Screening times:
Friday, November 12, 7:00 PM - Full capacity screening
Saturday, November 13, 7:00 PM - Half capacity socially-distanced screening
NEW: Saturday, November 13, 9:00 PM - Half capacity socially-distanced screening
Lisa Rovner | Documentary | UK | 2020 | 86m
with Clara Rockmore, Daphne Oram, Bebe Barron, Pauline Oliveros, Delia Derbyshire, Maryanne Amacher, Eliane Radigue, Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Spiegel
Sisters With Transistors is the remarkable untold story of electronic music’s female pioneers, composers who embraced machines and their liberating technologies to utterly transform how we produce and listen to music today.
The film maps a new history of electronic music through the visionary women whose radical experimentations with machines redefined the boundaries of music, including Clara Rockmore, Daphne Oram, Bebe Barron, Pauline Oliveros, Delia Derbyshire, Maryanne Amacher, Eliane Radigue, Suzanne Ciani, and Laurie Spiegel.
The history of women has been a history of silence. Music is no exception.
As one of the film’s subjects, Laurie Spiegel explains: “We women were especially drawn to electronic music when the possibility of a woman composing was in itself controversial. Electronics let us make music that could be heard by others without having to be taken seriously by the male dominated Establishment.” With the wider social, political and cultural context of the 20th century as our backdrop, this all archival documentary reveals a unique emancipation struggle, restoring the central role of women in the history of music and society at large.
But Sisters with Transistors is more than just the history of a music genre: it's the story of how we hear and the critical but little-known role female pioneers play in that story.
"Lisa Rovner’s superb documentary pays a deeply deserved, seldom-expressed tribute to the female composers, musicians and inventors from the brief history of electronic music." -Leslie Felperin, The Guardian
"The narrative, which is wonderfully told through a kind of archival collage that, along with the futuristic soundtrack of the profiled composers, makes it feel like an avant-garde art film." -Charlie Brigden, RogerEbert.com
"The film is a vital historical corrective, inscribing the names of these women into history as the innovators, independent thinkers and trailblazers they were." -Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times
NEXT:WAVE: award - Special mention - CPH:DOX 2020
Tickets $8.75 online, $8 at the door (if available).
Half capacity
Full capacity
COVID-19 Precautions:
Proof of double vaccination against COVID-19 is required to enter the building.
Masks are required at all times in the building.
We can't offer concessions at the moment (sorry!).
Outside food and drink is not allowed in the museum.
