On Screen/Sound: No. 9

Returning for Spring 2016, the On Screen/Sound film series resumes with a pair of films that consider the way that dialogue is dubbed into a film’s soundtrack. 
Presented as a filmed lecture about sound and image, 


Picture and Sound Rushes


 by Morgan Fisher disassembles the fixed relationship between spoken word and image to expose new relationships that intrigue, discomfort, and amuse.

 One of the earliest British “talkie” films, Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail


 was originally planned as a silent film. After the production studio jumped at the opportunity to include new sound technologies, the thick-accented lead actress needed her lines “dubbed” in real-time by an offstage speaker. Creating a woozy audio effect that complements the film’s German-expressionist visual influence, Blackmail relentlessly confronts complex issues around assault, murder, and obsession.

PROGRAM

• Picture and Sound Rushes


 (1973) Morgan Fisher
• 


Blackmail


 (1929) Alfred Hitchcock
• Approximate runtime: 120 mins

This year-long film series takes a close look at—and listen to—the way filmmakers have employed the sonic dimension of their form to complement, challenge, and reconsider our experience of the moving image.

Presenting cinematic performance, artists’ moving image, and Hollywood feature films, each On Screen/Sound program delves into the relationship between movie sound and image tracks, highlighting some radical examples of the aesthetic power and technical potential of sound in cinema. From musical theater to the music video, experimental shorts to industrially produced features, the series explores the affective and technical relationship between sound and image through the art of Foley, experimental music, found footage, soundtrack imaging, synched, multi-channel, and non-diegetic sound.