SCREENING | Sisters With Transistors | 3rd September, 2023

Film Synopsis 

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.

With the wider social, political and cultural context of the 20th century as the backdrop, the all archival documentary reveals a unique struggle, restoring the central role of women in the history of music and society at large. With Laurie Anderson as the narrator of the film, 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 that specific non-canonical pioneers play in that story. It’s also the story of how new devices opened music to the entire field of sound, and how electronic music not only changed the modes of production but in its wide-ranging effects also transformed the very terms of musical thought.

Sisters with Transistors [Official Trailer]

Film Details
Direction: Lisa Rovner
Duration: 1 hour 26 minutes
Released: 2020