Dr. Murke's collected silences

Duration: 23

Year Published: 1971

Creator: Images Motion Pictures

Format: 16mm

Color: B&W

Sound: sound

Description: A short story about the essential emptiness of modern life. A sound editor collects silences that he obtains in the course of doing his job, which is to cut out phrases from the soundtracks of various radio programs. What especially infuriates him on the day in which the film takes place is the need to delete the word God 26 times from a tape and replace it with an equivalent but pretentious-sounding phrase. As if this were a matter of earth-shaking importance, everyone at the station pursues it with utmost solemnity, even going so far as to try to record the replacement phrase with deep emotion: No trespass into absurdity is forbidden.