Sisters with Transistors

Lisa Rovner's 2020 documentary is about the women who built electronic music: Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram, Bebe Barron, Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Spiegel and others. Laurie Anderson narrates and the film is made almost entirely of archive footage. Its claim is that their exclusion was no accident: because the field was new nobody held traditional authority, and that opened a space for women; once the field was institutionalised the same names were erased. The passage on how Derbyshire made the Doctor Who theme is the most concrete part. The archive material is rich. The account is not chronological and some names pass quickly. Who it's for: viewers interested in the history of electronic music and portraits of women artists. Who it's not for: anyone wanting technical depth, or who finds experimental music hard to listen to.