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Creative Nonfiction #4: Sam Green on live documentary and 32 Sounds

In the fourth episode of our Creative Nonfiction Film podcast season, Sam Green discusses his film 32 Sounds and the live documentary.

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Episode 4: Sam Green (bottom) in his live documentary film 32 Sounds which he discusses on the podcast. The poster of 32 Sounds in a circle frame (top right). Sam Green is holding a microphone inside a sound-dampened room.
Episode 4: Sam Green (bottom) in his film 32 Sounds and the poster of 32 Sounds in a circle frame (top right)

On episode 4 of the creative nonfiction podcast season, Alex Heeney talks to Sam Green about 32 Sounds and his work exploring the possibilities of his work that he describes as “live documentaries”. These are part locked footage, part live performance, usually including a live band on stage performing the film’s music.

On this episode, we give some background on Sam Green’s work in live documentary, talk about how A Thousand Thoughts (2018), co-directed with Joe Bini, felt like a turning point for his work in the form, and discuss what makes 32 Sounds such a wonderful and innovative film. Finally, Alex talks to Sam Green about making 32 Sounds, and more broadly about how he thinks about live documentary and why this is a space he likes working in.

The episode features a conversation between Alex Heeney and Orla Smith about 32 Sounds and live documentary, recorded in January 2022 right after the world premiere of 32 Sounds. The interview with Sam Green was conducted via Zoom in January 2022 the day after 32 Sounds had its world (virtual) premiere at Sundance. This is an edited version of the complete conversation; the complete conversation is available on our website here.

About Sam Green’s live documentaries

Green’s first live documentary was Utopia in Four Movements (2010), which had its world premiere at Sundance 2010. He then did The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller (2012), which Alex Heeney saw at its world premiere in San Francisco. Director-editor Joe Bini, whom we interviewed about live documentary in our ebook Subjective realities: The art of creative nonfiction, also saw the film in SF. This led to Bini and Green collaborating on the Kronos Quartet live documentary A Thousand Thoughts (2018). 32 Sounds is Green’s first live documentary which was also designed for a home viewing experience.

About 32 Sounds, which we discuss on the podcast

On the Seventh Row podcast, Orla Smith described 32 Sounds as the “feel good film of the festival”. It’s an immersive deep-dive into how sound makes us feel and how we process sounds. It asks us to consider the sounds we encounter all the time and don’t notice, the sounds that mark our memories, and how we create sound. Its vignette structure was loosely inspired by 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould (François Girard, 1993). 32 Sounds certainly contains more than thirty-two sounds, though the selected ones are occasionally tallied for us. It is alternately lighthearted — explaining sound waves with a whoopie cushion — and deeply contemplative, as when Green dreads listening to the answering machine recordings left by his late brother.

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Creative Nonfiction Podcast season featuring an interview with Sam Green on his live documentary 32 Sounds

Listen to the whole Creative Nonfiction season

In this 5-episode podcast season, Alex Heeney interviews four creative nonfiction filmmakers about their latest films and how they are pushing the boundaries of what documentary and nonfiction film can be.

Listen to all the episodes to discover how filmmakers are pushing the bounds of documentary cinema in 2023.

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Show Notes for Creative Nonfiction Podcast Season Ep. 4: Sam Green on 32 Sounds and live documentary

Show Notes on creative nonfiction

Get our ebooks on documentary filmmaking and creative nonfiction film

Subjective Realities contains interviews with filmmakers Joe Bini (Little Ethiopia) and Zia Anger (My First Film) on their work on live documentary. Joe Bini also co-directed A Thousand Thoughts with Sam Green, and then continued to make his own live documentaries with his wife, Maya Daisy Hawke.

Dive deep into the work of Frederick Wiseman and Gianfranco Rosi and read our initial interview with Penny Lane on creative nonfiction by getting Documentary Masters in a bundle with Subjective Realities: The art of creative nonfiction film.

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Cover of Subjective Realities, a great introduction to creative nonfiction films that precede Falardeau's documentary Lac-Mégantic

Download a FREE excerpt from Subjective Realities here.

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Credits

Host Alex Heeney is the Editor-in-Chief of Seventh Row. Find her on Twitter @bwestcineaste.

This episode was edited, produced, and recorded by Alex Heeney.

Episode transcript

The transcript for the free excerpt of this episode was AI-generated by Otter.ai.

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