Animator and filmmaker Kelly Sears examines how industry, popular culture and the Cold War influenced Americans' attitudes about a common household appliance in this dryly comic short subject. In the 1950s, most folks in the United States were thoroughly accustomed to the telephone -- perhaps TOO accustomed. People had come to regard the telephone operator (then still a common part of long-distance dialing) as a friend, spoiling the efficiency of the operation, so the people behind America's telephone system (still a monopoly in those days) began using the growing malaise about the nation's troubled relationship with the Soviet Union as a way to convince callers that maybe the people on the line weren't their friends after all. Created using images borrowed from forgotten industrial films of the 1950s, Voices On The Line was an official selection at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi