I’m thrilled that 32 SOUNDS is now on the Criterion Channel for the next year. I’ve always been a fan of the curation, so it’s a real honor to share a platform with many of my film heros. I’m also tickled that they chose the cat as the thumbnail. I guess animals get the clicks!
My friend Jonn Herschend (The Thing Quarterly) recently asked me to be part of his new venture, THE QUARTERLY REPORT. It’s an actual, real publication! The prompt was “things people think about when they are not working” so I wrote an essay about my secret passion for manhole covers. Jonn also made a short film about me and manhole covers, which I have to say is quite terrific. All of this can be found at thequarterlyreport.com
I was over the moon that Lincoln Center did a retrospective of some of my live cinema greatest hits!! This might be the only time this’ll ever happen. 32 SOUNDS with JD Samson. A THOUSAND THOUGHTS with the Kronos Quartet. And THE LOVE SONG OF R BUCKMINSTER FULLER with Yo La Tengo. Actually this is the only time this will ever happen – two of the members of Kronos Quartet retired and this was one of the last screenings of ATT. Definitely a career highlight for me.
It was a great night for 32 SOUNDS at the Cinema Eye awards in NYC recently! JD Samson won for Best Score, Mark Mangini won for Best Sound Design, and 32 SOUNDS won the top award for Best Documentary. Deadline called our sweep, a “shocker,” which was either slightly offensive or just funny, and since we won, it was easy to take the high road and go with the latter. In any event, it was great to celebrate with the whole team: JD, Nels Bangerter, Yoni Brook, Josh Penn, Nora Wilkinson, and myself. Onwards!
Thrilled that 32 SOUNDS is on several Oscar prediction lists! Thanks Variety and Indiewire.
32 SOUNDS just finished a 9-week run at the Film Forum in NYC!!! We were scheduled to play the film there for one week, and it just kept getting extended. It’s an honor to have premiered the film at Film Forum, which is a beacon of artistic vision, independence, and excellence in the sea of mediocrity that is the film distribution landscape these days. The film has since opened at dozens of other theaters around the country and is currently the 6th-highest grossing documentary of the year!
I have gone on and on here (and elsewhere) about Annea Lockwood — in fact, my own mother asked me recently if Annea had replaced her in my heart (the answer of course was ‘no way!’). But at the risk of going overboard, I did want to mention that I wrote an essay recently for Pioneer Works about Annea that I’m pretty excited about. It’s called “Learning to Listen with Annea Lockwood.” It has lots of pictures and sounds and also recounts the story of our friendship. I could not have done it without the great editing powers of Joshua Jelly-Schapiro! Read the essay here: https://pioneerworks.org/broadcast/sam-green-annea-lockwood
There was a lot of Philly kismet at last weekend’s screening of 32 SOUNDS. It was a pleasure to perform at University of the Arts on Saturday night and to be in the city that’s home to Yoni Brook (the great cinematographer who shot the film), our post team at All Ages Productions, plus our EP Jen Westphal! And on top of all of that, Annea Lockwood — the star of the film — simultaneously had a show at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. She’s taking over the city!
I don’t take for granted the chance to be in a room with an audience these days, and I’m grateful to everyone who came… and to The Philadelphia Inquirer for the huge spread on 32 SOUNDS. That’s a lot of ink!
