Printmaster Landmark · 2017
Zama
Directed by Lucrecia Martel
Animal calls, insects and impossible resonances detach the colonial outpost from realism, as though the landscape refuses to remain background.
Printmaster editorial
Why it matters
Martel uses conspicuous, sometimes displaced sounds to unsettle the hierarchy between colonial officials and their environment. What should be ambience interrupts, comments and exceeds the characters' authority.
Listen for
- Animal sounds appearing with unusual prominence or uncertain sources
- Environmental details breaking the apparent scale and stability of a scene
Close listening · One sequence
The colonial outpost cannot control its acoustic world
The settlement's offices, watersides and waiting spaces
Speech and official ritual occupy the visible centre, but animals, water, calls and uncanny tones continually arrive from elsewhere. The soundtrack refuses the hierarchy that the colonial administration tries to stage.
- Listen past the speakerEnvironmental details remain assertive during dialogue instead of politely receding behind it.
- Nature becomes temporally strangeCalls with near-electronic timbres unsettle the safety of a conventional period atmosphere.
- Repetition without progressRecurring sounds and musical gestures turn waiting into a physical, circular condition.
What it teaches: An acoustic field can expose a social order by refusing to arrange itself around that order's supposed centre.
No timecode is given because editions and distributor idents vary. Locate the sequence by description.
Research & close listening
An environment that refuses to behave like background
Lucrecia Martel explains that she selected insects and frogs from recordings made in the Chaco for their unexpectedly mechanical or electronic qualities. She also brought insects into interior scenes, linking that choice to rooms with unglazed windows. Recording circumstances shaped the voices too: modern motorcycle noise meant that many scenes needed dialogue replacement. In the same interview, Martel connects the descending Shepard tone to moments of free fall. These are specific decisions about acoustic perspective, rather than a claim that every conspicuous sound documents the historical location.
Read the source Filmmaker · Lucrecia Martel interview ↗
A listening exercise
Printmaster editorial · A prompt for your own analysis
In an interior conversation, divide your notes into speech, animal or insect sound, and sounds whose source you cannot identify. Track which layer commands attention as the scene continues. Try describing the scene without calling any of these layers “background”.
Seminar question: How would the social balance of the scene change if the environment remained politely beneath the dialogue?
History and cultural life
Context and afterlives
Nature that sounds electronic
Martel and sound designer Guido Berenblum selected insects, birds and frogs whose calls approached electronic timbres. Combined with the endlessly descending Shepard tone, those sounds make the period setting feel temporally unstable rather than safely antique.
Research source MUBI Notebook · Lucrecia Martel interview ↗
A colonial centre that will not hold
The acoustic field refuses the officials’ hierarchy: animals, water and calls beyond the frame interrupt human speech and exceed the visible settlement. This continues Martel’s career-long attention to sound as a way of exposing social arrangements the image may appear to normalise.
Research source Film Comment · Lucrecia Martel interview ↗
Verified quotations
In their words
“These are natural sounds, but they give the film a kind of modern sound.”
Lineage and comparison
Where the idea travels
Documented lineage names a traceable relationship. Editorial echo is a Printmaster comparison, not a claim of direct influence.
Sound reveals social and psychological disturbance outside a restricted view.
Same filmmakerLa ciénaga2001Weather, animals and domestic noise disclose class and bodily unease.
Editorial echoStalker1979Landscape sits between material reality and transformed electronic tone.
Recognition sources
Recognised sound contributors
No award-linked contributor record is attached yet. This does not mean the film lacks significant credited sound work.
Provenance note. Editorial interpretation is written by Printmaster. Quotations are attributed and linked. Recognition records provide a checkable research trail but may not be complete screen credits.
Research trail