On January 10, 1968, three Norwegians cross the border from West to East Berlin. Here they hope to learn more about an instrument with a difficult-to-pronounce name: the Subharchord. A short time later, a Subharchord is secretly brought to Oslo. In 2008, around 40 years later, the East German engineers are happy to receive signals from Norway: their lost child is well. What happened to it and could it be playable?
This is the unjustly forgotten story of a unique invention from East Berlin. The film follows his birth, life, death and resurrection.
What is a Subharchord?
In the early 1960s, Alfred Hitchcock produced the soundtrack to “Die Vögel” (1963) on a “Trautonium” in West Berlin. Just a few kilometers away, in the "Laboratory for Acoustic and Musical Border Problems" in East Berlin, technicians, engineers, musicologists and composers are working on an even more advanced sound generator - the Subharchord.
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