Acousmatic Echoes of the Ruchový Archiv, 1968-1989
DOI: 10.5920/DivP.2025.01
Abstract
Acousmatic Echoes of the Ruchový Archiv 1968–89 is a fixed-media composition derived from digitised dubbing tapes from the Národní filmový archiv (National Film Archive) in Prague. Created by sound designer Sara Pinheiro and curator Jonáš Kucharský, the project explores the archive’s history and its significance in shaping Czech cinema’s sonic identity. Presented as four 30-minute versions, the composition highlights different dramaturgical aspects: raw materiality, fictional soundscapes, spectral textures and filmic context.
The work forms part of the Czech National Film Archive’s research initiative to reconstruct the lost contents of the Barrandov Studios Foley Archive, which disappeared after 1989, using preserved magnetic tapes from various sources. By repurposing foley as acousmatic sound, the project re-examines the boundaries between sound design and composition, offering insights into the ephemeral yet enduring nature of sound in film heritage. Through acousmatic listening, it reveals recurring sonic motifs and technological traces, posing the question: What did Czech cinema sound like?
Keywords
Archiving, Foley, Acousmatic, Fiction, Barrandov, Magnetic Tape, Media Archeology
Introduction
Acousmatic Echoes of the Ruchový Archiv 1968-89 is a fixed-media composition made out of digitised dubbing tapes from the Barrandov Foley Archive in Prague, Czech Republic.[1] The composition results from the long-term research goal of the Czech National Film Archive (NFA) to map out the history of the Foley Archive, a long defunct institution that was part of the Barrandov Film Studios. One of the approaches used in this research was to attempt to reconstruct the possible contents of the Archive from the period production magnetic audio tapes preserved by the NFA. As a part of this endeavour, NFA’s sound and music curator, Jonáš Kucharský, invited sound designer Sara Pinheiro to listen to an assortment of selected tapes and provide a mediated assessment of their sonic content. The composition was first presented at the Berlin-based Archive Assembly #3 hosted by the Arsenal, Institute for Film and Video Art, as a work-in-progress status report of the artistic research focused on the contents of the digitised magnetic tapes. This offered an initial glimpse into the enormous sonic space of the archive.
Instead of one single composition, there are four different versions of the same core arrangement, each one highlighting a different dramaturgical aspect of the sounds recorded on the dubbing tapes. Each of these 30-minute versions has the same structure, but frames the source material from a different perspective. The first version starts from a materialistic and mixtape-like composition, which does not impose any processing over the material. The second layer juxtaposes the original composition with ambiances and other explicit sound effects from the same tapes to create a sense of progression through a creative fictitious soundscape, in which the sounds gain other meanings. The third layer takes a spectral approach emphasising the textural and gestural aspects of the composition, while playing with the possibility to create patterns within that same content in a freer way. Finally, the fourth layer reveals the actual filmic context of the composition, contextualising the sounds in their intended purpose while integrating them with one another.
In this article we will share the reflections about sound, film, and archiving stemming from the process of making the/se piece/s. Our discussion will regard the context of the Barrandov Film Studios, the context of these archival tapes, the logic underlying the selection, and the bias which such a selection uncovers. In the meantime, we also share the methodology behind making the piece/s and the aesthetic implications that result from our method.
The Context
In the 1950s, the Czechoslovak film industry stood before the task of raising the technical and aesthetic standards of its production. During the tumultuous and turbulent period of the nascent communist state (from 1948 onwards) the newly nationalised film industry complex was struggling to create a clear organisational structure. This process was marked by sweeping declarations of loyalty to the new communist regime and promises of enhanced productivity. The post 1948 economy was centrally controlled and divided into the so-called ‘five-year-plans’, in which all sections of Czechoslovak society were obliged to adopt a clear set of economic and production goals. These goals were to be re-evaluated at the end of the five-year-plan deadline. Film professions went through a process of specialisation and new departments were created. The newly stratified field of film sound production had to tackle both the lack of highly professional personnel and the insufficient technological standard of the studio’s apparatus. The lack of professional education can be illustrated by the fact that the sound department at the Prague based film school FAMU (Filmová a televizní fakulta Akademie múzických umění v Praze; Film and Television Faculty, Academy of Performing Arts in Prague) was established at the beginning of 1980s. Most of the sound engineers in the 1950s were either previous employees of Filmová studio Barrandov (FSB), who came from various technical professions, or workers that came to Barrandov from other fields (Szczepanik, 2009, p.53). In the second half of the 1950s, all the sound departments made the technological switch from recording and mixing on optical soundtracks to superior techniques using magnetic tape. In an article dedicated to magnetic sound technology which was published in the professional journal Záběr (The Shot) one of the FSB’s sound engineers Josef Zora explains: ‘from the first take to the end of the mix of the last reel, we had a constant instantaneous ability to inspect the tape and listen back to the recording. This precluded any excuses for laboratory degradation of the sound.’ (Zora, 1956, p.9).
Even during this pioneering stage of magnetic sound production, the crew of the sound studios realised the potential of the technology. In addition to its superior dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratio, the technology’s ease of duplication and playback encouraged the FSB sound team to explore the potential for reusing recorded material. The quantum leap that was signified by the switch to magnetic workflow therefore reinvigorated one of the sound departments that had been developed since 1950 — the Foley Archive. Its goal was to ensure sufficient technical quality for the foley sounds that were being used, as well as lower the costs of the whole process of film production. The date of establishment of the archive is still unclear, however one of its first traces in primary sources is an unsigned report from a technical department, also published in Záběr:
The goal of the sound archive is to collect recorded sounds and to sort them into clearly arranged collections. The benefit that comes from the sheer existence of the sound archive is that when there is a need for a particular sound, it does not need to be recorded, as our archive will provide it. The savings achieved by this are considerable. Filming each sound is associated with the cost of renting sound equipment and other costs connected to obtaining the source of the needed sound. In most cases, it also means a certain delay in the work of the entire production crew, not to mention the increased consumption of sound negative material. On the other hand, from the sound archive, it is possible to receive the relevant sound for the price of just a few meters of film stock. (Záběr, 1950, p.15)
Given the early date of this report, it is likely that the initial efforts to establish this revolutionary institution were using the technology of optical sound. In its beginnings, the sound archive included about 750 sounds, with the aforementioned report indicating an expected growth of stored files (up to 1500) in the next couple of years. However, primary sources mentioning the archive in the 1950s are rather sparse, and we have yet to find one that would corroborate this claim. Further mention of the archive is found in a guideline produced by the Technical Department of FSB called ‘Technologický postup při magnetickém záznamu zvuku ve Filmovém Studiu Barrandov’ (‘The Technological Process of Magnetic Sound Recording in the Barrandov Film Studios’). The document states that all magnetic tapes produced at the FBS tend to be archived, and furthermore it also claims that certain scenes tend to have two masters created: one for post-processing and editing, and the other for the archive.[2]
The archive was then mentioned again in 1965, by one of the foremost Czech sound engineers, as well as an educator and author, Miroslav Hůrka. In his book Estetika zvuku ve filmu (The Aesthetics of Film Sound), he cites the archive as a precious source of foley sounds and atmospheres. However, he stipulates that for more specific sounds one should opt to create a new post-sync recording (Hůrka, 1965, p.87). Even though these spare sources seem to show that the archive was in existence, further sources challenge this notion. Most notably, Jiří Havelka, the author of the official report of the five-year plan of 1961-65, claims that the archive was established during this particular five-year plan (Havelka, 1975, p.158). In order to ascertain the exact founding date of the archive, several interviews with the FSB sound labs personnel were conducted as a part of the NFA oral history project.[3] In one of these interviews, Alena Durlinová, one of the employees of the archive, claimed that the institution was founded in 1968. Even though the exact date of the establishment of the archive is still not certain, it seems that, at least from 1968 onwards, it was in a working state. Given the somewhat conflicting data found in the primary sources, it also seems that starting from 1950, there were several initiatives to establish an archive that would store film production sounds, which ultimately lead to the so-called Foley Archive in 1968.
As revealed in other interviews with its personnel, the archive also had a unique cataloguing system, which included a keyword-based infrastructure that codified terminology for concrete sounds and ensured ease of sound retrieval. Many period sound engineers have attested to the importance of the Barrandov sound archive in their work. The archive is believed to have been a key source for film sound production from the 1960s through at least the late 1980s, with couple of sound engineers claiming to have used it even all the way through the 1990s (possibly a version or rather a digitised selection of contents of the archive, owned by undisclosed engineers). The archive itself was lost after the change of regimes in 1989. However, quite recent finds by the NFA offer us a chance to try to recreate its contents from historical foley tapes and other carriers that might contain at least parts of the work lost by this forgotten institution.
The establishment of the Foley Archive ultimately afforded the creation of a homogeneous cinematic soundscape, as all the films produced in the state-owned Barrandov Studios from 1968 onwards had access to its collection. In a centrally planned economy, a distinct power dynamic emerged: a central institution controlled the provision of foley and sound effects to filmmakers, thereby creating an aesthetic imposition, even if it was a welcome one. Therefore, the foley tapes stored at the archive constitute a potential sonic DNA — a common sonic identity – shared by at least a part of Czech cinema.
Selection of Films and Tapes in Detail
One of the ideas behind the long-term research project at the NFA is based on the fact that many contemporaries of the Foley Archive remember that the tapes stored in its database were recorded for specific films.[4] If we accept the thesis that films produced at Barrandov studios were not only using the contents of the Archive, but also were actively contributing to its collections. We might be able to reconstruct at least parts of it from period production and dubbing foley tapes. In the past five years, NFA has been cataloguing and digitising magnetic media that are connected to particular film works. Part of this collection contains foley recordings, and therefore constitutes a theoretical subset of the defunct institution’s work.
For the artistic research part of this project, the composition made by Pinheiro, there were eight dubbing tapes of Czech films selected. It has to be mentioned that several biases were at play here, mostly biases that are ‘hard-wired’ in the collection itself. Production tapes were never considered an archival material, neither by the film studios, nor by the archives. Vast numbers of tapes were therefore recycled by the sound studios, and others were simply discarded. The tapes that survived thus tend to belong to the canon of the so-called ‘classic’ films. Second, bias was introduced by the cataloguing and digitising process, in which we needed to find a way to prioritise materials for processing. The degradation of the tapes was taken into consideration, as well as the perceived historical value of the titles.
From the processed and digitised tapes a selection was made, the goal of which was to include as much variation as possible, both in terms of the filmic and the sonic content of the films. The genres of the films include, for example, horror, thriller, sci-fi, comedy and experimental allegory. Interestingly, many of the films share production crews (see filmography). The goal of the selection, and subsequently the assignment of the composition, was to explore the sonic similarities and differences in the films soundtracks, particularly their foley tracks.
The Composition as a Classifying Method
There were a few intentions behind the process of making a composition out of these tapes. Firstly, could the methodology itself provide some sort of perspective on the content? Secondly, would it be possible to find traces of historical technologies and technical processes in these recordings? And thirdly, what kind of layers would unfold by listening to the content of the tapes acousmatically? For all these purposes, we aligned the films on a DAW’s timeline with two tracks: one track had the video container of the film (mp4) with audio embedded, the second track contained the dubbing tapes synced and aligned to the films (wav). The top track was muted, but remained linked to the media below — meaning that anything we would do to the dubbing-tape audio clips (cut, move, mute) would be followed by the top track too, but without any active monitoring.
From this point onwards, Pinheiro listened exclusively to the dubbing tracks, being almost oblivious to what films they belonged to. In this part of the process, Pinheiro strived to answer these questions: What kind of sounds were in the tapes? Was it possible to categorise the sounds? Which ones are transversal, found across the four films? Are these categories informative? While listening, she trimmed the clips and, according to her understanding of the content, moved them to designated tracks. In this way, categories started emerging. Below, we can see how the first film looked like when trimmed and reorganised.
As the films played out, some new categories were repeating, some new ones were created, and some were occurring only once. Because we were dealing with dubbing tapes, sometimes it was not possible to isolate one sound from another. In that case, some level of hierarchy oriented the choice of category: length, recurrence, etc. Due to the lack of visual mediation, there was a high risk of misinterpreting the sounds. Without the screen, a door squeaking suddenly sounds like a lion roaring or vice-versa, some harsh human footsteps start resembling horses galloping, and a cat’s voice blends in with a chicken’s voice (spectral version, 28:20).
Only later in the process did Pinheiro realise that this category division was, by all means, similar to the current practice of a foley recording session. Usually, there are around sixteen audio tracks: a group of tracks dedicated to footsteps (divided by character), clothing, wood-like props (chairs, tables, etc), water-related, metal-related, etc. Our method seemed less systematic than such sessions, but simultaneously more permeable. By the end, there was a clear perspective on the most recurring and the most incidental sounds, showing that water, animals, fabric/movement/footsteps, cutlery and other (mostly metallic) props, doors and fire are the most constant elements. Below, we present an overview of the classification.
Besides the recurring sounds, it came to light that Malá mořská víla (The Little Mermaid, 1976) and Valerie a týden divů (Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, 1970) have very similar percussive sounds (around 11’ in all versions); while cutlery, fabric/movement/footsteps were the most dense tracks. Similarly, crowd sounds were also prevalent, although not as constant as the presence of various animals. Finally, all the films from the 1970s seemed keen on using electronic effects with several cases of either ‘admitted artificiality’ in water drops, machinery, or more customarily as musical effects.
Regarding the agency behind the sample selection, Pinheiro kept several colour marks for specific clips along the way. These were the ones that she would eventually want to keep for the composition, either because they were enticing, exquisite or, in most cases, because she was not completely sure what their source was, which she found intriguing. Kucharský also indicated specific clips that he deemed emblematic for the soundscape of the selected films, especially sounds that showed some level of electroacoustic manipulation. Thus, once at the end of the timeline, Pinheiro started deleting the ‘uncoloured clips’, and listening to the emerging sequence.
With this new perspective, there were a few observations that became clear. Firstly, the previously coloured sounds constituted too narrow a selection and, thus, other sounds needed to be brought back. For example, the exclusion of most of the footsteps was not representative of the overall content of the tapes. Secondly, the first version of the composition would be rather raw, not only because the sounds would be untreated, but also because it would exclude almost all the atmospheres, human and animal voices, and other rather more explicit sounds. These would be used only in the second version, the ‘fictional’ one, because of their strength in shaping a more of a clear perception of a ‘fictional but relatable’ world. In this way, the first version of the composition had more to do with ‘isolated sounds’ than necessarily with their raw qualities. Also, because these sounds came from the dubbing tapes, they were already fairly mixed with each other.
The task of mixing brings us back to whether or not there are technological traces which could be specific either to the region in which the films were produced, their genre, or their other narrative contents. Or is it the case that their historical and filmic contexts do not influence their sound all that much, but are more representative of the technical apparatus of the time? With these questions in mind, Pinheiro kept track of the grain of the material, the clicks, the beeps, and other artefacts that could be informative. These would almost certainly have a place in the third version of the composition, the spectral one. This could speak to the ‘aural tactility’ of the medium.[5] By this, we refer to the qualities of the recordings themselves (microphones, support format), the affordances of the format (the film carrier), and the condition of the preservation in its entirety.[6]
By the same token, what kind of narrative arc could emerge from listening to these sounds acousmatically? The composition offers a perspective on how we perceive mediated sounds without their original contexts. The use of decontextualised foley and sound effects also helps us to understand how sounds translate from one cultural space into another. By observing this re-contextualisation of the archival sounds, we can try to understand if there is anything particular about the sounds that were created and curated for the context of Czech cinema. Or, in more abstract terms, for any regional cinema. Besides, by repurposing sounds that come from the realm of cinematography for compositional means, we are trying to discern the borders between sound design and music. This question is even more pressing when we realise that film and music can share the Schaefferian concept of the sound-object, particularly in the realm of foley and sound effects.[7] However, the acousmaticity of the experience is obliterated, because there is a constant impression of ‘listening to a film’. In other words, there is indeed a standard cinematographic quality to the experience, even without the image.
In this line, Pinheiro thought of a three-part compositional structure for the main 30-minute composition. Each part focused on a different kind of materiality: first on metallic, cutlery and shaking objects; second on machinery sounds that contained lots of details and more variety; and third on more electronic sounds. In between the sounds, some quiet and calm elements would be introduced, disrupting the structure itself and breaking up its linearity. However, it was a challenge to find an acceptable dynamic balance in the piece, because, by the very natures of the sounds and the compositional method we used, the resulting soundscape is rather busy. On the one hand, the composition was designed as a loopable installation, and in that sense it needed to be compelling at all times. It strives to draw in all the listeners that would enter the installation space at any given moment during the playback of the composition. On the other hand, there was a lot of internal fragmentation, abrupt cuts and other changes in dynamics that could be overwhelming — in particular because the audience would not be able to distinguish what comes from the original source from what comes from the composer’s agency.
In spite of all this, the underlying intention behind the whole process was to provide a feeling to the listener of having ‘heard this before’. This could be both within the context of film history or within the composition’s four different versions. A feeling of recognition, a phantom memory. As Hoeckner puts it, ‘the contingency of a recorded memory may become the very condition of its transcendence’ (2019, p.29). In this sense, the composition also puts forward a broader understanding of sound’s ontological role in film’s cultural heritage. In other words, these sounds contain a recognisable filmic quality that is intrinsic to the craft of foley art in particular, and sound design in general.
Echoes of the Archive (A Conclusion)
Listen to Sara Pinheiro’s composition ‘Acousmatic Echoes of the Ruchový Archiv, 1968-1989’, hosted by Arsenal, Institut für Film und Videokunst, Berlin
This process, from the selection of the tapes to the last seconds of the fourth part of the composition, revealed many aspects of historical film sound, including technological and aesthetic aspects of foley. As one of the visitors of the installation remarked, ‘this sounds like Jan Švankmajer’s films’. The process offers a glimpse into the sonic realm that was created by the now defunct foley archive, while also offering another argument to the long-standing debate about preserving sound. In the context of film archiving, it is striking how actions that are transient by their nature can be preserved and later made permanent in their mediated form.
Besides examining the actual preserved sounds, the goal of this research was also to create an artistic rendition of the probable contents of the lost foley archive. The creation of a categorisation aimed to better describe both the narrative qualities of the foley sounds and their sonic contents. While our study was able to systematically categorise the foley recordings found on the archival tapes, it became evident that drawing conclusive links between specific types of sounds and broader historical phenomena (such as technological or aesthetic shifts) remains challenging. The categorisation helped us observe trends, surely, but no direct, definitive correlation between individual sound types and historical developments could be established solely from the material. Another aim was to develop an intuitive compositional tool. However, the research also proved that sound categorisation is a vital tool for understanding archival film sound, and the sheer amount of tapes preserved by the NFA.[8] One of our future goals is to further examine the sounds, expand our categorisation, and attempt a cataloguing tool that could be used beyond archival contexts. For example, one of the long term goals of the NFA is to publish an online database of Czech film sound, and such a categorisation would be a very welcome addition to traditional film material metadata.[9]
Furthermore, the archival tapes often contained a far more detailed and varied array of sounds than what audiences ultimately heard in the mixed films. This discrepancy points towards historical mixing practices, where a significant amount of recorded material was ultimately muted or omitted during the final sound mix. This contrast between the relative richness of the foley content on the dubbing tapes and the sparseness of foley elements in the final film soundtracks proved itself particularly revealing. From a broader perspective, this finding invites reflection on historical processes in Czech cinema. The decision to limit the amount of foley in the final mix could have been shaped by technical constraints of the mixing environment or limitations of the playback media. The low dynamic range of optical soundtracks might have both negative and positive effects, affording a degree of deliberate creative choice, aligning with specific aesthetic sensibilities of the time. Interestingly, as a viewer, the sonic experience of Czech cinema — often characterised by a feeling of sparsity or sonic minimalism, even a certain uncanny anxiety — seems intimately tied to this restrained use of foley. Thus, our research suggests that the sparse soundscapes typically associated with Czech cinema were due to decisions made during the final stages of film sound production. Whether they were made for technical or aesthetic reasons, they were clearly not due to a lack of material.
Finally, the composition itself reflects on the epistemology of sound in the age of recorded and archived media. We are primed to perceive sound as a temporary phenomenon, a mere fleeting vibration of the air that fades away with its source. Sound starkly contrasts with how we think of visual stimuli, which are embedded in our psyche as permanent features of reality. This dichotomy is however turned on its head with the advent of recorded sound, especially in the context of audiovisual artforms and media preservation. On the one hand, the picture gains some of the mediated temporality of sound, both in the realm of film projection but also in terms of the lifespan of the media itself and the degradation of the film elements. On the other hand, recorded, mediated and preserved sound gains some of the durable properties of the picture. Thus, the composition touches on the aforementioned questions and presents the possible contents of The Foley Archive in their heterogeneity. Therefore, we propose it as a systematic answer to the question: “What did Czech cinema sound like?”
Acknowledgments
This article was created with the institutional support for the long-term conceptual development of a research organisation provided by the Ministry of Culture, Czech Republic.
Endnotes
[1] Dubbing tapes can also be referred to as ‘music and effects soundtrack’ (M&E) or ‘international soundtracks’. It contains all the audio elements of the film, except for the dialogue. This track contains only the foley, sound effects, atmospheres and music, allowing for easy dubbing into other languages without altering the original sound design.
[2] This document is a part of an assortment of paper documents preserved by the Národní filmový archiv, Prague. The precise dating is unclear, but it belongs to a larger sum of materials that were produced between 1952 and 1953.
[3] All interviews were taken as a part of the long term project of Oral History at the NFA. All of the interviews are stored as audio and text at the NFA. Access is for registered researchers only, interview metadata is being uploaded to a public database accessible at: https://oralhistory.nfa.cz/works. While this paper refers to those that yielded relevant information to the topic hereby addressed, further interviews will be conducted in the future.
[4] For example, an interview with sound engineer Jiří Zobač has revealed that Petr Ruttner’s 1966 film The Score of Prague (sound by Jiří Zobač) enriched the foley archive with recordings of bells. The film is sadly lost in the mists of time, as is the case with many of these recordings. See https://oralhistory.nfa.cz/works.
[5] ‘Aural Tactility’ is a term used by Fox (2017).
[6] Sonia Campanini has addressed the issues of sonic preservation and restoration in archival practices. See Campanini, 2014.
[7] See also Schaeffer (2017).
[8] See, for example, Branigan (1989).
[9] For contextual reference to other attempts to categorise foley or sound effects see: https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/ or https://universalcategorysystem.com/.
Filmography
Malá mořská víla (The Little Mermaid, 1976)
Director: Karel Kachyňa
Sound engineer: Jiří Lenoch, Ivo Špalj
Music: Zdeněk Liška
DoP: Jaroslav Kučera
Na kometě (On the Comet, 1970)
Director: Karel Zeman
Sound engineer: František Strangmüller
Music: Luboš Fišer
DoP: Rudolf Stahl ml., Jaromír Holpuch
Odysseus a hvězdy (Ulysses and the Stars, 1976)
Director: Ludvík Ráža
Sound engineer: Emil Poledník
Music: Zdeněk Liška
DoP: Josef Pávek
Osada havranů (The Ravens’ Stronghold, 1977)
Director: Jan Schmidt
Sound engineer: František Fabián
Music: Zdeněk Liška
DoP: Jiří Macák
Petrolejové lampy (Oil Lamps, 1971)
Director: Juraj Herz
Sound engineer: František Černý, Bohumír Brunclík (sound effects)
Music: Luboš Fišer
DoP: Dodo Šimončič
Spalovač mrtvol (The Cremator, 1968)
Director: Juraj Herz
Sound engineer: František Černý, Karel Jakl (recording engineer)
Music: Zdeněk Liška
DoP: Stanislav Milota
Tajemství hradu v Karpatech (The Mystery of the Carpathian Castle, 1981)
Director: Oldřich Lipský
Sound engineer: Jiří Lenoch
Music: Luboš Fišer
DoP: Viktor Růžička
Valerie a týden divů (Valery and Her Week of Wonders, 1970)
Director: Jaromil Jireš
Sound engineer: Emil Poledník
Music: Luboš Fišer
DoP: Jan Čuřík
References
Branigan, E. (1989). Sound and Epistemology in Film. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 47(4), 311.
Campanini, S. (2014). Film Sound in Preservation and Presentation. PhD Thesis. University of Amsterdam.
Fox, A. (2017). Godard and Sound: Acoustic Innovation in the Late Films of Jean-Luc Godard. Bloomsbury Academic.
Havelka, J. (1975). Čs. Filmové hospodářství 1961-1965. Československý filmový ústav.
Hoeckner, B. (2019). Film, music, memory. University of Chicago Press.
Hůrka, M. (1965). Estetika zvuku ve filmu. Československý filmový ústav.
Schaeffer, P. (2017). Treatise on Musical Objects: An Essay across Disciplines. Trans. Christine North and John Dack. University of California Press.
Szczepanik, P. (2009). Konzervy se slovy: počátky zvukového filmu a česká mediální kultura 30. let. Host.
Záběr (1950). Zpráva z pracoviště. Záběr, 2(7).
Zora, J. (1956). První filmový magnetický záznam zvuku na Barrandově. Záběr, 8(9).
About the authors
Sara Pinheiro is a sound-maker. For film and video-art, she does sound recording, editing, foley and mixing. In her solo practice, she makes acousmatic pieces, usually for multichannel performances, radio broadcasts or installations. Her work crosses practices of sound design for film with concrete and acousmatic music. Pinheiro graduated in Cinema (Lisbon, 2008) and holds a Master of Music in Sonology (The Hague, 2012), where she has been a guest lecturer since then. She teaches sound at CAS – FAMU, Prague, since 2013. She is a regular collaborator of Synth Library and Arteacta, both in Prague. She facilitates workshops, soundwalks and listening sessions since 2012. Pinheiro is currently a PhD student at The School of Music and Media, Bangor University (UK), holding the Parry Williams scholarship.
Jonáš Kucharský is a curator of music and sound at the National film archive in Prague. His main research topics are film sound and music, electroacoustic sound, sound preservation, restoration and presentation. He is a member of the expert group at the Czech Ministry of Culture dedicated to audio preservation. His papers were presented at MaMI Conference (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023), IASA (2019, 2024) Filmmuseum Potsdam (2019) or Czech Archival Society Conference (2024), he held a masterclass on restoring the sound of the films Extase (2020) and Až přijde kocour (2022) at Il Cinema Ritrovato. He has published in musicology, film history and information science journals. As a freelance journalist he has published in various media outlets and has worked as a dramaturge at Czech Radio and Czech TV. He is a co-author of a book dedicated to the history of Czech electroacoustic music and held various lectures dedicated to film sound history, experimental music and pop culture. He is a part of a team awarded for the best restored film at the 2019 Venice Film Festival.