An immersive documentary and profound sensory experience from filmmaker Sam Green 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 will be at VIFF 2023 in its “live cinema” form at the Vancouver Playhouse, featuring live narration by Sam Green. Directed and performed by Sam Green, with music composed by JD Samson.
32 Sounds is a piece about sound, and the form itself will be focused on the experience of hearing and listening. 32 Sounds will provide headphones for every audience member to create an incredible binaural sound mix and add a new, deeply immersive element to the live documentary form.
Followed by a Q&A with Sam Green & sound designer Mark Mangini
A true original, Sam Green is a master raconteur. An endearing guide with a host of charms for encountering the many, many multitudes of ideas, artists, works of art, interviewees, and commentary that make 32 Sounds such a remarkable live cinema experience.
Impeccably researched, the work takes metaphysical stock, as it were, of the nature of ‘sound’ — its ability to profoundly shape our perceptions and sense of reality. 32 Sounds is Green’s latest live screen romp, here for VIFF LIVE 2023 with a special screening at the Vancouver Playhouse.
Green was last in Vancouver in 2014; the PuSh Festival screened The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller at the Vogue to a packed house of raving enthusiasts. Similarly, 32 Sounds is a VIFF event not to be missed!Norman Armour, VIFF Guest Live Curator
A relentlessly curious documentary. A wide-ranging meditation on sound and human memory. Heady and spine-tingling… engaging and richly visual. A 95-minute exploration that leapfrogs across several dozen scintillating surfaces.
Lindsay Zoladz, The New York Times
Sam Green’s 32 SOUNDS is a playful, thoughtful documentary… a delightful, joyous film that changes the way you look at — or maybe listen to — the world.
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox
Touches on sense memory…and it dares to tackle the question: If a tree falls in the woods, does it really make a sound?… probably the only movie to ever turn a Moho braccatus’s mating call into something that could move you to tears.
David Fear, Rolling Stone
Media Partner
Community Partner
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Guest
Sam Green
Sam Green (director, writer, editor) is a New York-based documentary filmmaker. Green’s most recent live documentaries include A Thousand Thoughts (with the Kronos Quartet) (2018), The Measure of All Things (2014), The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller (with Yo La Tengo) (2012), and Utopia in Four Movements (2010). With all of these works, Green narrates the film in-person while musicians perform a live soundtrack. Green’s 2004 feature-length film, The Weather Underground, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was nominated for an Academy Award, was included in the Whitney Biennial, and has screened widely around the world.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Familiar Touch
A loving portrait of an octogenarian transitioning into an assisted living facility, this award-winning first feature by choreographer Sarah Friedland has a simplicity and warmth that's exceptionally poignant.
Fairy Creek
Considered the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, the Fairy Creek blockade led to more than 1200 arrests. What Jen Muranetz's film gives us is the story from the front line from the activists' point of view (often, from the treetops).
East of Eden
Salinas, 1917. Cal Trask's forlorn attempts to win the affection of his self-righteous father (Raymond Massey) represented James Dean's first leading role in the cinema, and his emotionally raw performance ennobled misunderstood youth everywhere.
Georgia O'Keeffe: the Brightness of Light
Drawing on her copious correspondence and the world's leading scholars, this is a definitive documentary on the life and work of "the mother of American Modernism."
Rebel Without a Cause
Kids turned bad in the 1950s -- and their newly comfortable middle-class parents couldn't understand why. Ray points the finger right back at them: "You're tearing me apart!" rails Jim Stark (James Dean), speaking for his generation.
On the Waterfront
Marlon Brando's definitive performance as Terry Malloy, a New York dockworker (and once a promising boxer) who loses faith in his union and his smarter but corrupt older brother Charlie (Rod Steiger) after a whistleblower is murdered.