This article lists the same citations more than once. The reason given is: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/apr/23/sisters-with-transistors-film-electronic-musics-forgotten-pioneers-clara-rockmore (refs: 2, 7) (August 2024) |
Sisters with Transistors | |
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Directed by | Lisa Rovner |
Produced by | Anna Vaney Marcus Werner Hed |
Starring | Laurie Anderson |
Cinematography | Bill Kirstein |
Music by | Quinn Tsan, Alexander Babbitt |
Distributed by | Metrograph Pictures, Aspect Ratio |
Release date |
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Running time | 86 minutes |
Country | United States |
Sisters with Transistors is a 2020 documentary film directed by Lisa Rovner in her directorial debut. [1] [2] [3] It premiered at the 2020 South by Southwest Film Festival and was later screened at AFI Fest. The rights to the documentary were acquired by Metrograph Pictures. [4]
The documentary is made up of rare testimonies and archive footage. It chronicles the stories of the pioneering but little-known women of electronic music. These composers found, thanks to machines, a space of liberty and creativity that the male-dominated world of traditional music did not allow them. The film takes us into the heart of their studio-laboratories, and into a tangle of multicolored cables, tape scraps, primitive computers and oversized synthesizers. Narrated by Laurie Anderson, the ten artists featured in the documentary are Maryanne Amacher, Bebe Barron, Suzanne Ciani, Delia Derbyshire, Pauline Oliveros, Daphne Oram, Éliane Radigue, Clara Rockmore, Wendy Carlos and Laurie Spiegel. [5] [6] [7]
Sisters with Transistors was positively received by critics. [8] [9] Rogerebert.com's Charlie Brigden gave it four stars and noted that the documentary "often feels less like a film and more like a manifesto". The narrative, futuristic soundtrack and avant-garde aspect of the film were all highly praised. [10] The New York Times' Glenn Kenny described the film as "informative" and "fascinating. [11] Critics at NME and Slate also gave the documentary four stars and positive reviews. [12] [13]
Robert Arthur Moog was an American engineer and electronic music pioneer. He was the founder of the synthesizer manufacturer Moog Music and the inventor of the first commercial synthesizer, the Moog synthesizer, which debuted in 1964. In 1970, Moog released a more portable model, the Minimoog, described as the most famous and influential synthesizer in history. Among Moog's honors are a Technical Grammy Award, received in 2002, and an induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
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Delia Ann Derbyshire was an English musician and composer of electronic music. She carried out notable work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop during the 1960s, including her electronic arrangement of the theme music to the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. She has been referred to as "the unsung heroine of British electronic music", having influenced musicians including Aphex Twin, the Chemical Brothers and Paul Hartnoll of Orbital.
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"O Superman", also known as "O Superman (For Massenet)", is a 1981 song by performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson. The song became a surprise hit in the United Kingdom after it was championed by DJ John Peel, rising to number 2 on the UK Singles Charts in 1981. Prior to the success of this song, Anderson was little known outside the art world. First released as a promotional single, the song also appeared on her debut album Big Science (1982) and as part of her live album United States Live (1984).
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The San Francisco Tape Music Center, or SFTMC, was founded in the summer of 1962 by composers Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick as a collaborative, "non profit corporation developed and maintained" by local composers working with tape recorders and other novel compositional technologies, which functioned both as an electronic music studio and concert venue. Composer Pauline Oliveros, artist Tony Martin and technician William Maginnis eventually joined the SFTMC.
Gyula Julius Dobos is a composer, synthesist and music producer, best known for his electronic and orchestral music releases worldwide, and for his film scores and music used in major motion pictures and television programs in Europe and in the United States.
Michael Lehmann Boddicker is an American film composer and session musician, specializing in electronic music. He is a three times National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (N.A.R.A.S.) Most Valuable Player "Synthesizer" and MVP Emeritus, he was awarded a Grammy as a songwriter for "Imagination" from Flashdance in 1984. He is the president of The Lehmann Boddicker Group.
Slow Life is an EP by the Welsh alternative rock band Super Furry Animals, released in 2004. The EP was made available as a free download and also saw a limited CD release, bundled with remix album Phantom Phorce. Lead track "Slow Life" appeared on the 2003 album Phantom Power and was originally composed as a purely electronic song by keyboardist Cian Ciaran several years earlier. The band were keen to finish the track and Ciaran encouraged them to jam over his original version—this jam was then edited and made into the finished song. The track "Motherfokker" is a collaboration between the Super Furry Animals and rap group Goldie Lookin Chain.
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