Thursday, February 16th, 2017
Doors at 7:00... Screening at 7:30
@ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

Alison O’Daniel’s long-term film project The Tuba Thieves, made in the wake of tuba robberies from Los Angeles schools, elliptically connects the story of a Deaf drummer to the students, band directors, and school communities who must reconcile with missing sound following the thefts. The film is composed of portraits of music and silence in Los Angeles and beyond, and is interrupted by fictionalized re-enactments of two historic concerts: the 1952 premiere of John Cage’s 4’33”at the Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock, NY and a 1979 punk concert hosted by Bruce Conner at The Deaf Club in San Francisco. Reversing the typical process wherein a composer responds to filmic imagery, O’Daniel commissioned musical scores by three composers (Ethan Frederick Greene, Christine Sun Kim and Steve Roden) and worked ‘backwards”, accumulating a narrative through a process of deep listening. First-hand accounts and real life details from collaborations with students, musicians, composers, and actors are continuously altering the narrative, which is filmed in segments over time, eventually forming a feature length film. The dissonant world of The Tuba Thieves is shaped and colored by sound. The aural experience is interpreted through a visual sensitivity to cinematography, framing, and camera movement, which are considered from the Deaf and hard of hearing perspective as parallel descriptions of soundtrack. The film is produced in segments, out of order and the audience slowly pieces together the larger story.

Run Time: 52 minutes.