Hey---there's this doc film--THE TAILENDERS--screening
twice locally this week which is about audio recording
work done by white evangelicals in the South Pacific.
As I understand it, that part of spreading the word of
god to these people coincidentally resulted in the
recording and documentation of thousands of languages.
Also, while the published descriptions do not make
much of it, I've heard that the film is also very much
about oddball low-tech audio recorders and playback
equipment---cardboard non-electric record players;
hand-cranked cassette recorders, etc. It should be
interesting.

View and listen to the cardboard record player here:
http://thetailenders.com/Assets/Cardtalk%20player%208.mov

screenings:
Sunday (tonight) at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street (at Third)
presented by San Francisco Cinematheque
$8 general
$5 students/ seniors/ members

Tuesday at Pacific Film Archive on UC Berkeley campus
i dunno price

see:
www.thetailenders.com

read:
Adele Horne’s The Tailenders
Presented in Association with Film Arts Foundation
Adele Horne In Person
Shot in Los Angeles, the Solomon Islands, and Mexico,
Los Angeles-based Adele Horne’s first feature-length
documentary explores the work of an evangelical
missionary group known not only for their numerous
conversions but for their recordings and translations
of over 5,500 languages since their inception in 1939.
Working in regions where indigenous communities face
crises caused by global economic shifts, and using
amazingly efficient low-tech audio recording devices,
the missionaries seek out displaced and impoverished
people, ostensibly in need of some kind of
enlightenment. Elegantly structured and photographed,
The Tailenders explores both the material and
ideological means and meanings of these linguistic
translations and spiritual transformations.
from www.sfcinematheque.org

7:30 The Tailenders
Adele Horne (U.S., 2005)

Artist in Person

An ordinary piece of cardboard is folded in thirds
and, together with a pencil, spindle, and needle,
becomes a phonograph player. This and other
ingeniously constructed playback devices are tools of
the trade for evangelical missionaries attempting to
spread the Word to “tailenders,” the last people to be
reached by missionary activity. Traveling to remote
and impoverished places, including the Solomon
Islands, Mexico, and India, Protestant missionaries
distribute tapes to indigenous peoples in their own
languages. Founded in Los Angeles in 1939, Global
Recordings has made spiritual recordings in over 8,000
languages, drawing on market research and advertising
principles. Adele Horne's essayistic documentary
connects evangelism with spreading global capitalism
as the missionaries advocate a life focused on
individual material gain rather than communal needs.
Poetically and powerfully, the documentary follows the
recorded voice as it reverberates across languages,
cultures, and belief systems, forever altering them.
from
http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/calendar/index.html

(os)

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