Filmmaker’s documentary short heads for Sundance

Deborah Stratman is showing her documentary short, “Hacked Circuit,” at the Sundance Film Festival.

The Sundance Film Festival isn’t “an artist’s festival” where she’d join other artists to watch movies all day, says filmmaker Deborah Stratman.

But Stratman, associate professor of art, looks forward to showing her new documentary short, “Hacked Circuit,” at Sundance, which opens Thursday.

“Sundance is probably the best festival in the country for promoting a film’s visibility,” she said.

“And despite the fact that they are primarily in the business of promoting independent narratives, Sundance steadfastly supports less-easily classifiable forms, which would be the case for my own practice.”

“Hacked Circuit” is the third film Stratman has shown at Sundance — “O’er the Land” was shown in 2009 and “In Order Not to Be Here” in 2003.

The film, which will be shown five times during the festival beginning Saturday, depicts a filmmaking process, the recording of Foley sound effects — the background noises that make a film sound natural, like doors closing and fabric rustling.

A Foley artist reenacts sound effects from “The Conversation.”

A Foley artist is seen wielding everyday objects as improvised tools in sync with a clip from the Francis Ford Coppola classic “The Conversation,” where a surveillance pro searches his own apartment for a bug.

The real-life studio in Stratman’s film becomes increasingly cluttered as the Foley artist creates sound effects for the action in Coppola’s film.

Stratman explains the parallels between stagecraft and surveillance on her website.

“While portraying sound artists at work, typically invisible support mechanisms of filmmaking are exposed, as are, by extension and quotation, governmental violations of individual privacy.”