USA / Germany,
2004, 99 min
Shown in 2005
CREDITS
- dir
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Thomas Riedelsheimer
- prod
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Stefan Tolz, Leslie Hills, Trevor Davies
- cam
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Thomas Riedelsheimer
- editor
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Thomas Riedelsheimer
- mus
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Evelyn Glennie
- source
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Shadow Distribution, PO Box 1246, Waterville, ME 04903. FAX: 207-872-5502. EMAIL: shadow@prexar.com.
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COMMENTS
Thomas Riedelsheimer in person.
OTHER
Rivers and Tides, Thomas Riedelsheimer’s ravishing portrait of nature sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, won the Golden Gate Award for best documentary feature in 2002 and went on to become a nationwide hit. The visionary German filmmaker returns with a marvelously meditative study of another Scottish artist who creates touchingly impermanent pieces. The percussionist Evelyn Glennie, deaf since childhood, is a master improviser who conjures music from random found objects as easily as from conventional instruments. An intense and spirited collaborator, Glennie is equally at home joining a Manhattan street performer for an impromptu duet or adding her unique colors to a Japanese drum ensemble. She saves her most austere shadings, though, for a hypnotic pairing with Bay Area guitar virtuoso Fred Frith (who wrote and performed the score for Rivers and Tides) in a raw Cologne space. Gradually and patiently, Riedelsheimer’s trance-inducing film erases the line between the cacophony of the man-made world and the elegance of the natural world. Gorgeously photographed and imbued with a sense of mystery, Touch the Sound is, above all, an ear-opener. Watching the deaf Glennie, one realizes that intention and precision are as important in the creation of music as skill and training. “It starts with listening,” notes Frith, “and it ends with listening.”
—Michael Fox
FACTOID #12
In our occasional film series, The Unvanquished, we showcased the work of filmmakers who continued to make their art despite suffering artistic repression. Those honored include directors Paul Carpita (1996), Paul Meyer (1996), Abraham Polonsky (1996) and John Berry (1998) and actors Karen Morley (1999) and Behrouz Vossoughi (2001).
