Filmmaker Lynne Sachs and sound artist Stephen Vitiello in person.

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Admission: $10 General Admission                                                                                                                             Admission is free for Cinematheque members
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Light Moves Like Sound Waves is a two-part screening series documenting the five-year collaborative relationship between filmmaker Lynne Sachs and sound artist Stephen Vitiello. “In collaborating on the soundtracks for my films, Stephen somehow recognizes the interior sounds of objects and releases them for us to hear. Together his music and his sound designs push audiences toward a new way of experiencing cinema.” (Lynne Sachs) This two-part series is presented at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (November 3) and the Center for New Music (November 4). Lynne Sachs and Stephen Vitiello in person at both screenings. Information on the November 3 screening available here.

In his recorded works, installations and live performances, sound artist Stephen Vitiello creates sonic works which explore space, ambiance and locative sound, presenting rich and minimal ephemeralities suggestive of atmosphere, weather and luminance. Frequently collaborating closely with visual artists (including Nam June Paik, Tony Oursler and Dara Birnbaum), Vitiello has worked with filmmaker Lynne Sachs for five years.

According to my hard drive, I began creating soundtracks for Lynne Sachs in 2012. It feels like it could easily be longer, just in terms of the comfort of speaking about the role sound can take in Lynne’s works and finding a collaborative balance that gives me a great deal of freedom but also the interest to listen to valued feedback along the way. Film-to-film, I’ve truly enjoyed our working partnership. (Stephen Vitiello)

Program centers on performance works by Vitiello including a recent Montalvo Arts Center commission, Taking Sound Cues From Wings and From The Fish House, a section of Captiva, collaborative LP created with Taylor Deupree and other works as well as two films by Lynne Sachs featuring soundtracks by Vitiello.

FILMS TO SCREEN:

Drift and Bough (2014 by Lynne Sachs): A Central Park snowscape, a stark midtown pastorale in which life and hope assert in the face of mid-winter blues. “Vitielloʼs delicate yet soaring musical track which seems to wind its way across the frozen ground, up the tree trunks to the sky” (Sachs).

Every Fold Matters (2014–2018, (2014–2017, excerpt from live performance co-directed by Lynne Sachs & Lizzie Olesker): Based on a long-term collaboration between Sachs, Olesker and Vitiello, Every Fold Matters looks at the charged, intimate space of a crossroads of a Brooklyn community—the neighborhood laundromat. Based on interviews with New York City laundry workers, the project combines narrative and documentary elements as it explores personal stories of immigration, identity, money, stains and dirt. The legacy of domestic work, the issues surrounding power, and the exchange of money for services are all potent themes which rise to the surface and bubble over in dramatic, thrilling escalations of the everyday. (Ginny Mohler, The Brooklyn Rail)

 Image credit: Lynne Sachs: Drift and Bough (2014)