Critical Listening Review – an artist’s film about sirens is heard with a sound mind | Video

This film from London artist Aura Satz is an investigation of sirens – as in warning devices, not fantasy creatures that lure unsuspecting men to their destruction. It’s a masterful movie, and it was probably most at home in theaters where audiences could engage with its vivid visuals and experimental music for as long as they wanted. Like a movie show it is a test of endurance, a battle to listen and focus on the whole thing.

It opens with a drone shot of a large siren in the middle of what appears to be a residential area, ready to warn the inhabitants of the sky that they know what the threat is. Above, a beautiful song from songwriter Laurie Spiegel buzzes with the buzz of an electric mosquito. There are some interesting ideas here. The British-Egyptian actor Khalid Abdalla recalls the role of sirens in the Arab spring protests of 2011, and we learn that in Palestine the loudspeakers in the mosques sound every year on the day of the Nakba – one second for every year that has passed since the Palestinians were displaced from their land after the establishment of the state of Israel.

There are many. A worker in the US explains that for her, as a black woman, the blue flashing light of a speeding car is not protection and help – it means danger. In Fukushima, clocks are left dangling, frozen during the nuclear disaster in 2011. A Maori activist talks about renewing our relationship with nature – and there is a sense here of a siren wailing loudly, often unheeded because of impending danger. All interesting stuff, but these ideas come together without a clear enough understanding of what the film is about.