Thank you for the music – a film about muzak

Finland 1997, 24 min, Finnish OV with English subtitles

As in so many of Taanila’s films, which have been screened at over 300 festivals, the music plays a key role here: Experts like Theo Van Leeuwen (house composer for an electronics manufacturer) and Joseph Lanza, author of the standard works “Elevator Music” and “Vanilla Pop,” talk about the nature and influence of subliminal sound streams, in full, garish color and backed by a constant, lobotomizing 80-bpm pulse. In Taanila’s hands, Muzak becomes the battlefield of the future.