Sun. May 20

Sound + Vision. It wasn't just a David Bowie album title. It's what surrounds us and, especially, in a darkened theater it's what heightens our reality. Being a music guy, sound has always been important to us from Bernard Herrmann to Ennio Morricone to, Philip Glass to well, Tangerine Dream. We've often thought film-makers underestimated the value of sound, or, worse, attached stupid music to scenes in the hopes that we wouldn't notice the stupidity, so diverted were we my the music. So, now let's take a look at a filmmaker (and a musician before he turned to film) Leighton Pierce, from Iowa. He's said "the soundtrack is the movie, (and) the image is there to give poeple something to look at while they listen." The images he chooses tend to be lush and beautiful and the soundscapes nuanced and evocative. Critic Scott MacDonald calles these "impressionist interpretations of reality" and finds revelations of "transcendental domesticity." Pierce is at Harvard Film Archive Sunday May 20 at 7 for a series of his short film,s "He Likes to Chop Down Trees," "Red Shovel," "Blue Hat," "50 Foot of String" and "Glass." Admission; $8. The program is done in collaboration with the ICA and BU's Summer Term and Department of Film and Television. The ICA will present a program of Pierce's recent work May 23. Visit icaboston.org/programs/films for more info. BU will sponsor a workshop with Pierce May 21 - June 1`. Go to bu.edu/summer/featured_college_programs/film_workshops/.

HFA, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge, 617495-4700 hcl.harvard.edu/hfa