I hope I have managed to get across at least some of what I wanted to. I made this a Yes essay for me. I just went where the wind took me. Some of it is perfect, like how I wanted, and some of it is far from it. Thank you for letting me interview you. [art] lives in the lining of your skin. I always seem to wish I had more time.
A few nights ago, on the first crisp evening of autumn, I emerged from a film screening at the Millennium Film Workshop onto East 4th Street in Manhattan with Jem Cohen. Nested in the sublime clutter and cacophony of the Lower East Side, this block between 2nd and 3rd Avenue is home to some of the most innovative theater and film venues in New York City. It’s a dark, quiet, albeit decrepit, building that seems to hide its cinematic and theatrical secrets with a kind of futuristic pleasure. As we headed east toward the subway that would lead us both to our homes in Brooklyn, Jem gasped, not really out of fear or even surprise, but rather as if an internal light had gone on inside his mind, awakening a memory he needed to release. “Wait,” he exclaimed, “let’s go this way instead. I want to show you the most beautiful building in New York City.”
“Experiments in Documentary”
Millennium Film Journal 51 (Spring/Summer 2009)
Guest Edited by Lucas Hilderbrand and Lynne Sachs
This semester in Media Mavericks we will explore the experimental media work that has emerged in the realm of the documentary. In our discussion of this movement in film and video, we will consider how the practice of working with reality can be challenged, even transported, by the aesthetic freedom that comes with alternative modes of visual expression.
I AM NOT A WAR PHOTOGRAPHER is what I’ve decided to call a group of five films I’ve made over the last thirteen years. After breathlessly watching Christian Freil’s “War Photographer” (2001), the utterly transformative documentary on the life of James Nachtway, print journalism’s quintessential career war photographer, I knew that Nachtway’s remarkable credo —
“Every minute I was there, I wanted to flee. I did not want to see this. Would I cut and run, or would I deal with the responsibility of being there with a camera?”
An Argentine excursion: film frames, talk therapy, and ice cream. By Mark Street and Lynne Sachs (with Pablo Marin) http://www.gonzocircus.com/blog/?page_id=693 Our cinematic relationship to Argentina began in March of 2007, when the Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente (BAFICI) invited Lynne to show a retrospective of her films. During the one week she was […]
May 16, 2008 Brooklyn, New York Tonight I finished reading Julio Cortazar’s short story “Final del Juego”. Since I will be spending the summer in Buenos Aires in a few months, I am trying to get a feeling for the city and for the people. As a mother of two 13 and 11 year-old girls […]
Senses of Buenos Aires a few things about the city that I love by Lynne Sachs Confiteria Ideal In my opinion, this is the most wonderful place to see tango. Real people doing the dance of Argentina with a kind of love and commitment that that will make you want to get on the floor […]
The Collage-Essay: From Compilation to Culture-Jam New York University – Tisch School of the Arts721 Broadway Room 6487:00pm, Tuesday, November 18, 2008 Join San Francisco film aficionado and visionary Craig Baldwin (Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America; Sonic Outlaws; O No Coronado!; Spectres of the Spectrum) for a wild ride throughout his three-decade career in […]
Bruce Conner died in the summer of 2008. For those who may not know, he was a Beat generation artist, the first filmmaker to see the value in “found footage”, and an extraordinary visionary. His collages and films are in museums and archives all over the world. Two different people in Buenos Aires, where I was living last summer, mentioned his death to me without even knowing that I knew him. Bruce was a very important person in my life and psyche.