Between 2011 and 2013, certain instruments mysteriously disappear from Los Angeles music schools – tubas, of all things. The film follows Nyke Prince and Geovanny Marroquin, who play fictionalised versions of themselves, through the years of the robberies. In her debut feature film, Alison O’Daniel captures the impacts of these events from an unusual perspective: for it is not really about stolen tubas, rather the film searches for what it means to listen. The stories of the protagonists are interspersed with re-enactments of avant-garde concerts centred on “silence” – such as John Cage’s work 4’33”, which premiered in 1952. The narrative thread between different times and places is not just the relationship of deafness to music, but also a sense of how people, animals, plants, and the environment are affected and connected by sound, music, noise, and the presence of their alleged absence. In this hybrid cinematic work emerges a warm and exuberant portrait of a group of Deaf protagonists in Los Angeles.
Credits
Writer: Alison O’Daniel
Producer: Alison O’Daniel, Rachel Nederveld, Su Kim, Maya E. Rudolph For Louverture
Editor: Alison O’Daniel, Zack Khalil
Supervising Editor: David Teague
Director Of Photography: Derek Howard
Additional Cinematography: Meena Singh, Judy Phu
Intro
Intro by Tahereh Nourani
