Birth of a Pipe Organ

The film brings forward the power of the organ music, depth of voice of the narrator, and intensity of the experience of the building of the organ. The structure of the film is in part designed to make chordance between tones and sounds within the musical repertoire, and the story as it unfolds. Organ works are performed on the organ that is being built by internationally acclaimed concert organist, Haig Mardirosian. The camera brings into view macro cinematography of all of the intricate parts of the organ, we see them being installed, while also explained.

The music brings to life the parts of the organ as they are being played, the pipes, mechanical trackers, wind systems, and digital assist. Filmmaker Dana Plays visited the organ shop, captured interview over dinner with Dobson (at the Wagon Wheel Restaurant in Lake City, Iowa), and followed the installation by climbing 50 scaffolds to get inside the organ, and birds eye views of wind chests, bourdon pipes, being installed, and more. Through the works of Edvard Grieg, Franz Liszt, Mozart and Bach, the specificities of the building and voicing of the organ, we hear what is being built.

Dana Plays is an award winning experimental filmmaker, digital artist and professor of Film and Media Arts at The University of Tampa. Her work has exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in the exhibition The Color of Ritual, The Color of Women Avant-Garde Filmmakers in America 1930-2000, programmed by Whitney curator by Chrissie Isles, as well as other notable venues including the Pacific Film Archive, SF Cinematheque and more than 50 international film festivals where her films have garnered 25 film festival awards. Plays' work consists of a variety of approaches to experimental documentary and the visual film, utilizing optically printed found footage and/or footage that she has shot.

"Plays' work falls within the rich terrain mapped out by the feminist avant-garde as it has emerged in the last 15 years; it represents a rich and astute reworking of feminist film theory as it collides with personal lives. This feminist project attempts to reclaim memory, snapshots, recreated images, sounds, voices, and discarded footage as historical traces. The exceptionally evocative cinematography and optical reprinting laced throughout all her films suggests that Plays' project is to use manipulated images - whether through optical printing, composition, or light - to uncover their psychic imaginaries. Very, very few feminist filmmakers have the courage to unleash the ambiguities in voice and image; most want to anchor both. As a result, all of Plays' work asks spectators to let go as they watch, and work within the interstices between sound and image."

-Patricia Zimmermann, Professor, of Screen Studies, Ithaca College, Codirector of
Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival

As a critic who writes about experimental films, I am familiar with Dana's extensive body of film work. I have been impressed by the eclectic range of themes and techniques she has explored and developed throughout her career. In subject matter, her films range from ethnographic studies to formal explorations of the cinematic image. She is an adept documentarian, as well as master of the art of optical printing. Although her films are varied, there is a personal vision and a sense of integrity and purposefulness that unites them into a coherent whole. Dana approaches political issues such as the people of El Salvador and the United States government with sensitivity. Never heavy-handed or didactic, her films manifest her political convictions in a lyrical, personal way. Her films also have a consistent sensual richness; their lush imagery is organized into dynamic compositions that unfold with graceful rhythmic patterns of repetitions and variations." - Christine Tamblyn, Film Critic and Scholar (1951-1998)