Sisters with Transistors

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Audience Member We just saw this documentary, freshly released, and we were really excited about it. It was pretty compelling material, in that it's both counter-cultural and also like a period piece looking back on "the future" as it was becoming, from a time before we were born. And it's true, the characters we see are all amazing women - amazing for their times, for our times, for any times, and truly unique creative geniuses in their own rights. There's no mistaking the vital memory being activated. We were primed to love this documentary. What's compelling is the subject matter, which deserves a really strong artistic retelling. So the content is super rich. The stories of these pioneering women in the hands-free, no-trodden-path world of electronic music is super interesting. But. The actual documentary isn't up to the demands of the stories and the material, and there's a brace or two of ironies. First, the narrative reminded us of the structure of an academic dissertation or research project. Without incorporating the power of the visual medium, the storytelling looks at each woman as a kind of module, not even as a proper vignette, going through her material and her background, then drudging on to the next subject-chapter, and then the next, and then the next, with a final tying together that feels like shoehorning. What little narrative here is, is tedious. It's more subject-catalogue than coherent artistic vision, which is incredibly ironic, given that the material is the art of very inspired and talented artists. Second, the thesis the work is articulating is strong, a kind of Girrl-Power history of electronic music, but if we're to go just by the documentary, it's too gappy. First, without a strong narrative and without tying the modules on each composer together, it's not clear there's any real binding force (even in misogyny) in the various stories. Second, there are obvious voids in the narrative about electronic music, even to those like us without a lot of knowledge, and this gap is likely filled with men. They don't need to be celebrated, but they could have been used to highlight the powerful contributions of these women. It appears more like they were inconvenient, so left out, thus leaving the story of electronic music fragmentary, even for the women. You see glimpses - one artist is married, and her husband matches technical skills to her composing, and Jean Michel Jarre appears for an instant. But the "Taciturn" omission of what appears to be a chunk of framing history seems poorly considered. A bit more would have at least made the feminist thesis much more compelling. We could only speculate as to why this was done. Maybe it was to emphasize voice, to decentre maleness, or because the director was unclear about the wider narrative of electronic music; who knows? Regardless of why, the result is not ideal, and it strangely both fronts but also subtracts from the thesis. Third, there's another intense irony. The sound editing is weak. For a documentary on electronic music and sound, the editing produces muddy, cloudy sound that lacks sharpness or richness, or clear tones. The murky editing fails to play well with volume or timing, so that it's hard to actually hear a lot of the dialogue; you have to strain to make much of it out. The music sometimes lacks depth, power, richness or its obvious encompassing immersion, and it competes with and obscures dialogue. Adding another irony, a documentary meant to give voice, through sloppy editing, actually deadens and obscures it. Fourth, the video imagery could have been better, too. Instead of a tight focus on the women as people, as composers, as people and architects of their times, we get some cutesy, atmospheric, but also generic B-roll video subbed in, with weirdly juvenile snar-castic references to 1950's homemaker hypocrisy and all the usual patriarchy references, none of it particularly clever. It seemed more like tiresome cliche-feminism than anything else, effortless, lazy, predictable and charmless. Lastly, what really disappointed us was that we're left with no clear picture as to how these remarkable women shaped the future of electronic music. There's no "impact statement", no vectored arrow to the future showing how they directly and indirectly inspired others. Was this because some of the people who owe these founding women so much might be men, and thus aren't mentionable? If so, this is the irony of the self-abnegating kind of voice that the director used. I'd like to know more about how these women's geniuses live on and how they generated the evolution of electronic music. I'm sure it's no small thing. This afterlife of their genius should have been a (if not the) major focus of a documentary like this, and its absence is really strongly felt. The artists and bands that owe these women gargantuan debts, perhaps unpayable, must be groups like Aphex Twin, Krafkwerk, Tangerine Dream, Enigma, The Future Sound of London, Bjork, Art of Noise, Morcheeba, Isao Tomita, even Daft Punk. But if this genius transfuses from the these women's minds into our veins today, we see precious little to nothing of that from this documentary. There's some sentimentality, but of the cheap "patriarchy sucks" variety. The higher road would have been hugely more interesting, perhaps telling us more than why patriarchy is bad, but also showcasing why these women were absolutely great. They deserve that. The documentary kind of fails as a chronicle or biography. For a documentary about the genius of self-created technique and art, its flaws also make it weirdly artless and careless. In the end, the thesis is itself something like cliche-feminism with a sophomoric masters-thesis aftertaste, really just a fist-pump in the air. That's fine, for what it is, but the impression we had was more of a huge lost opportunity. The people who are giving this rave reviews seem to mostly be praising the material and the care given to showcase the women as they were/are, which is absolutely where credit is due. But we felt that the women whose genius was centre-stage deserved better. It could and should have been so much more. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/12/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Sisters with Transistors

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