Sunday, June 14, 2026 | 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
https://dcdoxfest.com/films/every-contact-leaves-a-trace/
https://www.nga.gov/calendar/every-contact-leaves-trace-grazing-images
Join us for a post-screening discussion with filmmakers Lynne Sachs and Mark Street along with “Every Contact Leaves a Trace” Sound Artist Stephen Vitiello , in person.
Contact—tactile, evocative of one person touching another, physically and emotionally. Trace—a reckoning with the residue of that initial encounter, filtered by time and the imperfection of memory. Filmmaker Lynne Sachs has lived most of her life before laptops reshaped how people connect, and she has saved every business card she has ever been given.
Each card is a portal to her past, a reminder of how someone she met in person shifted her consciousness and left a trace of their presence: a German woman grappling with her country’s history; a therapist who erased all records of her own life; an artist confronting government censorship. Sachs selects seven cards from hundreds and sets out to uncover how and why they have endured. When possible, she follows these traces, seeking out reunions.
Revisiting fleeting encounters in kitchens, parks, offices, and festivals, she carries her cards to a forensic scientist’s lab to examine their DNA traces. Blending the real and the imagined, her essay film teases apart nearly forgotten resonances, intertwining personal memory with broader geopolitical histories.
Preceded by the North American premiere of Grazing on Images. Filmed on 35mm analog still film and Super 8, Grazing on Images is a diaristic work that travels from Dublin to Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, and Beloit, Wisconsin, before returning to the filmmaker’s home base in Brooklyn to reflect on a life shaped by rhapsodic, everyday images. (Mark Street, 2025, DCP, 17 minutes)
This program is presented in partnership with the DC/DOX 2026 film festival.
