Sam Green is an Oscar-nominated director and has become one of the most crafted and influential documentarians. He earned an Oscar nominee for The Weather Underground (2002) and has gone on to direct other projects like A Thousand Thoughts (2018) and directed a few shorts. Green returns to excite audiences with his latest project as he asks the audience to actively listen. His new film 32 Sounds explores the elemental phenomenon of sound showing its incredible power through time, space, and shape proving the appreciation of sound and the world around us. Green’s film is one to seek out as the feature was selected to be a part of the 2022 Sundance film festival and the 2022 SXSW film festival. I recently had the chance to speak with Sam Green to discuss his immersive film.
Kristin: This is a unique film that explores sound. What made you want to take on this project and want to explore the idea of sound?
Green: Well, I made a movie! The previous movie I made, it was about a classical music group called the Kronos Quartet and they’re a great classical group. And you know, in that movie, I tried really hard to get people to listen, not just in like a passive way, but in an active way. The Kronos Quartet, if you listen is just sort of halfway through, okay, its classical music, whatever, but if you really open your ears and engage and pay attention, they’re stunning. They’re remarkable. They’re amazing. So, trying in a film to get people to use their ears was a really interesting and creative challenge. And so, I was thinking about a lot of all that and then the pandemic happened. What was that? March of 2020?
Kristin: It was 2020.
Green: Seems like so long ago!
Kristin: I know, right?
Green: All of the shows I had with the Kronos Quartet were canceled and I had a lot of time. I was reading a book about this composer named Pauline Oliveros, and I read a, there was a sentence in there and it made a reference to her longtime friend named Neal Lockwood, a composer who had recorded the Sound of Rivers for 50 years. I had I say this in 32 sounds, and I just was completely taken with that idea because I love the sound of Rivers. Yeah. Like whom? Who has recorded rivers for 50 years? What? You know, and so, yeah, I Googled it and was like, wow, who is this person? I’d never heard of her before. She’s done all this interesting stuff. I started to listen to her music on YouTube and I just, you know, I was at home not doing much, so I found her website and I emailed her and I said, hey, I’m interested in sound, can we talk some time? She said, yeah, how about this afternoon? We talked and she was so wonderful and funny and sharp and thoughtful about sound. I just started, you know, in the pandemic, and in March, April, May, and June, we just talked a lot, and I was so inspired by her. I think the film came out of that. That was really what, what? The seed.
Kristin: You see that kind of grew from that because you incorporated a lot of different influences. You also got the audience to be active participants in the film. Why did you want to do that and be so interactive and be like this voice of God?
Green: It’s funny because I hate audience participation. If I go to like a performance and if I’ve heard there’s audience participation, I’ll sit in the very back. You know, it’s like if somebody is like we need a volunteer from the audience. I’m always like, I look down at you. You’re just like my biggest fear. I’m very ambivalent. You know, it’s like not easy to say, like, okay, I’m going to do things that are kind of participatory, but these are so gentle. Close your eyes is a very easy one. It doesn’t ask a lot of you, but I think with that, it does two things. One, I mention this and I think that the normal way of watching films is that it’s the film you’re really focusing on visually, and then the sound is sort of secondary. And that’s just the nature of cinema, for better or for worse, I think. So, trying to turn that on its head because what I’m trying to do is make a film that’s sonic first and visual. You know, if not second, at least next to the Sonic. So, do you? Closing your eyes is a radical intervention that makes that the reality. You know you’re listening. People can listen a lot better if they’re not using their eyes and then also it just kind of scrambles the normal way in which people sit and watch films, which is sort of like you sit back, especially with big movies now they’re so big, we just sit back and it washes over us. We’re kind of catatonic or vegetable so making people more active, you know an intervention like that helps.
Kristin: There’s even a point in the film you ask the audience to get up and dance.
Green: In the live version of this film, people always do, which is great, and then really not like totally resets the energy. Yeah, it’s like a seventh-inning stretch or something like that.
Kristin: It’s a good way to kind of like get up and stretch your legs out. Well, one thing I was very interested in is that you brought in JD for this project, and I was wondering what it was like working with her and what made it so critical to work with.
Green: JD is great! We collaborated. I did a live cinema piece for the Whitney Biennial in 2019. Somebody connected me with JD to make music for that and it was really fun, and we got along well. I had been a fan of JD’s music for many years. In these situations where I kind of expected JD would be like a rock star, like a kind of like mean, weird rock star, but she’s completely sweet and nice and we got along great. I love JD’s music and the emotional pallet of it. When I started to work on this, I asked JD if she would be up for making music for this. It’s funny because I think JD thought it’d be a year or something, and it’s been maybe four years and I’m still. I wrote to JD yesterday saying, could you do a show at the ACA in Boston on March 10th, 2024? You know, it’s just like this endless commitment which I hope JD doesn’t regret, but the movie would not be what it is at all without JD and JD is more than just a composer making music. JD is a muse, I love filming JD. She’s great on camera and there are scenes of her in the movie. I’m lucky to have been working with her.
Kristin: Yeah, she was a great addition! I thought she was a great touch to the film because I love seeing her walk around and see her clap hands like she’s like an active participant showing how critical sound is. Moving on to my final question, it’s very common to see a lot of directors edit their own work. I know you’re an editor for the project, so why do you think it’s important for directors to edit their own films?
Green: I don’t think it’s important for anybody else but me, you know? I mean, I don’t know what anybody whatever, if anybody else does. I’m not concerned with that, but for me, I edited the film with somebody. Nels Bangor Church is a great editor and we edited together. He edited some sections more than me. He’s a great editor. There are whole stretches that are him. When you make a fiction film, you have a script and you film it and you put it together and sure, you change it, but you’re basically working from something. So that’s a different process when you make a documentary. Often, you’re making the film up in the editing room, you’re creating the film, and so it just seems impossible to have somebody to outsource that, you know? I mean, if there’s a documentary that’s a straightforward one, something that has a real plot. It’s like, okay, you could say, make this movie and somebody can make it. This is a movie. Without that, there are a million ways you could order this or, you know, does this come before that? You’re making it in the editing room. It just seems impossible because the movie is a creative vision that comes from me. I couldn’t there’s no other way to that. It could come into being and I just like editing it’s fun. Editing is hard work, but fun!
32 Sounds is available in select theaters now.
