The Accident That Pricks Hunter Integrated Media Arts Fall 2025 Course IMA78378 Room: HN 544 1 Credit Course
Sunday October 19th from 10am-1pm on zoom Saturday November 1st from 10am-6pm in person Wednesday November 5th from 5:30pm-9pm in person (public event)
Lynne Sachs
The Accident that Pricks: Family and Photography is a course in which we will explore the ways in which images of our mother, father, sister, brother, cousin, grand-parent, aunt or uncle might become material for the making of a personal film. Each participant will come to the first day with a single photograph they want to examine. You will then create a cinematic presence for this image by incorporating storytelling and performance. In the process, we will discuss and challenge notions of truth-telling and language. This course is inspired by French theorist Roland Barthes’ theory of the punctum, the intensely subjective effect of a photograph, and Italian novelist Natalia Ginzburg’s writing on her family living under Fascism during World War II. Ginzburg was a prescient artist who enjoyed mixing up conventional distinctions between fiction and non-fiction: “Every time that I have found myself inventing something in accordance with my old habits as a novelist, I have felt compelled at once to destroy it. The places, events, and people are all real.”
Reading:
John Ashberry, “Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror” poem Roland Barthes, Camara Lucida (selections) Tina Campt, Listening to Images, Introduction and Chapter 1. Natalia Ginzburg, Family Lexicon, pp 5_35 Clarice Lispector, “Mystery of Sao Cristovao” from Family Ties
“Mark and I were asked by the New York Public Library Reserve Film Collection to speak about why the films they own and exhibit means so much to us and the world.”
A film about traces, guilt and memory — and about the impossibility of approaching the past arbitrarily.
In “Every Contact Leaves a Trace,” experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs starts from a seemingly simple idea: she’s spent her life collecting business cards from people she’s encountered along the way—colleagues, festival directors, strangers who popped into her life briefly. Most have long since vanished. What remains is a box full of names, numbers, and faded impressions. Sachs decides to reconnect with some of them, camera in hand, while her children ask her questions about who these people were—and why them in particular.
The premise is intriguing: a film about the traces left by encounters. Yet, Sachs doesn’t allow for chance. She chooses the people she remembers well, those with whom the connection was once tangible. This keeps the adventure within safe boundaries; the possibility that the unknown might truly surprise her remains unexploited.
Yet, despite her limited abilities, Sachs manages to keep the film alive until the very end. Ultimately, ‘Every Contact Leaves a Trace’ isn’t just about the people behind the tickets; it gradually unfolds into a film about the past, atonement, and guilt. She visits Angela, a former German festival director, who, using Heinrich Heine’s poem “Die arme Weber” (The Poor Weber), speaks about the legacy of guilt that weighs on Germany. Sachs accompanies her narrative with daring poetic imagery—close-ups on 8mm and digital—supported by Stephen Vitiello’s pulsating score. What could have been a simple interview elevates into an essayistic pamphlet on memory and responsibility.
At times, however, Sachs goes too far. In her search for form, she veers toward abstraction: audio fragments and fragmented sentences tumble over each other like a maelstrom of thoughts. In these moments, the film threatens to descend into artistic introspection—art for art’s sake—and the lighthearted curiosity that usually characterizes her work vanishes. Fortunately, she always regains her balance.
One of the most intriguing encounters is with avant-garde filmmaker Lawrence Brose, whose work on Oscar Wilde is visually captivating, but whose personal history remains fraught: he was once convicted of possessing child pornography, a charge he claims had nothing to do with his artistic practice. The film touches on moral ambiguity here without resorting to sensationalism—and it is precisely there that Sachs reveals her strength: behind every card lies a person who, as soon as the camera focuses on him and thus magnifies him, proves to be extraordinary.
What remains is a film that tells as much about Sachs herself as it does about the people she visits. Her gaze, her voice, her editing—that’s what makes “Every Contact Leaves a Trace” tick. She captures beauty in the mundane, elevates the casual to poetry, and shows that even the most fleeting encounter leaves a lasting legacy.
The Film-Makers’ Cooperative and Canyon Cinema joined forces in 2025 to support Fall of Freedom, an urgent nationwide arts movement united in defiance of the rise of authoritarianism. We sent out a call for 10-second films. Over 100 artists sent us their work.
Featured filmmakers:
Tommy Becker Anne Colvin Clair Bain Julie Halazy Toby Kaufmann-Buhler Abigail Child Joe Miller Auguste Bartninkaite Thomas Dimopoulos Rudy Gerson Chihiro Ito Sean Paul Amal Alshoura Andrew Tamburrino The Davis (CA) Visibility Brigade Césaire José Carroll-Domínguez Bill Baldewicz Craig Baldwin Leonard Henny (courtesy Eye Filmmuseum) Max Wolf Horatio Perry Katherine Bauer Jan Adamove Dana Teen Lomax Jamie Naqvi Charles de Agustin Alexis Krasilovsky Diganto Mori Lucien Pin J Woltz Tommaso Paris Robert Schneider Jeffrey Skoller Ausín Sáinz Roland Cartagena Noel Molloy Chris Nyklewicz Miguel Chichorro Ellie Vanderlip Dominic Angerame Brigitte Valobra Wald Randolph Bird ALice Leonardo Tara Lamorgese Madeline Florio MM Serra Wenwen Zhu Karen Bosy Pauline Mateos Andrew Reichel Zazie Kanwar-Torge ALina Taalman Lillian Canright Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock Jem Cohen Susan Kouguell Evgeny Kondrov Arisha Chowdhury Tony Merritt Aiden Castillo Lynne Sachs Samuel Rivera Cortes Evan Bode Hogan Seidel Kathleen Quillian Juyi Mao Billie Sorribès Joel Singer Mark Street Leonardo Severino Rankin Renwick Candy Powell Erica Schreiner Ate Von Hes Vahid Valikani Anne Senstad Conor Williams Phil Weisman Roman Ženatý James Hollenbaugh Gloria Chung Lawrence Jordan Liam Kenny Julius Klein Koomah Callon Murphy Ruth Hayes Ira Vicari James Sansing Thad Povey Michelle Rauch Yann les Jours Spyrous Patsouras Kevin Roy and Tim Mustoe Zhang Yida Walter K. Lew and Alissa Xhixhabesi Janis Crystal Lipzin William Brown and Mila Zuo Tushar GIdwani Keum-Taek Jung Annie Robertson Caroline Savage Jim Hubbard Mary Filippo Tyler Turkle Brian Padian Nechama Winston Robert Joshua San Luis Fred Camper Adam E. Stone Matt McKinzie Tav Falco Anthony Tko Rrose PResent rylik zzoo Maxmilien Luc Proctor Vanja Mervič Christophe Charre
Organized by Brett Kashmere (Canyon Cinema), Matt McKinzie (The Film-Makers’ Cooperative), and Lynne Sachs. Edited by Mary Rose McClain.
For more information visit: CANYON CINEMA: canyoncinema.com THE FILM-MAKERS’ COOPERATIVE: film-makerscoop.com FALL OF FREEDOM: falloffreedom.com
CALL FOR FILMS
Please join The Film-Makers’ Cooperative and Canyon Cinema in support of Fall of Freedom – an urgent call to the arts community to unite in defiance of authoritarian forces sweeping the nation. This fall, our two organizations are reaching out together to the experimental film and media community to be part of a nationwide wave of creative resistance. You can participate by creating a short film of 10 seconds in length that expresses your sense of urgency at this moment. Your film will become a part of a single film that will combine all of our contributions.
This is our invitation to film and media artists and enthusiasts to take part. Collectively, we will challenge the rise of American fascism.
In 1967, a group of angry but concerned filmmakers gathered together to organize the first FOR LIFE AGAINST THE WAR. With the Vietnam War escalating wildly, an invitation was issued to artists to create works running under three minutes in protest against the accumulating carnage. The resulting 60-film compilation included works by such avant-garde luminaries as Robert Breer, Shirley Clarke, Storm De Hirsch, Ken Jacobs, Lawrence Jordan, Jonas Mekas, Stan VanDerBeek, and numerous other FMC and Canyon members.
In 2007, an invitation to protest yet another war seemed sadly urgent, inspiring the New York Film-Makers’ Cooperative to ring the clarion once again. The response was overwhelming, with submissions from several generations of artists unified by a singular disgust for the war. As a collective effort, FOR LIFE AGAINST THE WAR, AGAIN brought together many active members from the Coop and Canyon.
How to Participate: Create a 10 second film as an .mp4 video file. Label your file: last_name_first_name.mp4 Send your completed file to info@film-makerscoop.com either via email or using a file transfer program like Google Drive, WeTransfer, or Dropbox. Deadline: November 10, 2025. Do not include credits of any kind. All participants will be given a credit at the end of the film. For freedom of every kind, Canyon Cinema The Film-Makers’ Cooperative
Join us at e-flux Screening Room for an evening dedicated to Allen Ginsberg, bringing together a live performance, poetry reading, and screening of two works by Jonas Mekas, the 1997 Scenes from Allen’s Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit along with an untitled video portrait of Ginsberg. Guest-curated by Conor Williams, the evening reflects on how Ginsberg’s voice continues to move across music, cinema, and contemporary literary and artistic communities.
The program will open with a live performance of Ginsberg’s punk composition “Capitol Air,” interpreted by Emily Greenberg, Daniel Cooke, and Williams. Written in the early 1980s and later performed with The Clash, the song underscores Ginsberg’s presence as both poet and musician. The performance will be followed by Ginsberg’s poems read by Hannah Beerman, Lynne Sachs, Terrence Arjoon, and A. S. Hamrah. The program will conclude with a screening of two works by Jonas Mekas: Scenes from Allen’s Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit,filmed at Ginsberg’s East Village loft in the days immediately following his death in April 1997; along with an additional video portrait of Ginsberg by Mekas, bridging footage recorded with Ginsberg in 1987 and Mekas’s reflections in 1997.
Films
Jonas Mekas, Scenes from Allen’s Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit (1997, 66 minutes) A video record of the Buddhist Wake ceremony at Allen Ginsberg’s flat. One can see Ginsberg, now asleep forever, in his bed; some of his close friends; the wrapping up and removal of his body, and the final farewell at the Buddhist temple. Mekas also describes his last conversation with Ginsberg.
Jonas Mekas, Untitled Ginsberg video (1997, 22 minutes) Allen Ginsberg records Jonas Mekas, his wife Hollis Melton, and son Sebastian Mekas in their loft apartment.
In this month’s picks, a portrait of a vanguard filmmaker, a look back at a televised clash between writers, and a reflection on a Hollywood star and pinup.
The proliferationof documentaries on streaming services makes it difficult to choose what to watch. Each month, we select three nonfiction films — classics, overlooked recent docs and more — that will reward your time.
The “Law & Order: SVU” star Mariska Hargitay was just 3 when her mother, Jayne Mansfield, died in a car crash in 1967. Hargitay herself was in the back seat and only survived because her 6-year-old brother had the presence of mind to ask where she was — that is, why she hadn’t been retrieved from the wreck. In “My Mom Jayne,” Hargitay sets out to learn more about a parent of whom she had no memories, and whose public image differed starkly from her private life.
Early on, we see a clip in which Mansfield was a guest on Groucho Marx’s show; Marx emphasizes that she is far more than the ditzy-blonde avatar her audiences perceived. In another clip, she bristles that her figure had received more attention than her intellect. “My Mom Jayne” explains she was multilingual and had a passion for piano and violin. She was exacting about her career and harbored ambitions to be a serious actress, but was told at an early Paramount audition that she was wasting her “obvious talents.” Hargitay confesses to being upset by the high-pitched, Marilyn Monroe-esque voice with which Mansfield spoke in movies and on TV, which wasn’t how she talked in life. (There is brief footage in which she speaks about wounded veterans that the movie presents as showing the real her.)
But “My Mom Jayne” is more than a simple effort to show that Jayne Mansfield was deeper than her fans knew at the time. Her troubled relationships with men and early death left Hargitay with tangled family dynamics (she was raised by Mickey Hargitay, the bodybuilder who was Mansfield’s second husband, and Mickey’s later wife, Ellen, in what’s portrayed as a loving, close-knit group) and a lot of questions about the past. “My Mom Jayne” is in some ways closer to documentary psychodramas like Lynne Sachs’s “Film About a Father Who” than it is to a standard celebrity portrait, and it has a tenderness that is rare in the genre.
Gunvor Nelson (1931–2025) was an acclaimed Swedish experimental filmmaker who made the Bay Area her home for nearly four decades. Born and raised in Kristinehamn, Sweden, she originally came to California in 1953 to study art and art history, first at Humboldt State College, then the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), and finally Mills College, where she earned an MFA in painting. Between 1970 and 1992, she taught at SFAI, where she influenced generations of filmmakers. In 1993 she returned to Sweden and shifted her practice from 16mm filmmaking to digital video.
Over the years, Nelson made personal films that explored her own life and experiences. She thought deeply and freely about film editing and about when to use sound or allow a film to be silent. She collaborated with Dorothy Wiley on five films, three of which are included in this tribute: Schmeerguntz, Fog Pumas, and Before Need Redressed. BAMPFA holds Nelson’s 16mm camera originals and copies of her films in our film vault. In 2019 My Name Is Oona was named to the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry.
Films in this Screening
Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor Lynne Sachs, United States, 2018
Red Shift Gunvor Nelson, United States, Sweden, 1984
Before Need Redressed Gunvor Nelson, Dorothy Wiley, United States, Sweden, 1994
When: Friday, November 21st Doors: 7:00pm | Films Start: 8:00pm Where: INTERCOMM, 5-84 Woodward Ave, Ridgewood, NY Entry: $10 NOTAFLOF
Penumbra is a congregational, large screen, experimental film-watching series inspired by the fleeting illumination of projectors in a world of shadows cast upon the moon. This first installment of short films, Transference, meditates upon themes of transformation, ritual, motherhood, death, and geographical memory.
The program is curated by Maralie Armstrong-Rial, Katy Mongeau, and Sarah Viviana Valdez and includes new works by the curators alongside films from Lynne Sachs, Jennifer Montgomery, Rose Bush, Kelly Yan, and Asuka Lin.
Film stills: 1. ‘Same Stream Twice’ Lynne Sachs 2. ‘Dweller Between Waters’ Maralie Armstrong-Rial 3. ‘TWBT’ Katy Mongeau 4. ‘SUNSETBLOOMSASIFAFLOWER’ Sarah Viviana Valdez 5. ‘Vultures of Tibet’ Rose Bush 6. ‘After the Final No There Comes a Yes’ Jennifer Montgomery 7. ‘AI Mama’ Asuka Lin 8. ‘A City Shaped Dream’ Kelly Yan
Beginning with the idea of “trace evidence,” filmmaker Lynne Sachs seeks to discover if genetic material and fingerprints remain attached to the six hundred or so business cards she’s collected over the years. The idea is that these pieces of cardboard maintain markers of the people they represent beyond contact information that often becomes outdated in the time since receipt. More than these scientific remnants, however, are also memories steeped in emotional connection. Why have some of their owners vividly imprinted upon her mind?
Every Contact Leaves a Trace is the result of Sachs’ fascination with this tactile phenomenon that has all but been erased with the advent of cellphones and digital address books. She exposes this generational divide by enlisting her twin niece and nephew (Felix and Viva Johnson Sachs Torres) as soundboards with which to ask if they’d ever keep a collection of cards like this themselves. They of course say no because the technology has objectively become obsolete and I admittedly felt sad for them since business cards played a big role in my own life.
I too have a book of cards from the early aughts and became fascinated with the potential of graphic design as a career through the ingenuity they represent. I love the wild ideas Stefan Sagmeister came up with for his branding projects. He made something so simple and, perhaps, classist (see American Psycho) into unique objects with their own motion, puzzles, and artistry. His ability to make something so uniformly commonplace into an unforgettable keepsake left an indelible mark. Sachs’ subject Bradley Eros’ punched “tickets” recall this truth.
A similar thing happened with Sachs, but through the cards’ scrapbook nature as symbols of their owners rather than objects in their own right. We watch as she leafs through her tote, shuffling them together like playing cards before putting them on her table one by one with brief commentary on whether she thinks the person is both someone she’d want to reconnect with and someone who’d be interested in participating in the film. In the end, Sachs chooses seven cards that hold a strong enough contact trace to hunt down their owners.
Betty Leacraft is a former student turned textile artist Sachs seems to remember more and have a stronger bond with than the other way around. Angela Haardt was the director of a German film festival she attended at twenty-nine and an in-road to better consider her heritage as a German Jew and her guilt towards what’s happening in Gaza. Jiang Juan was the chairperson of the China Women’s Film Festival in which Sachs was an invitee. Irina Yekimova is her hairstylist and bookend to the film who provides a great moment of epiphany.
The gist of this revelation is that we can only ever know what we know. Yes, these people have all left their mark on Sachs, but only insofar as what that mark means to her. She doesn’t actually know any of them. Not really. Not wholly. There’s a great moment where she rejects a card saying that she’s pretty sure she already knows everything he’s willing to let her know—proof that our understanding of the people around us is forever incomplete. We place our meaning on their words and actions. So, our truth isn’t necessarily the truth.
Case and point: cards six and seven. One is that of a former therapist who Sachs couldn’t track down. She instead hires actor Rae C. Wright to portray the character in a hypothetical scene wherein the filmmaker confronts her for what she believes was complicity to deceit. Through this exercise comes the acknowledgement that the words Sachs thought were permission could have been interpreted many different ways. But the way she did take them ultimately becomes the only “real” answer considering it’s what drove her actions.
The other card is Lawrence Brose, a name I’m familiar with living in Buffalo and having gone to UB. A controversial figure due to his 2009 arrest for child pornography, Sachs voices the thought that maybe she should cut him from the film since that isn’t why she contacted him. Her memory upon seeing his name concerned his experimental film De Profundis and it was only after they connected that she remembered the rest. But she decides to hear his truth about the arrest anyway and, perhaps, change her own ideas about him as a result.
Therein lies this journey’s thesis. Whereas a contact trace in investigative terms purports to forensically find objective truth, there’s always room for error (enough that the government offered Brose a plea deal but not enough to guarantee an exoneration). And when it comes to contact traces in terms of personal memory and impact, there’s probably more error than truth due to perspective. Whether your memory is right or wrong, however, proves moot in hindsight. How you used it cannot be changed, but a new trace might still be left for tomorrow.
The parlous state of documentary distribution may have been a constant conversational theme among industry delegates at International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) this week, but a notable number of executives said they are energised by the search to find new ways for films to reach audiences and are optimistic about the road ahead.
For the European documentary sector, the bad news is that at least one prominent documentary-focused sales agent has gone out of business over the last year, and documentary sales executives themselves are increasingly juggling other jobs in consultancy or teaching to make ends meet.
The good news is that new companies are being formed and some of the more established outfits are successfully rethinking their strategies.
Former Autlook executive Martina Droandi has just launched Vienna-based Odd Slice Films, which arrived at IDFA with an inaugural slate including Miguel Eek’s much-admired political documentary Amilcar, which world premiered in IDFA’s Envision and Olia Verriopoulou’s IDFA Luminous world premiere, Stories Of A Lie.
Droandi is optimistic she can help films connect with audiences.
“I am very excited to be back in the market. I am very positive because I have the energy,” Droandi says. “I like projects that generally might be hard to sell. I am up for the challenge. And I’m very interested in trying to get films for young audiences.”
She is calling for closer communication between sales agents themselves.
“It’s clear that the industry model that we’ve had up till now is not working so well. The theatrical chances are very small, the broadcasters are making fewer and fewer acquisitions. We need to think a bit more creatively about how we can find new models and try out new things so we can keep the industry alive.”
Odd Slice joins several other smaller-scale sales agencies representing auteur-driven work and looking for new ways to find audiences. They include Maria Vera’s Lisbon-based Kino Rebelde, which is handling Lynne Sachs’ Every Contact Leaves A Trace, a world premiere in IDFA’s Signed section and based around the 600 business cards Sachs has collected over the years.
“My idea is to connect with cinematheques, film archives, universities, libraries, museums, galleries and arthouse venues,” Vera says of the Kino Rebelde model.
“I have to plan in a very creative way because my films are not mainstream. And it is working. Just be honest. None of us are getting rich from this, but my company is surviving, the filmmakers have an income, and most importantly, they have recognition.”
Like Droandi, Vera calls on filmmakers themselves to become far more savvy about distribution and festival strategy.
“You [as a filmmaker] need to learn and navigate that part with more responsibility,” she says. “There are many filmmakers who arrive at a premiere and have not submitted the film to any festival afterwards, so you will have a gap of four months or six months. You need to work very, very hard. There is a lot of competition and fewer windows.”
The need to find new, more direct ways of engaging with the documentary-loving public was echoed by Abby Sun, director of programmes at International Documentary Association, at an IDFA Industry talk called ‘Reconnecting with Audiences’.
Sun said cinema may actually be thriving, but that the crisis is within the industry itself and with what Carlos Gutierrez, her colleague at collective Distribution Advocates, has characterised as a “crumbling” and “fragmented” system, dominated by intermediaries who charge fees merely to grant filmmakers access to its inner workings”.
Picking up on his insights, Sun suggested problems facing distribution are self-inflicted.
“Some of the reasons why filmmakers and films are so disconnected from public audiences is because we have chosen a path that has narrowed our options and that excludes the direct connection with audiences,” she said.
Audience-led models
Sun was one of several figures in IDFA this week calling for a more audience-led distribution model.
Shoshi Korman, co-managing director of Tel Aviv-based Cinephil, argues the issue is less to do with the market, “which always fluctuates”, than with the lack of “docs being made right now that match what real audiences want to watch”
Buyers, she notes, had taken “some risks with more niche films that had premieres at A-list festivals but they didn’t translate outside the industry circle and the buyers are being more careful now”.
Korman says titles that have worked for Cinephil recently, such as The Dating Game, The Last Republican and Natchez, “have been driven by characters and relationships, and they offer an emotional payoff. They don’t shy away from politics but they’re not preaching. They invite viewers into a conversation. That’s what’s connecting”.
Other documentary sales agents at IDFA found further reasons to be upbeat.
“These six last months were tough but this IDFA is a breath of fresh air because finally buyers are enthusiastic about the films,” said Kilian Kiefel, documentary sales and festivals executive at Mediawan Rights, which is representing Gianluca Matarrese’s hybrid doc I Want Her Dead, featuring his own bickering relatives. “Not only TV but theatrical too. Things take way more time than before but I have had a good market.”
