Alan Berliner on THE SWEETEST SOUND

1. Let’s talk about your “film family” if you will ... which Directors, films or Editors have served as models or stimuli to you at some point in your career? Do you belong to any tendency or “school” within independent filmmaking?

I studied filmmaking at a unique university program that treated cinema as a fine art, focusing on the history, culture and poetic aspirations of the avant-garde in all fields and disciplines. In some classes we studied paintings and pieces of music as often as we looked at films. At the same time I was also taking art classes in photography, sculpture and video -- developing a parallel aesthetic that would ultimately lead to the audio and video installations I also make today. Back then, almost all of my work was very abstract, minimal and conceptual. If someone had told me that I would one day end up making personal films about my family, I would have laughed in utter disbelief.

Among my early filmmaker heroes were people like Vertov (especially Man With A Movie Camera and Enthusiasm), Eisenstein (his films and theories), Ruttmann (Berlin,Symphony of a Great City), and Welles (especially Citizen Kane). Some of the contemporary “experimental” filmmakers that inspired me were Michael Snow, Hollis Frampton, Bruce Connors and Ernie Gehr, along with my mentor at the time, Larry Gottheim.

To be honest, I’ve never found a “category” or a “school” that I feel comfortable being a part of. I’ve never considered myself a documentary filmmaker (at least in the traditional sense), and despite my university pedigree, I’m no longer thought of as an “avant-garde” filmmaker. Over the years, my films have been variously described as, “personal non-fiction,” “experimental documentaries,” “cine-essays’’ and “autobiographical.” My installation work has been called, “sound sculpture,” “video art,” “para-cinema” and “interactive.” As someone who is always trying to break boundaries -- both within and across the various media I work in -- how I’m labeled (as an artist) doesn’t mean all that much to me.

2. Have you been influenced by any other artistic fields? What place do art installations occupy within the overall framework of your work?

I’ve always been fascinated by early “multi-media” artists like Fernand Léger, Man Ray, Hans Richter and Moholy Nagy, because their work spanned many disciplines, including film, photography, painting and sculpture. I was also very affected by my encounters with the De Stijl school of Holland – particularly the aesthetically rigorous “Neo-Plastic Art” manifestos of Theo van Doesburg, the writings (and paintings) of Wassily Kandinsky, and the entire philosophy (and practice) of the Bauhaus School. In some way, all of these influences (along with many others of course) inspired me to believe in and continue my own interdisciplinary approach towards making films and installation work.

As a young student, I used to go and sit on the floor of the Mondrian room in the Museum of Modern Art for hours at a time, mesmerized by the playful order of his work – seeing each of his paintings as a unique equation that solved some subtle problem of asymmetrical composition. It’s no coincidence that I listen to a lot of renaissance music these days. Amidst the frenzy and chaotic pace of my life, it’s one of the few things that actually soothes my soul.

Because my films take such a long time to make -- please keep in mind, I’m the producer, the director, the editor, the writer and often (one of, if not) the cinematographer – and because they demand my total commitment and devotion, (sometimes for several years at a time), I find myself thoroughly exhausted when I come to the end of a project. It therefore becomes essential that I find a way to relax, to rejuvenate and clear out my brain before even thinking about entering the universe of a new film project.

That’s where the art installations come in – as creative counterpoints to my film work. But please understand that I don’t see them as the “lesser” side of my work. They have a conceptual foundation and an aesthetic language all their own. In some cases, they too have taken years to complete. I truly believe that I’m a better filmmaker because of my installation projects, and that an important part of what makes my installation projects interesting is the way they reflect insights and understandings drawn from my experience as a maker of cinema; the two dimensions of my work have always cross-fertilized one another.

3. Could you please tell us how you discovered the material leading to “The Family Album?” Did you record the voices and sounds by yourself? How many people usually make up your film crew when you’re shooting?

In the spring of 1980, I saw an advertisement on the bulletin board of an experimental film theater and workshop here in New York City called The Collective For Living Cinema, where I was teaching at the time. As I was leaving one night, I suddenly saw a small, hand written note offering to sell a large collection of anonymous 16mm American home movies from the 1920’s through the 1950’s. I quickly wrote down the telephone number and called the very next morning. Luckily -- and I should say thankfully -- I was the first person to respond.

A few days later I met a very genteel man -- his name was Mr. Price -- on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 48th Street here in Manhattan. I paid him $150 (incredibly cheap, now that I think about it!) for three large boxes filled with almost 30 hours of assorted home movies. He even helped me load them into the trunk of the taxi. Mr. Price had been a collector of antique cinema devices, buying old movie projectors and cameras from estate sales, flea markets and garage sales, whenever and wherever he could. As he explained to me, he often bought the reels of home movies that came with those cameras and projectors, even though they were not really an important part of his interest. Over the years he had accumulated a large quantity of home movies and simply didn’t have enough room to store them any longer. To his credit, he had the idea of selling them to a filmmaker – someone who might make something out of them.

Even though it took me almost a full year to look at and digest all of the home movie footage, my basic idea for the film was triggered by thinking about “sound.” I became obsessed with exploring the audio “equivalents” of home movies, and set out to gather – which meant buying (at estate sales, flea markets and garage sales); borrowing (from friends and colleagues; and in some cases creating (with members of my own family) -- all kinds of “authentic” family audio recordings. I began to collect oral histories, recordings of birthday parties, weddings, anniversaries, holidays, funerals, children's songs, audio letters, music lessons, children playing with microphones and tape recorders, telephone answering machine tapes – anything and everything I could get my hands on.

The entire 60 minutes of The Family Album is composed of 16mm home movies, so there was never any reason to do any additional shooting. As to the nature of my “crew” -- each film I make requires a different solution. With Intimate Stranger, which relied exclusively on oral history recordings of family members, I conducted the interviews and shot all of the footage myself. In the case of Nobody’s Business, I hired a cinematographer to shoot the on-camera interviews while I recorded sound. Otherwise, I shot everything else for the film myself. With The Sweetest Sound, I hired a cinematographer and a sound-recordist to shoot both the on-camera interviews and the dinner party I hosted for all the Alan Berliners in the world. I also used this small crew to accompany me all over New York City, where I interviewed hundreds of people on the streets about their names..

4. Allowing the fact that filmed scenes can be edited in different combinations, what process did you follow in order to reach the final biographic structure as reflected in “The Family Album?”

The entire film is a collage of American family sounds and images -- structured from birth to death, from childhood to adulthood -- from innocence to experience. I would guess that there are least 75 different families (of mixed race, religion, ethnicity and class – though of course, naturally there’s a predominance of upper class families) represented in the film. Since all of the voices, songs and stories on the soundtrack were gathered independently of the imagery, the film is a totally synthetic compilation of “family life” -- composed entirely during the editing process.

There were many ways that the material could have been put together, but I wanted to find a strategy that was most respectful of -- and organic to -- the genre and idiom of home movies. Over time, I kept noticing that all of the reels and cans I was viewing were labeled in chronological order -- following the growth of a child or the procession of holidays as the years went by – Adrienne, age 1; Adrienne, age 2; etc., etc.. That discovery made me consider using the idea of a “composite lifetime” as a possible organizing principle of the film, and so I began assembling hundreds of images from many different families in such a way that the film would, in effect, “grow old.” I wanted to make a film that would begin with babies and end with gray and white haired people – that would evolve in complexity -- emotionally, psychologically and philosophically -- like life itself.

5. For a Director who has made a film like “The Sweetest Sound”, how much does the anonymity of the majority of people portrayed influence the way you deal with familiar images? Would you have changed your approach, had you known the Christian and surnames of these people beforehand?

What struck me as I was making The Family Album was the way in which the act of assigning a name to a stranger’s face, or inventing a story about an anonymous character -- however small the detail -- gave the images a power I’d never imagined possible. It made each of the anonymous faces somehow “come alive” -- even feel more familiar. To this day, I cannot think of them by any other names (or by any other stories) than those they were assigned in the film.

What I would do with the old home movies of a contemporary family (other than my own) – containing images of people whose names and life stories were available to me -- is a very interesting question. Assuming I could interview them, (and/or their extended family members) about their lives, it would be an exciting prospect for me to probe the concept of “family” from the perspective of an outsider – a true “intimate stranger.” Considering my conversations with second and third cousins in Nobody’s Business, and my discussions with all the people in the world who share my name in The Sweetest Sound, you might say that (one way or another) I’m always trying to make family out of strangers. I wouldn’t be surprised if I tried to make relatives out of anyone (and/or any “family”) I was making a film about.

6. You often repeat scenes from one picture to another, but use them to express different things. Do you think that scenes are ambiguous and can be easily manipulated, as opposed to words, which are more direct and less deceitful? After filming “The Family Album,” do you have no confidence in images as instruments for perpetuating and preserving memories?

To this day, I continue to recycle images from old films into new films, and have been doing so for more than 20 years. Every time I finish a film, all of the original elements go back into my archive and become part of the “pool” of sounds and images that are available for use in the next film. I like the idea that I’m setting up a series of internal references and “footnotes” within and between all the films I’ve made. Reusing selected images and sounds links all of my films -- as if they’re all part of the same “genealogy.” I sometimes think of it as a metaphor for the idea of recombinant DNA. In the broadest possible sense, doing this allows my work to be examined longitudinally, that is to say -- over time. It gives the viewer another dimension to consider while experiencing my work.

I also enjoy what it allows me to say about “montage” -- that the power, meaning and metaphorical potential of any particular image and/or sound can change and shift (sometimes radically) as a result of carefully conceived re-juxtapositions with other images and/or sounds. It’s a kind of re-working of some of the early Russian experiments in editing (conducted by Eisenstein and Kuleshov) that showed how context in cinema is totally “plastic.” In many ways I think this area of filmmaking is still largely unexplored.

Making The Family Album taught me that home movie images are lies. They present an idealized representation of the family as a father-dominated world of no struggle, no strife and no pain. They frame the family (for posterity) as a source of perpetual joy and fun -- as if life was one long summer day at the beach. I use the soundtrack of the film to undercut and challenge the illusion of the home movie image by introducing contradiction, complexity and a wide range of real life issues -- illness, divorce, alcoholism, suicide, death (among others) -- that change the way we look at the reality both in front of, and behind the camera.

7. Regarding your facet as a collector, what kinds of motion picture, photographic or sound records make up your archive? What criteria do you follow to arrange and classify them?

My studio is also a kind of multi-media archive. I have assembled collections of sounds -- both sound effects and other audio recordings (such as music and historical speeches); motion picture images -- including home movies (both from my own family and anonymous sources), fragments of old films, both feature and documentary; newspaper and magazine photographs clipped from The New York Times and various magazines; 35mm slide transparencies (both found and personal); old (anonymous) family photographs and photo albums; not to mention all sorts of miscellaneous objects and curiosities that I’ve saved over the years. I also have an entire wall composed of more than 200 loose-leaf notebooks, containing information -- mostly newspaper and magazine articles -- on a wide and eclectic range of different subjects that continue to interest me.

I should also mention that I am “the keeper of the memory” for both sides of my family. I have a large filing cabinet filled with important family photographs, documents and letters that have been passed down (somehow ending up with me) from both sets of my grandparents. Naturally, I’ve had them catalogued, annotated, translated and preserved.

It’s takes a lot of time, effort and energy to keep track of all of these things, but I do it for one simple reason: I believe that somehow -- even though I don’t know exactly why at the moment I find them -- that any of these sounds, images, photographs, objects or tidbits of information -- can and will be of use to me in my work one day.

8. Do you keep any kind of filmed diary, similar to that shot by Jonas Mekas?

No. I don’t keep any kind of a video diary. I’ve already surrounded myself with enough material in my archive to keep me busy for a lifetime. I would drown in footage if I also kept a chronicle of my daily life. For some reason I’m more content working with elements from the distant “past” than with those of the immediate “present.” I like to think I operate from an “alchemist’s” perspective: transforming old objects, sounds and images into new forms and meanings.

But who knows? The demands and circumstances of my life are always changing. Perhaps personal or political events in the future might demand that I begin documenting my life in diary form. Like the major change I’ve already experienced in my career… from making short abstract collage films to making personal films about my family… stranger things have happened!

9. In “Intimate Stranger,” the more you tell the story of Joseph Cassuto, the more the figure of his wife emerges; it is as if, in solving one mystery, you create another. Did you never think of telling the story from his Grandmother’s point of view?

To be sure, my grandmother Rose Cassuto’s life story was no less interesting than that of my grandfather’s. But, (for better or worse), history tends to reward the survivors. He’s the one who obsessively saved the letters, papers, photographs and everything else that served as documentation for the film. He was the one who felt compelled to write his autobiography -- to become a witness of and to his own life. Of course, without all of that material, I wouldn’t have learned nearly as much about him -- butalso – I wouldn’t have learned very much about my grandmother either. In a way, he rescued her as a character for me -- helped me understand her emotional and psychological reality as a wife and mother.

In the end, one of the most important things I learned from making Intimate Stranger was that biographies of the dead are really explorations of the living. In many ways, the real subjects of the film are his children -- my mother and her three brothers -- and how they still experience the implications of their parents’ legacy to this very day. They all had deep compassion for my grandmother and what she had to endure in her marriage -- and it’s reflected in the film. Joseph Cassuto may be the central character, but in the end, it’s as if Rose Cassuto gets the final word, especially when my uncle describes her as “the real hero of my family.” Maybe it’s more meaningful and powerful to present her that way?

10. What foundation do you use to begin the assembly process? Do you begin with a sound or a particular scene? Given your gathered experience, would you say you have managed to create something similar to a sort of method in your work?

I have no rules when I work, only an intuitive trust in the mysteries of my process. Because my work is so rooted in editing, and because editing is so grounded in a kind of “blind faith” – I always have to believe that I can (and will) make exciting connections and discoveries from and within the body of material I choose to work with. Years and years of trial and error have taught me to persevere, even when I can’t see the road in front of me. I’m also open to the fact that my films can begin with one set of ideas or challenges and end up someplace totally different and unexpected.

Another big piece of wisdom I’ve learned over the years is the absolute importance of having “bad ideas.” In fact, sometimes the more of them the better. Bad ideas always lead to better ones. They are the key to problem solving, and essential to the process of making things. Finally, I’ve realized that putting a film together is a lot like a bird building a nest -- one twig at a time, and before you know it…

11. You maintain that the rough material itself indicates the route a film must follow. Have you ever abandoned projects because you didn’t hear this inner voice, this guide? Would you care to tell us something about these projects?

I’ve never once abandoned a project because I didn’t “hear” the voice of the film. I firmly believe that every film starts out with a faint pulse and (as it evolves and grows over time) ends up with a strong personality. At some point along the way, you enter into a “dialogue” with the film. It starts to talk back. To tell you what it needs. Every filmmaker has to decide if and how closely they want to listen. Over the years I’ve made it a point to concentrate on creating and nurturing this kind of relationship with my work. If something’s not working, it’s usually because I’m not “listening” well enough.

By the way, this is hardly a new idea; having a dialogue with one’s work is an intrinsic part of the creative process itself, one that artists across all media engage in whether they choose to acknowledge it or not.

12. And, in this process, how do you find the title of a film? What is the importance of a title?

The best titles are those that resonate during all three stages of an audience’s relationship to a film – that is -- before, during and after they’ve seen it. After all, a title is also a “name,” and like a “name,” it precedes, announces and follows whoever or whatever it’s referring to.

In many ways finding a good title is even more important than the first shot of a film. At very least it’s the first tangible gesture -- the first actual message -- sent to the audience by the filmmaker. It tells the viewer what the filmmaker thinks of the film, what kind of thought process they want to initiate -- what kind of tone they want to set. Whether intentional or not, every title automatically creates an “aura” around the film -- a series of subtle associations and expectations that are activated before the viewer ever steps into the theatre.

While the film is on the screen, its title is also lurking in the air, serving as a kind of “handle” -- a navigational guide for the viewer to hold on to -- especially if the film is difficult or (if for some reason) they find themselves losing their way. I often find myself thinking about the title of the film while I’m watching it. It’s another way for me to make connections, to tease out different meanings and make new associations.

Finally, a good title should also serve as a kind of resonant “echo” -- something the viewer can refer to in his or her recollection of the film -- after it’s over. Long after the final shot has faded from memory, a good title is still there to play with – to stimulate reflection and trigger new (and/or old) thoughts about the film.

It took more than a year and a half for the title of The Sweetest Sound to finally emerge. At first I was extremely frustrated, but in the end I realized that it made sense for a film about names to suffer some degree of difficulty finding it’s own. In fact, I make the search for the film’s title part of the film itself. I even created a section containing 15 “rejected” titles -- each of which could easily have been the title (but not necessarily “the best” title) for a film about names. All of this self-reflexive activity becomes a kind of “meta-dialogue” – another way of exploring the process and importance of names and naming.

I still can’t think of a better title for Nobody’s Business, which came from a line in the film when my father declared that discussing his divorce in public was simply, “nobody’s business.” I’ve always enjoyed the way that expression has several implications. First, that making a film about one’s family (and revealing all sorts of personal details) is indeed “no one’s business,” -- and then, in another play of words -- that such a film might also be understood as the story (“the business”) of a “nobody” -- a so-called “ordinary” person. To the extent that we discuss my father’s business career (his occupation) inside the film -- (and it was, in fact a source of pride to him) -- there’s another possible reading of the title as well.

13. Especially in “Nobody's Business” and “The Sweetest Sound,” the films develop into documentaries about themselves, narrating how they were made and the difficulties you had to overcome to make them. It seems you assume a compromise of transparency with the audience including your own appearances on screen. How do you understand your relationship with the audience? What does it demand from you? What do you expect from it?

I strongly believe that each film I make is a kind of contract with the audience. Because my films are dense and fast paced, they require a high degree of concentration and patience from the viewer. In return for that effort, I feel responsible to provide them with a kind of experiential “lucidity” -- to make sure they feel rewarded for the work they put in.

With that in mind, I try to create a flow of thought throughout the film that the audience never loses faith in. I want them to feel they’re in good hands -- that I’m always trying to strike a delicate balance between spontaneity and control in the way I tell a story. I never want to be predictable or confusing, especially near the beginning of a film, when I have my best chance at building our bond of trust.

Each film I’ve made has its own unique vocabulary and strategy for dealing with the issues inside that particular story. In the case of Intimate Stranger, it’s the click/clack rhythms and sounds of a manual typewriter – the tool of my grandfather’s intended autobiography – that punctuate the quick montages of still photographs woven throughout the film. In the case of Nobody’s Business, it’s the use of boxing images and sounds that function as an ongoing metaphor for my relationship with my father -- for all parent-child relationships -- throughout the film. The secret of The Sweetest Sound lies in the intimate relationship I create with the audience, grounded in both the words of my personal essay, and the informal tone with which I deliver them.

Because The Sweetest Sound was the first time I’d ever spoken directly to an audience, I felt it was important to be both self-reflexive and self-reflective in my “narration.” By giving them a window to my inner life -- and by introducing humor in the process – I relax the audience and (hopefully) encourage them to enter the deeper (and sometimes darker) dimensions of the film with more openness.

I almost always try to put some kind of interactive element in my films. There’s a title card in Nobody’s Business that asks the audience to “please contact the filmmaker” if they have any information about the championship baseball team my father played on while he was in the army. A year later, I was actually contacted by one of his teammates.

In The Sweetest Sound, I invite viewers to get in touch with me if they have any new information that would contradict my “challenge” to the “myth” that the names of newly arrived immigrants to the United States were changed by immigration officials on Ellis Island. At another point, I put the address of my website on screen, once again giving the audience an opportunity to interact with the film after it’s over.

14. Your filmography apparently presents impeccable coherence. It seems that each film generates the next. In your opinion, which elements create this unity? Would you agree with critics who state that your entire filmography revolves around the question of identity?

First of all, thank you. Strangely enough it’s not at all pre-meditated. The truth is, after each film is finished I never know what my next film is going to be. I’ve never worked on two films at once, or edited one while shooting another. Never.

Perhaps the coherency you speak of is due to the fact that (as we discussed earlier), I sometimes recycle the same (or similar) imagery from film to film. Perhaps it’s because they’re all variations and reflections on the issue of “identity,” as seen through the prism of “the family,” -- my family – that creates deep connections between them. Perhaps it’s because they all share a similar cast of characters.

I would also like to believe that what binds my films together is my dedication to making the way I tell a story as interesting and compelling as the particular story I’m trying to tell. I want them to share the look and feel of that approach to filmmaking.

After The Sweetest Sound was completed in 2001, I once again found myself in the familiar position of not knowing what I was going to do next -- where my next “identity” search was going to take me. Surprisingly, I’ve chosen to go back to the concerns of my early abstract, experimental films. My new project, (currently code-named) “Arithmetic” is an expanded and updated exploration of the sound/image relationship “collage” films I was making back in the 1980’s – films like City Edition and Everywhere At Once.

Since I am very near the beginning of this new project, I wonder if, (despite my intention not to make a “personal” film), it will somehow manage to evolve into something that intrinsically connects with my other films about “identity” and “the family. I’m wondering whether you’ll be able to recognize it as the “distant cousin” of films like Nobody’s Business or The Family Album?

I suspect it’s a possibility. One part of me hopes that when “Arithmetic” is finished, you’ll say that it also fits “with impeccable coherence” inside the body of my work. But at the same time, as much as I want you to recognize its relationship to a process of filmmaking that’s been evolving for decades, I also want you to be truly (and pleasantly) surprised.

15. As reflected in “Intimate Stranger,” your grandfather’s surname comes from Spanish Sephardim. Have you ever considered investigating your Spanish roots?

I would love to investigate my Spanish roots. The only problem is that Jews were expelled from Spain in the 15th century. Even the paper trail of my Eastern European ancestry stops in the early 1800’s. I’m almost certain that there are no documents to be found in Spain relating to the names of my Spanish ancestors. Even if they existed, I wouldn’t begin to know where to look for them.

With that in mind -- and because I’d love an excuse to visit Spain again some day -- let me take this opportunity to list the names of my Sephardic ancestors. Maybe someone who’s reading this right now has some information -- or at least might be able to point me in the right direction. The key Spanish surnames in my family are Cassuto, Pettito, Trabulous, and Benveniste…

16. Your films have a strong Jewish identity, even though no explicit reference is made of the same. What does being Jewish mean to you: is it a cultural feature, a historical memory or a religious conviction?

In many ways my experience as a Jew – my Jewish identity -- is something I’m still coming to terms with. While my films obviously reflect my Jewish heritage and ancestry, they tend to do so in “cultural” terms, not religious ones. Nobody’s Business, for instance, is usually perceived as a very “Jewish” film – it’s shown at Jewish film festivals and conferences all over the world -- yet my father and I never actually discuss religion. Except for a short section about the Holocaust, there’s very little talk about being Jewish at all.

I think that’s’ because the film’s “Jewish-ness” is encoded in the very tone of our conversation -- in my father’s body language, in his manner of speech, in the quality of his persistent skepticism. Perhaps it lies in the basic irony of our relationship: our ability to speak with one another as father and son -- openly, honestly, angrily and/but also lovingly.

For some reason, Jewish people tend to relate to the film very much. All of which reminds me of a Jewish joke:

What’s the definition of a Jewish joke?

It’s a joke that no non-Jewish person can understand, but one that every Jewish person has already heard.

Thankfully, the film has transcended its Jewish origins. I’ve had people from all over the world – of different races, ethnicities and religions – write to me saying how much it reminded them of their relationships with their own parents or grandparents. One person actually wrote and said that seeing Nobody’s Business made him want to be Jewish!

I suppose because I’ve chosen my own family as a laboratory for exploring the mysterious confluence of history, heritage and culture that links one generation to another, the experience of being Jewish naturally plays an important role in my work.

To me, the most Jewish thing about my films is their connection to a deep (almost Talmudic) tradition of asking questions -- not as a way of looking for answers -- but rather as a way of unraveling (and asking) more questions.