Steve Elkins

The Reach of Resonance

Steve Elkins

John Luther Adams, Jon Rose

Miya Masaoka uses music to interact with plants and insects; Jon Rose turns fences into musical instruments with a violin bow in conflict zones ranging from the Australian outback to Israel; John Luther Adams translates geophysical phenomena in Alaska into music; and Bob Ostertag explores socio-political issues through processes as diverse as transcribing riots into string quartets, and creating live cinema with garbage. By contrasting the creative paths of these artists, and a connection between them by the world renowned Kronos Quartet, the film explores music not as a form of entertainment, career, or even self-expression, but as a tool to develop more deeply meaningful relationships with people and the complexities of the world they live in.

Echoes of the Invisible

Steve Elkins

Echoes of the Invisible interweaves a mosaic of profound quests: a blind man running alone from the lowest point in the western hemisphere to the highest mountain peak in the U.S.; artist Rachel Sussman’s struggles to photograph the oldest continuously living things on Earth; journalist Paul Salopek’s 21,000-mile walk retracing the migration route through which our ancestors first discovered the planet; astronomers and physicists attempting to see into the furthest depths of time; and monks probing the most extreme environment of all - the human heart. They discover, in their own way, something that transcends all that divides us in a world lost in the speed and noise of the digital age.