Director: Alison Tavel
A daughter's grief becomes a detective story in Resynator, a 2024 documentary that follows filmmaker Alison Tavel as she tries to understand the electronic instrument her late father built decades before synthesizers went mainstream.
What is Resynator about?
After her father Don Tavel dies, Alison discovers a strange homemade synthesizer prototype tucked away among his belongings. Determined to figure out what it was and why it mattered so much to him, she tracks down the musicians and engineers who crossed paths with her father in the early days of electronic music. Interviews with figures like Peter Gabriel, Jon Anderson, Fred Armisen, and Grace Potter widen the picture, turning a personal search into a broader look at an overlooked inventor's place in music history. The film moves between old family recordings, archival footage, and present-day conversations, letting Alison's own uncertainty about her father guide the pacing rather than a tidy timeline.
Cast & crew
Alison Tavel directs and appears on camera as the film's central voice, joined by her father Donald Tavel in archival material. Musicians Peter Gabriel, Fred Armisen, Grace Potter, and Jon Anderson appear as interview subjects who knew or worked near the instrument's legacy, giving outside perspective on why the invention mattered.
Context & significance
Resynator sits inside a small but growing wave of documentaries revisiting forgotten corners of electronic-music history, where hobbyist inventors built instruments years ahead of the companies that later commercialized similar ideas. Rather than treating that history as trivia, the film frames it as unfinished family business, which is part of why it played well on the festival circuit after its 2024 premiere.
Where & how to watch
Resynator streams on K-Time with a free account login, presented in its original English with the platform's Persian-language interface for browsing and playback controls. No subscription commitment is required just to read this page or explore the catalog around it.