Wavelengths

A radical history of music in experimental film.

Focusing on sound in experimental film, Wavelengths investigates how sound and music have broadened avant-garde cinema’s boundaries, exploring the mutual influence and relationship between some of the most exciting independent filmmakrers and composers/musicians (Paul Clipson with Grouper, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Sarah Davachi; Takashi Makino with Chris Corsano, Reinier Van Houdt, Mats Gustaffson). Kim looks at how experimental film uses sound as a way to displace and disorient listeners in the context of Black political experimental film (as in the films of Christopher Harris and Morgan Quaintance), explores “colonized sound” in early ethnographic films and contemporary ethnographic works (comparing the films of Robert Gardner, Jean Rouch, and those from Harvard’s Sensory Ethnographic Laboratory), and looks at how sound can be a playful liberation in feminist and queer cinema (e.g. Barbara Hammer and Lynne Sachs).Joshua Minsoo Kim is a writer. His work has appeared in Pitchfork, The Wire, NPR, the Chicago Reader, The Singles Jukebox, and Mubi’s Notebook. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of Tone Glow. He currently lives in Chicago.