Topic

Recording

Capturing a performance, and slowly replacing it.

3: in film
13:00: average
39 min: in total
810: across the network

Recording across the network →

All briefs3

13:00

Monterey Pop

D. A. Pennebaker · 1968

D. A. Pennebaker’s 1968 documentary captures select performances from the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival with minimal intervention: no narration, no crowd shots, no chronological fidelity. Shot on 16mm and mixed from live eight-track recordings, it presents Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, and others as autonomous musical events — valued for physical presence, duration, and sonic fidelity rather than cultural symbolism. Its power lies in restraint, not revelation.

13:00

Original Cast Album: Company

D. A. Pennebaker · 1970

D. A. Pennebaker’s 1970 documentary observes the marathon studio session for the original cast album of Stephen Sondheim’s Company. Filmed over two days at Columbia Records’ 30th Street Studio, it captures singers, musicians, and producers wrestling with fatigue, pitch, and timing — most memorably Elaine Stritch’s repeated attempts at 'The Ladies Who Lunch'. Unvarnished, chronological, and devoid of narration or context, it treats recording as craft rather than spectacle.

13:00

Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould

François Girard · 1993

François Girard’s 1993 Canadian film abandons linear biography for thirty-two discrete segments — documentary, re-enactment, animation, silence — each offering a distinct, unmediated angle on pianist Glenn Gould. Colm Feore performs with meticulous restraint, Alain Dostie photographs with quiet exactness, and the soundtrack uses only Gould’s own recordings. It does not seek to resolve his contradictions — his isolation, his technology use, his early retirement — but to hold them in careful, cumulative balance.

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13:00

20th Century Women

Mike Mills · 2016

Set in 1979 Santa Barbara, Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women follows 15-year-old Jamie as his single mother Dorothea enlists two younger women — photographer Abbie and teenage friend Julie — to help raise him. Anchored by Annette Bening’s restrained performance, the film observes their overlapping lives with warmth and precision, treating feminism, illness, ageing and adolescence as lived conditions rather than themes. Shot by Sean Porter and edited by Leslie Jones, it moves at the pace of real conversation, building meaning through accumulation rather than climax.

13:00

24 Frames

Abbas Kiarostami · 2017

Abbas Kiarostami’s final film, 24 Frames, comprises twenty-four uncut, static shots — each ninety seconds long — observing nature, animals, and thresholds between interior and exterior. Beginning with animated movement superimposed on Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow, it proceeds into real-world stillness, testing how much meaning resides in time, attention, and unmediated presence. Released posthumously at Cannes 2017, it is a rigorous, unsentimental essay on perception and impermanence.

13:00

3:10 to Yuma

Delmer Daves · 1957

Delmer Daves’ 1957 Western 3:10 to Yuma adapts Elmore Leonard’s taut short story into a study of obligation under pressure. Rancher Dan Evans agrees to escort outlaw Ben Wade to the 3:10 train for Yuma, facing ambush, betrayal, and his own wavering resolve. Shot by Charles Lawton Jr. with sun-bleached realism and scored sparingly by George Duning, the film builds suspense through pacing, performance, and moral granularity — not spectacle. It was preserved by the Library of Congress in 2012 for its cultural and aesthetic significance.

13:00

3 Women

Robert Altman · 1977

Robert Altman’s 1977 film 3 Women follows the uncanny merging of identities among a timid young woman, her garrulous roommate and a silent, pregnant artist in a sun-scorched California town. Built from a dream and shot with deliberate, unhurried precision, it uses repetition, reflection and improvisation to explore how selves are borrowed, performed and abandoned.