by LifestyleMK's Tremayne Miller
DARTMOUTH FILMS and QUIET MARK
Presents
IN PURSUIT OF SILENCE
In cinemas 21 October
‘In
Pursuit of Silence is a meditative film the explores our relationship with
silence, sound, and the impact of noise on our lives.’
A
film by Patrick Shen
Produced By: Patrick Shen, Andrew Brumme, Brandon Vedder
Inpursuitofsilence.co.uk
Running Time: 81 minutes
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64c_1MtQUlM
DIRECTOR’S
FILMOGRAPHY
Flight from Death: The Quest for
Immortality (2005)
The Philosopher Kings (2009)
La Source (2012)
Hypaethral (2015)
In Pursuit of Silence (2015)
The
film begins with 4 minutes 33 seconds of experimental silence paying tribute to
the composer, John Cage, and his
famous composition, 4’ 33”.
Momentum is gathering
for silence to be introduced back into people’s lives, and it should be noted
that the film is not silent all the way through, Shen, however, does
combine static camera shots of a tree in a field and a petrol station at night,
alongside interviews with individuals whose interests lie in the consideration
of sound and silence across the globe, a mixture of academics, monks and audiologists.
Silence then breaks
with an introduction to Greg
Hindy,
a Yale graduate, who’s taken a vow of silence and is walking across the United
States to get away from noisy distractions, found in electronics and
entertainment.
Shen hopes that the film will bring about
change, “..slow down and on some level
make the world new again ..”
The Noise Attitudes
Survey by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
in 2012 states that 48 per cent of people in the UK felt their home life was
spoilt by noise.
Only a small amount of
the world isn’t flown over by planes, and road noise can significantly be louder.
According to the World Health Organisation, eight million people across Europe
suffer from insomnia as a consequence.
A normal human
conversation is set at around 50-60 dBA, and anything higher will require people
to raise their voices.
“All of our physical rhythms are being affected by
sound..,”says
Julian Treasure, a “sound evangelist,” as well as chairman of The Sound Agency.
He goes on to say that
our bodies are affected by noise in four different ways; and the farther we get
away from silence, the more we lose our sense of humanity and we begin to
resemble a synth not unlike those in Channel 4 Series, Humans.
Physiologically
Sudden noise can cause
the body to produce a shot of cortisol, “the fight-or-flight hormone.”
Psychologically
Sound affects our mood.
“If you’re surrounded by noise .. it has
a .. bad effect on the spirit,” says Treasure, hearing that many scenes of
domestic violence tended to involve police at the scene of the crime having to
turn down loud device, often those emitting music.
Cognitively
The reason we cannot
understand two people talking at the same time is because our auditory input
channel is distinctly limited in its bandwidth. The equivalent to 1.6 human
conversations.
Behaviourally
The World Health
Organisation writes that noise pollution is a “major public environmental
health burden, second only to air pollution,” which can greatly affect one’s concentration.
Children in schools
under flight paths are said to have a lower reading ability than their peers
whose studies are conducted in a quieter environment.
Noise is also apparent
in hospitals, where doctors must make critical decisions.
“..delays in
decision-making, errors in receiving information, errors in transmitting
information, errors in calculations of medication dosages and a whole series of
other downstream problems” have been linked to noise pollution.
Noise is the cause
behind some hospital admissions, and Professor of Psychiatry at Queen Mary
University of London, Dr. Stephen Stansfeld says that recent studies prove that
“hypertension, high blood pressure .. cardiovascular disease, heart attacks and
even death” can be tracked back to noise pollution.
FACT: Mumbai is thought to be the loudest
city in the world, with its most common cause being motor vehicles. Other sources include - generator sets,
office machines, aircraft and activities from industry and construction.
It took the rape of a 10-year old girl one year at the Ganeshotsav carnival for people to stand
up and fight against the levels of noise, which on this occasion prevented
anyone from being able to hear the child’s cries for help.
‘So why is silence
good for us?,’ you ask. Well, scientists are finding that time spent in solitude
can be beneficial to our health – both our body and mind.
“silence is where we
hear something deeper than our chatter..”
A Japanese environmental researcher who features
in the film discusses the silence of the forest, a place where a human’s health
and well being can be vastly improved.
“There is a deep
wonder in silence and quietness and when you start to experience it, it becomes
the thing you want to run to find because in it you feel topped up, inspired.
You get genius ideas out of nowhere that make the rest of the day go well.”
This could be because
sitting in quiet, without noise or stimuli to distract us, helps to activate
the brain’s “default mode”.”
The silent movement
A change is already beginning,
particularly in the world of consumer goods. The buying director of John Lewis,
Johnathan Marsh says that there is now a higher demand for quieter appliances,
especially among those who have an open-plan kitchen, sitting room or dining
room.
In Pursuit of Silence a vision of the
future is painted, where not only buildings but road networks and entire cities
are constructed with auditory impact in mind, as Treasure shockingly reveals an
architect in the UK can train up to five years, and only devote one day to
sound! It’s no wonder, therefore, that [buildings are] entirely ocular, he
says.
It should not be
forgotten that we once used silence as a means of survival, and to lose sight
of it completely would represent a huge loss within true selves.
In Pursuit of Silence ‘pays homage
to the ineffable qualities of silence,’ proving the contention that the balance
of noise and silence in our lives has fallen dramatically out of sync.
Silence
does not really exist in this modern, artificial world we live in, we just pick
up on other sounds.
FILM FACTS
*The
film was launched with a Kickstarter campaign in 2013, and was then further
helped in autumn 2014 with a second successful Kickstarter campaign.
*In Pursuit of Silence is the first major
film to be made about noise pollution, shooting in 8 different countries,
including The U.S., Japan, United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, China, Taiwan and
India. This took place over a 2 year period.
* La Source Shen’s third documentary premiered in 2012 at AFI Docs. It was narrated
by Oscar nominee, Don Cheadle, and
told the story of Josue Lajuenesse. Lajuenesse, a janitor at Princetown
University, visits Haiti post the earthquake of 2010 to deliver clean water to his
village.
*‘Patrick
has received a grant from the Fledging Fund and for the past three years has
been selected by the U.S. Department of State and the USC School of Cinematic
Arts to participate in the American Film Showcase..’
Writer © Tremayne Miller
Tremayne Miller regularly presents her reviews on LifestyleMK Tuesdays 7 - 8pm.
