Deaf filmmaker Alison O’Daniel came across a news report about the unsolved theft of tubas at a number of Los Angeles high schools. She wondered how the students would be able to practice without an instrument. This became the starting point for a visual poem about how people across the deafness spectrum experience sound.
The Tuba Thieves does not only tell the story of the theft but uses the event as a central thread for an associative tour of a city filled with sound. We see the impact of aircraft noise on residents, and how instruments can connect hearing and deaf musicians. We become part of a world where sound and silence are reframed for all audiences.
In open captions, the sounds are described as accurately as possible. An inventive sound montage enhances the precise camera work. Gradually it becomes clear that sound and silence are the factors that connect all these apparently independent impressions. More than a documentary, The Tuba Thieves is an auditory experience.
IDFA X De Balie
Australian Jordan Bryon, an experienced journalist and filmmaker, had been in Afghanistan for five years when the Americans withdrew from the country in 2021 and the Taliban took power. This transition more or less coincided with his own physical changes: as a trans man, he started taking testosterone injections and was awaiting surgery. For a
Gerlach van Beinum is one of the last old-school crop farmers in the Netherlands. Surrounded by the advancing exponents of modernity—distribution centers, highways, multinationals – he moves through the seasons at his own pace. We follow him for several years in his fields on the outskirts of Amsterdam. With the help of his best friend
During the rehearsals of a theatre adaptation of Émile Zola’s book L’Assommoir, the real and fictional lives of actress and artistic director Anne and her stage character Gervaise appear to intertwine. Experimental and intimately filmed scenes provide insights into the constantly shifting parallel worlds between which Anne and Gervaise are navigating. The fascinating play between
