE “You were the composer, you were the performer, you were the sole arbiter of your creation,” electronic pioneer Suzanne Ciani says in the new documentary “Sisters with Transistors.” Photo courtesy of Suzanne Ciani.
Electronic music is a global phenomenon, but all of today’s highest paid electronic musicians are men, such as the Chainsmokers, Calvin Harris, and Tiësto. Lesser known is the history of women who pioneered electronic music beginning in the 20th century. Their story is told in a new documentary called “Sisters with Transistors,” narrated by electronic luminary Laurie Anderson.
What’s new to VOD and streaming this weekend: May 7-9
Including Almodovar s English-language debut, Eat Wheaties! and season 3 of The Girlfriend Experience By Norman Wilner and Kevin Ritchie
May 7, 2021
The Human Voice
(Pedro Almodóvar)
Spanish director Almodóvar’s English-language debut is a short film that strips the hallmarks of his oeuvre down to a few core elements: a high-strung woman engages in high drama while clad in high fashion. Based on Jean Cocteau’s monodrama of the same name, The Human Voice is essentially a 30-minute showpiece for Tilda Swinton, who stars as a jilted woman confronting her ex in a lengthy phone call as her oblivious dog unhelpfully reflects back her anxiety. Cocteau’s play served as the inspiration for Almodóvar’s 1988 international hit Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown so not unlike 2019’s Pain And Glory, this project finds the director self-consciously revisiting the late 80s/early 90s period that defined his suc
Sisters with Transistors. Photo: Peggy Weil. Courtesy of Metrograph Pictures.
Such care is taken with the visual and aural elements of Lisa Rovner’s
Sisters with Transistors, a new documentary profiling women composers from the early days of electronic music, that watching it feels more like observing a cinematic poem than a cut-and-dried work of nonfiction. Featuring a voice-over by Laurie Anderson alongside decades’ worth of rare archival footage, the movie examines the careers of ten women Clara Rockmore, Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram, Éliane Radigue, Maryanne Amacher, Bebe Barron, Suzanne Ciani, Pauline Oliveros, Laurie Spiegel, and Wendy Carlos and the gender disparity that has led to so many of them being overlooked, forgotten, or outright erased from the history of electronic music. The relationship between art, humans, and machines is one I find constantly fascinating, and