From California to Florida to New York to Maryland to Tennessee, I’ve been making and teaching avant-garde film for 20 years. In my experience, there is only one film, of the many works to which I expose my college students, that consistently creates a passionate, call it vitriolic, reaction: Stan Brakhage’s “Window, Water, Baby, Moving”(1959, 12 min.).
A Grapevine to the Sky: A Meditation on Life in Brooklyn by Lynne Sachs Jack must have started his infamous climb to the sky from a backyard in Brooklyn. While not the eponymous beanstalk with which most of us are familiar, the seventy-five foot high Concord grape vine in my backyard reaches so daringly up […]
MAKING AND BEING “DRAWN & QUARTERED” BY LYNNE SACHS My great Uncle Charlie was a prominent Memphis businessman who took a giddy pleasure in shooting some of the most elegant, compassionate photographs I’ve ever seen. I remember his close-up portrait taken in the late 1950’s of a wizened black man looking into the lens. I […]
Seven on Ice by Lynne Sachs After two weeks of persistent pleading, a young girl with wispy brown hair and long fingers convinced her parents that she had not only memorized the way through the woods but that she could be trusted to stay strictly on the well-trodden path. This was her first time to […]
It’s taken me seventeen years to realize what an inspiration Gunvor Nelson is for me as a filmmaker, a teacher and a mother who allowed her work as an artist to grow and change as a result of her decision to become a parent. Aspects of the life she led in the Bay Area during […]
Lilith Speaks to Adam Just when I am on my way to becoming, My eyes open and you are there. Is Eden large enough for the two of us? Wherever I turn, there are branches pulling at my hair, Earth between my toes and under my tongue. I slither and sometimes I use my wings. […]
Rudy Burckhardt’s Life and Work: How Wide is Sixth Avenue by Phillip Lopate Reviewed by Lynne Sachs For over twenty years, writer Philip Lopate was lucky enough to call artist Rudy Burckhardt (1914-1999) a friend. An afternoon visit to Burckhardts Chelsea loft would usually include a cup of tea or a bottle of beer and […]
Original Poetry from A Biography of Lilith by Lynne Sachs © 2004 Lilith Speaks to Adam Just when I am on my way to becoming, My eyes open and you are there. Is Eden large enough for the two of us? Wherever I turn, there are branches pulling at my hair, Earth between my toes […]
To build a house on a mountain, I find a place in my room where a cloud meets my eye. Capture the wind with my lips. Take notice of a bird writing eloquent script across the sky. Flickering in the morning yellow, Aspen leaves turning somersaults, Dark, light, dark, light. A moon and its negative […]
Investigation of a Flame By Lynne Sachs Transcription …If I should leave you, I do remember all the good times. Long days filled with sunshine, and just a little… Tonight the cup of peril is full in Vietnam. Tonight as so many nights before young Americans struggle and young Americans die in a distant land. […]
