In conjunction with the SB International Film Festival, CAF will feature:

Bruce Yonemoto
Sounds Like The Sound of Music

about the BLOOM PROJECTS series

Bruce Yonemoto’s Sounds Like The Sound of Music (2005) draws from two distinct and seemingly unrelated Hollywood film classics, George Lucas’ Star Wars trilogy (specifically, the Reagan-era Return of the Jedi) and Robert Wise’s 1965 musical, The Sound of Music. Both films express Hollywood’s associations to political narratives of their times: The Sound of Music dramatized Post-War nostalgia for European ideals at the dawn of the Nazi regime; and Star Wars’ depiction of the “good vs. evil” ethos surrounding the final years of the Cold-War era.

Filmed in Cuzco, Peru, Yonemoto’s video recreates the opening sequence from The Sound of Music, replacing the Austrian Alps with the Peruvian Andes, the village of Salzberg with Incan ruins and Julie Andrews with a young Andean boy. Sweeping aerial views and a solitary figure accompany the soundtrack, sung by the Andean boy. Yet the language is probably best known through its place in popular culture as George Lucas’ villain Jabba the Hut. These relationships to war and cultural imperialism are of great interest to Yonemoto, especially when filtered through the Hollywood entertainment machine.