A Dialogue Between Cinema & Sound

Our senses shape the way we move through the world, giving each moment its texture, atmosphere and emotional weight. An image can tell a story without a word, while a familiar song can bring us back to a place we haven’t visited in years. Sometimes, we respond before we can even put the feeling into words.

When image and sound come together, each can deepen the way we experience the other. Music can turn a familiar scene into something comforting or unsettling, while a movement or the surrounding environment can give a melody new meaning. 

This year, The Fields become an experimental playground for exploring this sensory interplay. Through cinema and sound, films are paired with live musical performances, bringing visual worlds into dialogue with music responding in real time. Images guide the direction of a performance, while sound responds to the shifting moods and rhythms on screen, drawing us deeper into the moment and shaping the atmosphere of our collective presence.

This year, that exploration takes shape through two new programs. From films inspired by music, place and cultural practice to live interpretations that give existing works an entirely new soundtrack, both invite us to see and listen a little differently.

Nick Dwyer has spent more than 30 years following sound across countries and cultures. The New Zealand-born filmmaker began working in radio at 14, and his passion for music eventually took him around the world before he settled in Japan. His documentaries explore the people, places and everyday rituals he encountered along the way, often using music as a way into a much wider story.

Across three evenings and three venues, Nick brings three films to The Fields, each paired with a live musical response.

The Insect Musicians explores a centuries-old tradition of listening to insects as music. A Century in Sound: Episode 4 “Nightingale” takes us inside an intimate space devoted to records, while special preview of Geinoh Yamashirogumi follows a collective exploring ritual, tradition and communal music-making. Each offers a different way into a place, its traditions and the people who keep it alive.

This December, those stories take on another dimension through live performance. Musicians and sound artists respond to the films and their themes, weaving new musical interpretations and carrying their narratives beyond the screen.

Step inside Nick’s world and explore the three films

While Nick Dwyer’s films follow music into the lives and places around it, the second program begins with cinema itself. What happens when a film’s original audio is silenced and its visual world is given an entirely new musical interpretation?

Across each festival day, film screenings unfold from daytime into evening and through the night. Each film is screened in full with its original audio muted, while a musician, selector, filmmaker, DJ or artist collective performs a new interpretation live using vinyl, CDs, tapes and other analogue formats.

The film becomes a starting point for each artist to reimagine through their own musical language, moving beyond the conventions of a traditional score. Responding to movement, atmosphere, rhythm, tension, color and silence, each brings their own perspective to what unfolds on screen.

Celebrated works sit alongside cult films, experimental pieces, regional discoveries and overlooked gems from different periods and visual traditions. The selection is international and culturally open, with space for Thai and regional films, music and participants.

The program moves with the changing atmosphere of the festival, from open, meditative or playful selections by day to deeper, more obscure or immersive works after dark. Each pairing offers a new encounter between cinema and sound, shaped by the film, the artist and the exchange between them.

Have a film to share? We're inviting filmmakers and creators to share their work for a chance to be part of this year's program. Selected films will be paired with artists who will develop and perform a new musical interpretation live at Wonderfruit.

Submit your film.

Beyond the two Cinema & Sound programs, moving image continues elsewhere in The Fields. At Unconditional Space, a separate program of screenings unfold outside this concept, offering another way to encounter film.