In ’32 Sounds,’ NYC filmmaker Sam Green explores how what we hear shapes how we feel

A new documentary called “32 Sounds” opens today at Film Forum, and there’s almost nothing conventional about it.

New York filmmaker Sam Green says he knew from the start how his film, about sound and how it affects us, was going to end – and then had to work out how he’d get to that point. While watching films in public is a communal experience, some screenings of the documentary involve audience members cocooned in headphones, with the sound being mixed live in the theater.

And, breaking the most basic rule of filmmaking, at various points Green invites you not to watch, but to close your eyes and just listen.

“32 Sounds,” which Green made in collaboration with electronic musician JD Samson, has a lot more than 32 sounds – I lost count after just a few minutes. Green says he built the film around that specific figure, even if he doesn’t actually number many of the sounds on screen. The title is a nod to the groundbreaking 1993 documentary “32 Short Films About Glenn Gould.” Here, sound #27 – the creation of a movie sound effect – is accompanied by Gould playing Bach.

But the film isn’t just about sound – it’s about what sounds can mean.

“If you see a photo of somebody you’ve known, who you’ve loved, and is gone, it can move you, and it can remind you of the person,” Green said. “But if you hear their voice, it’s something different altogether.”

Poet Fred Moten talks about this in the film, saying, “The most sort of dominant sonic experiences I have are these ghost sounds, the sounds of people who are gone.”

One striking example of this phenomenon is a recording not of a person, but of a bird. Moho braccatus, known in Hawaii as the ō’ō, went extinct in the 1980s.

“There was a pair of these birds, and the female got killed,” Green said. “So then there’s the male that’s doing his mating call, and it’s totally heartbreaking. We know there will never be a response, but he just keeps doing it.”

One noise Green…