Framed around a string of unsolved tuba thefts in Los Angeles from 2011 to 2013, the film cuts against the grain: instead of investigating the crimes like a conventional documentary, it reframes them as a metaphysical experiment — how does the absence of sound affect our experience? The film reimagines closed captions, expressing stories and ways of hearing through text placement, font size, colour, and punctuation that’s equally playful and profound. The result is a vibrant new cinematic experience — part historical documentary, part poetic video essay, with interwoven narrative vignettes — that immerses you in a rich parallel world, where you “hear” the humming of plants, the vibrations in the air from Californian forest fires, a 70s punk rock deaf concert, a performance of John Cage’s infamous 4′33″… It forces you to reevaluate your relationship with the quotidian sounds of your life. Drawing on her lived experience as a d/Deaf/Hard of Hearing person, director Alison O’Daniel transcends assumptions of sound, silence, and language in this groundbreaking hybrid documentary.
The Tuba Thieves, by Alison O’Daniel, is a groundbreaking work of art, a wonderfully different, beautiful film that showcases creative captioning and visual and audio poetry.
Chicago Reader
Q&A on September 30 & October 2
Community Partner
Nyeisha “Nyke” Prince, Russell Harvard, Geovanny Marroquin, Warren “WAWA” Snipe, Ajia Jones
USA
2023
Spectrum
In American Sign Language and English with open captions
Coarse & Sexual Language
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Executive Producer
Wendy Ettinger, Maida Lynn, Sally Jo Fifer, Lois Vossen
Producer
Rachel Nederveld, Alison O’Daniel, Su Kim, Maya E. Rudolph
Cinematography
Derek Howard
Editor
Alison O’Daniel, Zach Khalil
Production Design
Mboni Maumba, Clover Singsen, Heather Quesada
Original Music
Christine Sun Kim, Ethan Frederick Greene, Steve Roden
Director
Alison O'Daniel
Alison O’Daniel is a filmmaker and visual artist. She has screened and exhibited in galleries and museums internationally, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, FR; Centro Centro, Madrid, Spain; Renaissance Society, Chicago; Art in General, New York; and many more. O’Daniel is a United States Artist 2022 Disability Futures Fellow and a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow. She was included in Filmmaker magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film and writing. She is an Assistant Professor of Film at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Take Me In Your Arms
In this boldly stylized musical melodrama mixing reformist politics with outrageous musical numbers, the incomparable Ninón Sevilla is the poor fisherman's daughter navigating a success of dodgy men on her way to true love.
Montreal, ma belle
In this Valentine to discovering love later in life, the ever-elegant Joan Chen plays Feng Xia, a 53-year-old Chinese immigrant and mother in Montreal whose world is turned upside down when she meets and falls in love with a young Quebecoise.
A Magnificent Life
Animator Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville; The Illusionist) crafts a loving biopic of the revered French writer, playwright and filmmaker Marcel Pagnol (Jean de Florette; My Father's Glory)