Directions in Documentary Sound: A Conversation with Stuart Cody, Sarah Elder & Ernst Karel

This event was recorded. Please view the lecture here.

Along with the historical developments in picture technology, there have been significant changes in the way documentary sound has been recorded, composed, and conceptualized. Join us for a lively discussion with documentary sound artists—whose work collectively spans over a half-century—as they dissect landmark film clips to explore the relationship between the technical and practical innovations and emergent theoretical and aesthetic concerns of ethnographic filmmaking from the 1950s to today.

This evening’s program includes individual presentations by sound innovator and engineer Stuart Cody; Sarah Elder, filmmaker and professor of film in the Department of Media Study at the State University of New York at Buffalo; and Ernst Karel, sound artist and visiting lecturer on anthropology at Harvard. Their talks will be followed by a conversation, moderated by Ilisa Barbash, museum curator of visual anthropology at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

This talk is offered in conjunction with a screening of Buckdancer and The Sound of the Bells, happening shortly after this program, at 8pm at the Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy Street, in Cambridge. For more information, please visit the Harvard Film Archive website.

Both programs are part of DER 50, 1968–2018, a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Documentary Educational Resources, a Watertown-based organization that promotes thought-provoking documentary film and media for learning about the people and cultures of the world.

Co-sponsored by Documentary Educational Resources, Harvard Film Archive, Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard, and the Harvard Art Museums.

The lecture will take place in Menschel Hall, Lower Level. Please enter the museums via the entrance on Broadway. Doors will open at 5:30pm.

Free admission, but seating is limited. Tickets will be distributed beginning at 5:30pm at the Broadway entrance. One ticket per person.

Complimentary parking available in the Broadway Garage, 7 Felton Street, Cambridge.

Support for the program is provided by Richard L. Menschel Endowment Fund at the Harvard Art Museums.