Music is a conduit to the divine. "In Balinese there is no word for music," says ethnomusicologist and gamelan orchestra composer, Wayan Sudirana. Music as both a gift and an offering is deeply ingrained in the Balinese way of life. I Made and Suasthi Bandem train the next generation of Balinese musicians and dancers. Guitar wizard Wayan Balawan innovates by blending traditional gamelan music with jazz. Musical ambassador Nita Aartsen hosts the Tepi Sawah Festival, Bali's only music festival featuring exclusively Indonesian artists from across the archipelago.

Director Statement

At the core of my cinematic practice is the belief that art is medicine, essential for both individual and societal well-being. I strive to create films that act as a salve for the soul, bask the audience in the healing glow of love, provide catharsis, allow rumination on our shared humanity, and connect us to one another within a global community. I utilize the documentary form to construct dramatic and philosophical narratives around the lives of everyday people. My films cast a humanistic perspective on themes that probe interpersonal relationships, love, loss, death, and art as resistance, spiritual practice, and remedy.

My approach to documentary is akin to poetry and music, rejoicing in the moment, celebrating the impermanence of life, and finding peace through stillness and nature. My documentary quests are driven by my curiosity to know myself and the world better through the privilege of connecting to others. I strive to capture profound universal experiences, create empathy through the participants inhabiting my films, and highlight the complex and often contradictory nature of truth, allowing audiences to reflect on their own life experiences and make personal interpretations and connections to the themes weaved into my films.

Vibrations evolved out of my lifelong love of music and the opportunity and privilege to live abroad. As I grew up, music was a refuge, an inspiration, and a pathway to explore and discover myself. It offered communities where I could be “different,” or what I would later recognize as simply “the ability to be my authentic self and be accepted.” Music was the first place where I heard not only someone’s voice, but their soul resounding, and I felt these reverberations deep inside my core, stirring my own soul to rise and resound. When my partner took a job in Southeast Asia, the opportunity presented itself for me to search out and discover similar voices in a part of the world I had never been before. Vibrations is the culmination of this journey. Presented within it is a chorus of souls resounding.

Director Biography - Benjamin Steger

Filmmaker Benjamin Steger has been making experimental, documentary, and narrative fiction films since the 1990s. His documentary work features lyrical, empathetic character studies that explore the core of the human experience. His feature length documentary, Stage Four: A Love Story (2015), was awarded “Best International Feature Length Documentary” at the 2016 DOCFeed Documentary Festival in the Netherlands and “Best Feature Length Documentary” at the 69th Annual University Film and Video Association International Conference. He also directed Left Field (2009), a feature length documentary about an oddball community of artists, musicians and misfits that coalesce around the grade school game of kickball, which screened at the Austin Film Festival, Gene Siskel Film Center, Dallas Videofest, DocuFest Atlanta, Kansas International Film Festival and others. Great Bend (2006), a short narrative fiction written and directed by Ben, screened at the Sedona International Film Festival, Long Island Film Festival, and others. Noted film critic Robert Butler selected it as a "Critic's Pick" for the 2007 Kansas City Filmmaker's Jubilee.