Category Archives: SECTIONS

Between Sight and Touch: Selected Shorts by Barbara Hammer / e-flux Screening Room

Between Sight and Touch: Selected Shorts by Barbara Hammer
e-flux Screening Room
September 19, 2022
Screening on September 22, 2022
https://www.e-flux.com/live/491616/between-sight-and-touch-selected-shorts-nbsp-by-barbara-hammer/

Introduction by Lynne Sachs

“Welcome to ‘Between Sight and Touch: Selected Shorts by Barbara Hammer’

Which is Part of EFlux Screening Room’s

Revisiting Feminist Moving-Image Art, a monthly series of screenings aimed at revisiting the origins, contexts, developments, and impact of feminist video art and experimental cinema around the world from the 1960s through the present.

It’s really an honor for me to have the chance to introduce this exciting and thought provoking selection of films by artist and dear friend Barbara Hammer.

Tonight you’ll be watching.

“Psychosynthesis”, “Women I Love”, “Sync Touch”, “No No Nooky T.V.”, “Save Sex”, and “Lesbian Whale”, accompanied by a screening of “A Month of Single Frames”

Barbara Hammer and I met in 1987 in San Francisco, a mecca for alternative, underground, experimental filmmaking. She taught me the fine, solitary craft of optical printing during a weekend workshop, thus beginning a friendship that eventually followed us across the country to New York City.

Tonight you will see her 1975 “Psychosynthesis” and her 1981 “Sync Touch” both of which will give you a sense of her masterful ability to use this extremely technical analog machine which was absolutely essential to her practice as a filmmaker who wanted to both celebrate and deconstruct – a word of the day – the culture she saw swirling around her. In “Psychosynthesis”, Barbara goes completely auto-biographical, but in oh so psychodelic way, using her body and her archive of family photos to investigate who she was and who she wanted to be. You will see her unbelievably skillful use of mattes and superimpositions here. Pre computers, this kind of image manipulation took incredible skill! Made around the same time…yes Barbara was extremely prolific, her film “Women I Love” is an openly Lesbian, openly compassionate embrace of the women in her life she holds dear. How extraordinarily brave Barbara was in the mid 1970s!

“Sync Touch”, a favorite of mine for a long time, is an exhilarating celebration of the haptic – skin to skin – in all its manifestations and a precise, ingenious investigation of feminist theory – which Barbara was clearly exploring in profound ways at the time.

Barbara first decided to call herself a moving image artist at a time when the separation between the practice of making films and the practice of making video were very, very different. More than a painter choosing oil over acrylic, a moving image artist who sided with celluloid was forced to decide how she wanted to embrace or reject a long legacy of mostly male produced media that were circulating on screens or on tv. For the most part, Barbara opted for the film side of things, but in 1987 her 12min “No Nooky TV” arrived in the scene. I dare say, the videomaking would never be the same again. This brazen, text based send up of all things “broadcast” took the body language of experimental film coming out of the 60s and 70s and transformed into a TV-minded send up of advertising, news, and mainstream graphic design – transposing the culturally tame words of the media mainstream with words like Boob, Cunt, Do It. Literal becomes Cliteral and away we go. Plus Barbara has figured out how to make and disseminate all of the wildest 1980s character-generator signage to make her feminist discourse look like something you might have seen lit up in Times Square. In her 1993 “Save Sex”, we see Barbara’s AIDS activism in full force. This Hammer-esque public service announcement type of piece that celebrates SAFE SEX while while also advocating for “saving” sex at the same time.

You will see Barbara’s face and body in most of the films curator Lukas Brasiskis is presenting tonight. Barbara always had an uncanny ability to understand herself from the inside out and from the outside in. Her films were visceral and personal. In both subtle and overt way, they were also intentionally political calling attention to the sexual inequities she witnessed everywhere.

Now I will tell you a bit about “A Month of Single Frames”, the film I made with and for Barbara.

Some background. Between 2015 to 2018, Barbara agreed to be part of the making of my short, experimental documentary Carolee, Barbara and Gunvor (2018) a three-part film that includes Carolee Schneemann and Gunvor Nelson. All three were renowned artists and beloved friends, just a generation older than I, who had embraced the moving image throughout their lives. I shot this film with Barbara near her home and studio in the West Village.

In 2018, Barbara asked me to come to her home to discuss something she needed to say in person. I immediately faced a complicated set of emotions. This was around the time she gave the talk “The Art of Dying or (Palliative Art Making in the Age of Anxiety)” at the Whitney Museum. I knew that this tête-à-tête would involve some kind of good-bye, but I had no idea that she had decided to share a part of her personal archive, and thus a part of her being on this earth, with me. Filmmaking, in the tradition that Barbara and I have espoused for most of our lives as experimental makers, involves a deeply focused solitary period of introspection. A complementary aspect of our practice, however, calls for playful, engaged exchanges with all of the people in the film — both in front and behind the camera. Fundamental to Barbara’s sense of herself as an artist was her commitment to deep and lasting intellectual engagement with her fellow artists in the field, particularly other women who were also trying to find an aesthetic language that could speak about the issues that meant so much to us. By asking me to work with her, alongside her but not “for” her, Barbara, a feminist filmmaker, was actually creating an entirely new vision of the artist’s legacy.

While writing the text for my own film, the words I placed on the screen came to me in a dream. By the time I finished my film, Barbara had died. I quickly realized that this kind of oneiric encounter could become a posthumous continuation of the dialogue I had started with Barbara.

I hope you enjoy this program, a part of a magnificent series of films and videos made by women over the years. If you are interested in reading more about my work with Barbara, you will find an essay I wrote in Camera Obscura: a journal on Feminism, Culture, and Media published last year.

I also hope that you will join me for EFlux’s presentation of my work on Oct. 27, 2022 when I will be able to join you in conversation here in Brooklyn.

Between Sight and Touch: Selected Shorts by Barbara Hammer
With a video introduction and special screening by Lynne Sachs

Admission starts at $5

Date
September 22, 2022, 7pm

172 Classon Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11205
USA

A lesbian/feminist aesthetic proposing the connection between touch and sight to be the basis for a “new cinema.”
—Barbara Hammer

Join us at e-flux Screening Room on Thursday, September 22 at 7pm for Between Sight and Touch, a screening of selected works by Barbara Hammer, featuring Psychosynthesis, Women I Love, Sync Touch, No No Nooky T.V., Save Sex, and Lesbian Whale, accompanied by a screening of A Month of Single Frames by experimental documentary filmmaker and poet Lynne Sachs, who will also be introducing the evening via video.

Barbara Hammer (1939-2019), a pioneer of queer experimental filmmaking in the US, devoted most of her five-decade artistic career to the deconstruction of normative understandings of gender and sexuality. She was attempting to build a new cinema via material explorations of onscreen representations of the female body and analysis of the functioning of the film medium itself. This program features Hammer’s lesser-known short films and video works in which the artist questions the strict boundaries between the representation of gender and sexuality and the exploration of one’s body—between sight and touch.

Between Sight and Touch is part of Revisiting Feminist Moving-Image Art, a monthly series of screenings at e-flux Screening Room aimed at revisiting the origins, contexts, developments, and impact of feminist video art and experimental cinema around the world from the 1960s through the present.

Films

Barbara Hammer, Psychosynthesis, 1975, 6 minutes
“The sub-personalities of me, as baby, athlete, witch, and artist are synthesized in this film of superimpositions, intensities, and color layers coming together through the powers of film.” (Barbara Hammer)

Barbara Hammer, Women I Love, 1976, 23 minutes
A series of cameo portraits of the filmmaker’s friends and lovers intercut with a playful celebration of fruits and vegetables in nature. Culminating footage evokes a tantric painting of sexuality sustained.

Barbara Hammer, Sync Touch, 1981, 10 minutes
“…The film explores the tactile child nature within the adult woman filmmaker, the connection between sexuality and filmmaking, and the scientific analysis of the sense of touch.” (Barbara Hammer)

Barbara Hammer, No No Nooky T.V., 1987, 12 minutes
Using a 16mm Bolex and Amiga computer, Hammer creates a witty and stunning film about how women view their sexuality versus the way male images of women and sex are perceived. The impact of technology on sexuality, emotion, and the sensual self is explored through computer language juxtaposed with the everyday colloquial language of sex.

Barbara Hammer, Save Sex, 1993, 1 minutes
A minute-long, partly animated color video that is a humorous plea for good sex, safely prophylactic though it may be.

Barbara Hammer, Lesbian Whale, 2015, 6 minutes
A video animation of Hammer’s early notebook drawings set to a soundtrack of commentary by the artist’s friends and peers.

Lynne Sachs, A Month of Single Frames, 2019, 14 minutes
In 1998, lesbian experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer took part in a one-month residency at a Cape Cod dune shack without running water or electricity, where she shot film, recorded sound, and kept a journal. In 2018 she gave all of this material to Lynne Sachs and invited her to make a film with it.

Accessibility
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the Screening Room and this bathroom.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.

Category

Film, Sexuality & Eroticism, Feminism

Subject

Experimental Film, Video Art, Queer Art & Theory

Barbara Hammer was born in 1939 in Hollywood, California. She lived and worked in New York until her death in 2019. With a career spanning fifty years, Barbara Hammer is recognized as a pioneer of queer cinema. Working primarily in film and video, Hammer created a groundbreaking body of experimental work that illuminates lesbian histories, lives, and representations. Hammer has stated: “My work makes these invisible bodies and histories visible. As a lesbian artist, I found little existing representation, so I put lesbian life on this blank screen, leaving a cultural record for future generations.”

“Swerve”: 2022 Camden International Film Festival Review / Bain’s Film Reviews

“Swerve”: 2022 Camden Film Festival Review
Bain’s Film Reviews
By Kyle Bain
September 18, 2022
https://baintrain08.wixsite.com/bainsfilmreviews/post/swerve-2022

Swerve (2022)

2022 CAMDEN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW!

Food brings us together. It can be the connector needed to form relationships both romantic and platonic–and for some, food can be their calling in life. Swerve uses food to bring together five unique individuals (and an audience) as they navigate the streets of Queens. While food is ultimately the catalyst for their journeys, each of them speaking in verse, expressing themselves in an incredibly effective way, lets emotion rise to the surface as they make an impression on viewers around the world.

While Swerve is technically a documentary, it plays out in a way that allows it to appear like a narrative and an artistic version of the real world. We see the subjects of the film navigating Queens both above and below ground, on the crowded streets amongst thousands and alone at a table. The juxtapositions created throughout the course of Swerve open the world’s eyes to the diversity of not just New York City, but the rest of the globe as well. Viewers are invited back into the world that they already know, but it shows it from a series of angles by which they may not have already been familiar. These angles are literal and figurative, and each one plays an integral role in the reception of the film.

As these literal camera angles take form throughout the film, viewers see exactly what Director Lynne Sachs wants them to. When she wants viewers to see the hustle and bustle of the busy streets, that’s what they see. When she wants them to understand the mental and emotional statuses of the five subjects, they do; and when she wants them to feel relaxed, one with the sometimes calming sentiments present in Swerve, that’s exactly what they feel. Sachs is a brilliant creator who knows the ins and outs of developing something that can and will appeal to the masses. Her prowess in this respect is uplifting and full of passion, and she does a spectacular job of bringing her vision to life in Swerve.

I often struggle with documentaries that have parts written for them, as I tend to want these films to happen naturally rather than being manipulated into something that forces an agenda. Swerve has verse written for it, and the individuals on screen are tasked with presenting these lines in a fashion that mirrors the visuals and the sentiment present in the film. For the first time I believe that the script written for a documentary is not only acceptable, but essential. It works wonders for the film, and it brings everything to life in a vibrant and infectious fashion.

Rhyme plays a pivotal role in the reception of Swerve, as it becomes the most inviting part of the entire film. Creating rhyming poetry that has a genuine purpose and a profound effect on those involved can be challenging, but this team has managed to create something meaningful beyond the visuals, something that surely resonates with viewers.

Swerve is powerful, full of passion, energetic, honest, and relatable. It never loses its vigor, and it never loses focus–keeping viewers intrigued from beginning to end. It’s smooth sailing throughout the course of Swerve, and anyone that has time to watch this short documentary will certainly gain something positive along the way.

Directed by Lynne Sachs.

Starring Emmy Catedral, Ray Ferriera, Paolo Javier, Jeff Preiss, Inney Prakash, & Juliana Sass.

“Home” Movies Screening / The Film-Makers’ Coop

“Home” Movies
The Film-Makers’ Coop
September 14, 2022
Screening on September 24, 2022
https://film-makerscoop.com/screenings/home-movies
Tickets: https://filmmakerscoop.ecwid.com/Home-Movies-p492156671

Join us on Saturday, September 24th at 6pm in the FMC Screening Room for “HOME” MOVIES: A program of avant-garde shorts exploring homes and domestic spaces from the 1940s through the 2010s. Curated by Matt McKinzie.

TICKETS

“The past two years have seen us retreat into our homes in an unprecedented way. The necessity of lockdowns, quarantine periods, and social distancing with the rise of Covid-19 (and more recently, monkeypox) have forced us to contend with domestic spaces – our kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms – almost constantly, unable to venture into the outside world in a totally safe way.

There are certain notions associated with the domestic sphere and homes in general. Often, “home” is a “constant”: a fixed geographical space where we retreat, eat, bathe, and sleep. Lockdowns and quarantines within the past two years have complicated that space; home is where we do practically everything now.

The term “home movie” is defined as: “a film made at home, or without professional equipment or expertise, especially a movie featuring one’s own activities.” But a “home movie” is not necessarily a “home” movie.

After all, “home movies,” in the traditional sense, might arbitrarily depict everything from birthdays to holidays to family picnics to weddings to graduation ceremonies… the list goes on. These moments, while valuable in their own ways, don’t necessarily convey or examine the “home.”

This program, “Home” Movies, looks at films specifically about homes and the domestic sphere, and asks: how have filmmakers, throughout history, documented and examined homes and domestic spaces? How have they explored and subverted the “home,” on screen, in ways physical, personal, and/or political? What larger patterns and trends can be discerned from the various filmic depictions of homes and domestic spaces, depending on when a given film was made and the identity and lived experiences of the filmmaker? And, for experimental and avant-garde filmmakers specifically, how has one’s home — due to the independent and low-budget nature of the job — operated as a site for work and creativity even before “work-from-home” was commonplace?

The inspiration for this screening also stems from my current life situation. I’m grateful to curate this program as I permanently relocate from Connecticut to New York City — leaving one home behind to build another home here.”

—Matt McKinzie

PROGRAM

Peace O’ Mind (1983), Directed by Mary Filippo; 16mm, B&W, sound, 8.5 minutes

An Avant-Garde Home Movie (1961), Directed by Stan Brakhage; 16mm, color, silent, 3.5 minutes

Still Life with Woman and Four Objects (1986), Directed by Lynne Sachs; 16mm, B&W, sound, 4 minutes

Home (1975), Directed by Dan Perz; 16mm, color, sound, 7 minutes

Domicile (1977), Directed by Gary Doberman; 16mm, color, silent, 9 minutes

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), Directed by Maya Deren; 16mm, B&W, sound, 14 minutes

Windows in the Kitchen (1983), Directed by Elaine Summers; 16mm, color, sound, 12 minutes

Window Work (2000), Directed by Lynne Sachs; Video, color, sound, 9 minutes

Open Eyes in Shadow Series: Domestic Notes (2019), Directed by Rrose Present; Digital, color, sound, 4.5 minutes

RESET ME/Dirty Clothes Are Washed At Home (2017), Directed by Rrose Present; Digital, color, sound, 2 minutes

Kitchen (2020), Directed by Michael Siporin Levine; Digital, color, sound, 8 minutes

Carolee Schneemann Film Series / Barbican

Breaking the Frame (18) + Short + Introduction by Helen De Witt: Carolee Schneemann Film Series
Barbican
September 10, 2022
Screening on September 17, 2022
https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2022/event/carolee-schneemann-breaking-the-frame-intro

Carolee Schneeman by Lynne Sachs

A rare chance to catch this unconventional, impressionistic portrait of Carolee Schneemann.

Rather than a simple survey of Schneemann’s life and work, Breaking the Frame is structured thematically, as a kind of collage, and aims to capture the artist in her own words and images.

Contemporary interviews with Schneemann are interwoven with excerpts from her film works, documentation of performances – including Meat Joy (1964) and Interior Scroll (1975) – and more recent museum commissions and exhibitions. Schneemann’s philosophical observations on spatial theory, nature and politics of the human body – drawn from her diaries and read in voiceover – offer insights into the process and execution of some of her most famous pieces.

Dreamlike and meandering in tone and structure, some of the film’s most thrilling sections ramble through Schneemann’s 18th-century Hudson Valley farmhouse.

108 min

Breaking the Frame screens here with Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor (2018), a short, tripartite documentary profile of Schneemann and fellow artist-filmmakers Barbara Hammer and Gunvor Nelson.

Carolee Schneeman: Body Politics
https://www.barbican.org.uk/our-story/press-room/carolee-schneemann-body-politics

Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics is the first survey in the UK of the work of American artist Carolee Schneemann (1939-2019) and the first major exhibition since her death in 2019. Tracing Schneemann’s diverse, transgressive and interdisciplinary work over six decades, the show celebrates a radical and pioneering artist who remains a feminist icon and point of reference for many contemporary artists and thinkers.

Addressing urgent topics from sexual expression and the objectification of women to human suffering and the violence of war, Schneemann’s work is concerned with the precarious lived experience of humans and animals. With over 300 objects, the exhibition draws from the Carolee Schneemann Foundation, as well as numerous private and public collections, spanning the extraordinary range of Schneemann’s artistic output. Bringing together paintings, sculptural assemblages, performance photographs, films and large-scale multimedia installations, as well as rarely seen archival material including scores, sketches, scrapbooks, programmes and costumes, this exhibition positions Schneemann as one of the most relevant, provocative and inspiring artists of the last century.

‘A Biography of Lilith’ and the ‘House of Science: A Museum of False Facts’ / Indiana University Cinema

A Biography of Lilith and the House of Science: A Museum of False Facts
Indiana University Cinema
September 8, 2022
Screening on September 24, 2022
https://cinema.indiana.edu/upcoming-films/screening/2022-fall-program-saturday-september-24-700pm

Underground Film Series

Lynne Sachs | 1997 | USA | Not rated | 16mm

A pair of films from singular filmmaker Lynne Sachs investigating the connection between the body, the camera, and the materiality of film itself.

About A Biography of Lilith:

Lynne Sachs explores the possibilities of a new creation myth in A Biography of Lilith through a mixture of collage, mythology, cabalistic parable, folklore, interviews, and memoir to provide a narrative of the first woman and, perhaps, the first feminist. Situated on the margins of both documentary and experimental narrative, the film spans Lilith’s betrayal by Adam in Eden to her revenge story in the present-day, as a mother who gives up her baby for adoption and works as a bar dancer. Featuring music by Pamela Z and Charming Hostess. [35 mins; documentary; English]

Lynne Sachs | 1991 | USA | Not rated | 16mm

About The House of Science: A Museum of False Facts:

The House of Science: A Museum of False Facts inspects and interrupts representations of women in the house, the museum, and in science, bridging between public, private, and idealized spaces to generate a new, dual image of women, of “a ‘me’ that is two—the body of the body and the body of the mind.” Through a lively assemblage of home movies, personal reminiscences, staged scenes, found footage, and voice, Sachs’ feminized film form reclaims the body divided among these spaces: “We look at ourselves from within, collect our own data, create our own science, begin to define.” [30 mins; documentary; English]

“Scars, Muscles, Curves of the Spine: Lynne Sachs’ Films at IU Cinema” — By Richard Jermain, The Ryder Magazine
https://online.flippingbook.com/view/986112840/16/

“I am Two Bodies: The Maternal in Two Lynne Sachs Films” — By Laura Ivins, Indiana University Cinema Establishing Shot
https://blogs.iu.edu/establishingshot/2022/09/21/i-am-two-bodies-the-maternal-in-two-lynne-sachs-films/#more-13373

Lynne Sachs & ‘Film About A Father Who’ at MajorDocs

Film About A Father Who & Lynne Sachs Masterclass at MajorDocs
MajorDocs
September 1, 2022
Festival dates: October 4-8, 2022
https://majordocs.org/festival/

PHILOSOPHY

THE FIRST SLOW FILM FESTIVAL

MajorDocs is the international creative documentary film festival in Mallorca; a space to discover other realities and other perspectives through carefully selected creative documentaries.

In a time defined by the sheer excess of content, MajorDocs proposes a slow experience: a journey through eight films, each with a deep author’s gaze, that encourage us to stop, step away from our daily lives and connect with not just the other, but also with our own sensibility.

Five days to reflect, ask and discuss each film with its author in an intimate and close setting, without lecterns or pedestals. Each screening will be a unique event without counterprogramming since it is our goal to take care of each film and each author.

During the festival, renowned filmmakers and new talents will share their experiences with the public. An event that will stimulate the critical eye through screenings and talks, as well as workshops and discussions on documentary cinema.

An unmissable date for anyone who enjoys looking without limits, discovering the unknown and stirring their heart.

MANIFESTO

MajorDocs goes out and looks for a creative documentary…

Hybrid, innovative, transgressive, adventurous.
Able to transcend the present and keep questioning ourselves in the future.
Useless – in which art prevails over functionality.
That digs deeply into the ins and outs of a complex world without staying on the surface.
That leaves a mark on the audience and is able to short-circuit the passive spectator.
In which the author’s gaze prevails over the facts.
Able to transcend, if the film demands for it, the limits of the classic narrative.

FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO
https://majordocs.org/ca/event/film-about-a-father-who/

Synopsis

Over a period of 35 years, filmmaker Lynne Sachs shot 8 and 16mm film, videotape and digital images of her father, Ira Sachs Sr., a bon vivant, seductive, extravagant and pioneering businessman. Film About a Father Who is her attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and her siblings.

With the presence of the director.

MASTERCLASS: THE BODY, THE CAMERA, AND THE MATERIAL
https://majordocs.org/majordocs-pro/

October 5, 2022 / 10:00 – 11:30
Fundació Sa Nostra

Lynne Sachs will explore the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences. Using examples from the essay films, experimental documentaries, and performances she has produced over the last three decades, she will guide her workshop participants on a journey investigating the connection between the body, the camera, and the materiality of film itself.

* Session in English.

Lynne Sachs (Memphis, Tennessee, 1961) is a filmmaker and poet living in Brooklyn, New York. Her work explores the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences by weaving together text, collage, painting, politics and layered sound design. Strongly committed to a feminist dialogue between cinematic theory and practice, she searches for a rigorous play between image and sound, pushing the visual and aural textures in her work with every new project. Her moving image work ranges from short experimental films, to essay films to hybrid live performances. Lynne has made 37 films, including features and shorts, which have screened, won awards or been included in retrospectives at New York Film Festival, Museum of Modern Art, Sundance, Oberhausen, Viennale, Sheffield Doc/Fest, BAFICI, RIDM Montréal, Vancouver Film Festival, Doclisboa, Havana IFF, and China Women’s Film Festival. In 2014, she received the Guggenheim Fellowship in the Creative Arts.

JURY & AWARD WINNERS

Jury
Andrés Duque, Ainhoa Andraka, and Lynne Sachs

Award winners

Scars, Muscles, Curves of the Spine: Lynne Sachs’ Films at IU Cinema / The Ryder

Scars, Muscles, Curves of the Spine: Lynne Sachs’ Films at IU Cinema
The Ryder Magazine
By Richard Jermain
September 1, 2022
https://online.flippingbook.com/view/986112840/16/

It may seem old hat to say an experimental filmmaker’s career defies easy classification, but in the case of Lynne Sachs, it’s necessary. Sachs has produced over 40 films in as many years, as well as web projects, multimedia, and live performances. Additionally, she has written original fiction and poetry which appears in her films. Sachs has worked closely with filmmakers like Craig Baldwin, Bruce Conner, Barbara Hammer, Chris Marker, Gunvor Nelson, Carolee Schneemann, and Trinh T. Min-ha. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Sachs’ recent work includes five films with sound artist Stephen Vitiello, a collection of site-specific live performances featuring two years of research with NYC laundry workers, and a poetry collection, Year by Year Poems, published in 2019 by Tender Buttons Press.

However wide ranging the works of Sachs may be, there are common themes and concerns. Her films frequently expose intimate and private details—often with personal memories—and explore the problem of translation, not only between one text and another but between text and image as well. Her predilection for collage, mixed- media, and hybridized form is intrinsic to the themes she explores, which often traverse public and private experiences. There is an ever- present connection to be found between the concept and the material, the form and the content.

The late 1980s and early 90s marks a period in Sachs’ career when her biggest concern as a woman and an artist were the political and personal themes of gender, the body, sexuality, and language. Like many of the “downtown” avant-garde filmmakers working in NYC at this time, Sachs was inspired by feminist literature, finding herself in a reading group with fellow filmmakers such as Peggy Ahwesh and Lynn Kirby that engaged with the challenging ideas of French authors

Luce Irigery (Speculum of Other Woman) and Hélène Cixous (The Newly Born Woman). In Sachs’ words, this was “some of the most powerful, eye-opening literature I had ever experienced. For each of us, the discovery of the expansive, rigorous and playful essays of [these authors] completely changed our sense of language and the body.”

The impact that this had on her perspective as a filmmaker can be directly sensed in the narration in The House of Science: A Museum of False Facts (1991, 30 min., 16mm), not simply through an abstract, intellectual stance, but also through a visceral, lived experience:

“Narration: A speculum before me, I hold the mirror just inches away and learn to look—sometimes shyly, occasionally detached, and now, more often than not, bravely. I touch myself with knowledge. I trace a path across my chest, searching for surprises I’d rather not find, knots in the fabric.

Male voice from the movie: Look!!!

Narration: Undressed, we read our bodies like a history. Scars, muscles, curves of the spine. We look at ourselves from within, collect our own data, create our own science, begin to define.”

It is through the form of the film itself that Sachs seeks to define not just women’s experience but her own personal experience of fragmentation she felt throughout adolescence. Narration here is not an overdetermined explanation of events, but one among many types of media ranging from home movies, staged scenes, found footage, and even Sachs’ own body, as the film explores the fragmented divide between what it names “the body of the body” and “the body of the mind.” This split is not just between the body and the mind but between what is felt and experienced in the body versus what is said and shown in private and public spaces from the home to the museum to the clinic, unable to be fully defined in any of them. The House of Science is a means of not only detailing these stories but of reclaiming authorship of one’s own body.

In A Biography of Lilith (1997, 35 min. 16mm), Sachs expounds on this theme, this time exploring the broader cultural narratives that define the experience of gender and identity. A mixture of narrative, collage, and memoir, the film reimagines the creation myth of the first woman as a modern tale of revenge following Lilith’s betrayal by Adam in Eden. Sachs juxtaposes high-art and mundane images of Lilith: in haunting silver, in Medieval Hebrew protection amulets, Baroque paintings, Mesopotamian ceramics, in Jean Seberg’s portrayal of the crazed Lilith in a mental hospital, in the TV-sitcom “Cheers.”

Like in the critical examination of sources in House of Science, here in Lilith Sachs plays text against image in an attempt to rewrite these received narratives: “I’m learning to read all over again, / a face, this time, connected to a body. / At first, I feel your story from within– / Nose rubs against belly, elbow prods groin. / Your silent cough becomes / a confusing dip and bulge. / You speak and I struggle to translate.”

As in many of her films, Sachs’ personal life and struggles are deeply connected with the themes she presents. In this case, it was her first child that raised the issue of the historical roots of our social definitions of motherhood for her: “I was captivated by this story and all of the folklore that came with it, especially since new mothers were historically told to be afraid of Lilith. She was too willful and aware of her sexuality, which was exactly what attracted me. I discovered Lilith when I was pregnant with my first daughter and finished the film right after I gave birth to my second. My film Biography of Lilith is a reflection of all the awe, fear, frustration, and excitement that was part of this experience.”

An artist who continues to inspire and innovate, Lynne Sachs’ films have been presented at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), Tate Modern, Image Forum Tokyo, Wexner Center for the Arts, and festivals such as New York Film Festival, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Punto de Vista, Sundance, Vancouver IFF, Viennale and Doclisboa, among many others. In 2021, she received awards for her lifetime achievements in experimental and documentary fields from the Edison Film Festival and Prismatic Ground Film Festival. A Biography of Lilith received prizes at NY Film Expo; Black Maria; New York Women’s Film Festival and The House of Science has received numerous prizes at national and international film festivals and venues. As part of the IU Underground Film Series at the IU Cinema, The House of Science: A Museum of False Facts and Biography of Lilith will be shown on Saturday, September 24 at 7pm. The event is free but ticketed—visit cinema.indiana.edu to reserve tickets.

The Underground Film Series, curated by IU graduate students, explores the artistic and subversive possibilities of film through the unique vision of noncommercial or otherwise marginalized filmmakers. The series encompasses modes of filmmaking from full-length feature films to documentaries, to short films, to video art. The Underground Film Series works to bring unconventional films that are not easily accessible by other means to the attention of the IU and Bloomington communities. By screening avant-garde and experimental films, the Underground Film Series brings audiences to films in danger of being lost or forgotten.

Indiana University Cinema Underground Film Series
A Biography of Lilith and The House of Science: A Museum of False Facts
https://cinema.indiana.edu/upcoming-films/screening/2022-fall-program-saturday-september-24-700pm

A Biography of Lilith + The House of Science | Underground Film Series / Visit Bloomington

A Biography of Lilith + The House of Science | Underground Film Series
Visit Bloomington
August 24, 2022
https://www.visitbloomington.com/event/a-biography-of-lilith-%2B-the-house-of-science-%7C-underground-film-series/48404/

IU Cinema
September 24, 2022
1213 E. 7th Street, Bloomington, IN 47405
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM
Free, but ticketed

Lynne Sachs explores the possibilities of a new creation myth in A Biography of Lilith through a mixture of collage, mythology, cabalistic parable, folklore, interviews, and memoir to provide a narrative of the first woman and, perhaps, the first feminist. Situated on the margins of both documentary and experimental narrative, the film spans Lilith’s betrayal by Adam in Eden to her revenge story in the present-day, as a mother who gives up her baby for adoption and works as a bar dancer. Featuring music by Pamela Z and Charming Hostess. [35 mins; documentary; English]
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The House of Science: A Museum of False Facts inspects and interrupts representations of women in the house, the museum, and in science, bridging between public, private, and idealized spaces to generate a new, dual image of women, of “a ‘me’ that is two—the body of the body and the body of the mind.” Through a lively assemblage of home movies, personal reminiscences, staged scenes, found footage, and voice, Sachs’ feminized film form reclaims the body divided among these spaces: “We look at ourselves from within, collect our own data, create our own science, begin to define.” [30 mins; documentary; English]

Camden International Film Festival Unveils 2022 Lineup / Variety

Camden International Film Festival, an Oscar Campaign Hotspot, Unveils 2022 Lineup (EXCLUSIVE)
Variety
By Addie Morfoot
August 22, 2022
https://variety.com/2022/film/news/camden-international-film-festival-2022-1235346757/

The 18th edition of the Camden Intl. Film Festival, kicking off Sept. 15, will feature a handful of award-contending documentaries fresh off showings at Telluride and the Toronto film festivals. The Maine-based festival will unfold in a hybrid format, with both in-person events over a three-day period concluding Sept. 18, and online screenings available from Sept. 15 to Sept. 25 to audiences across North America.

This year’s CIFF highlights include the U.S. premiere of Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen’s Netflix release “In Her Hands,” which follows one of Afghanistan’s first female mayors during the months leading up to the Taliban takeover the country in 2021; Chris Smith’s “Sr.,” centered on the life and career of Robert Downey Sr. and his relationship to his son, Robert Downey Jr.; and Steve James’ “A Compassionate Spy,” about Manhattan Project physicist, Soviet spy and University of Chicago alum Theodore Hall. Each of the three featured documentaries will have made its world premiere before CIFF, at festivals in Toronto, Telluride and Venice, respectively.

The fest will also offer a special sneak preview of Patricio Guzman’s “My Imaginary Country,” which chronicles the recent protests in Chile in which millions took to the street to demand democracy, dignity, and a new constitution.

It is also teasing “a special secret screening” which will be the opening night film, with little additional information besides the fact that it is a new film by an Academy Award-winning director that will be in attendance.

Located in a small, remote village on the coast of Maine that is two hours from a major airport, CIFF has become an Oscar campaign hotspot in recent years. Last year, Oscar contending docus including “The Rescue” (Nat. Geo), “Procession” (Netflix), “Ascension” (MTV Documentaries), and “Flee” (Neon) all screened at CIFF, where the who’s who of the doc community — including Oscar winner Alex Gibney, Cinetic Media founder and principal John Sloss and former Sundance Institute CEO Keri Putnam – come to celebrate the fest.

“Much of our slate this year will be brand new to audiences in the U.S. or North America, and one of the greatest things we can do as a festival is to build buzz and momentum for (films) here,” says Ben Fowlie, executive and artistic director of the Points North Institute and founder of CIFF. “This means getting filmmakers to Maine for their in-person screenings and connecting them with attending industry and press.”

All told, the 2022 fest will include 34 features and 40 short films from over 41 countries. Over 60% of the entire program is directed or co-directed by BIPOC filmmakers; this is the sixth consecutive edition that the festival has reached gender parity within the program.

“This year’s program celebrates the diversity of voices and forms in documentary and cinematic nonfiction,” says Fowlie. “This year’s program emphasizes the international that represents the ‘I’ in CIFF and reminds us time and again of the limitless creative potential and potency of the documentary form.”

Alex Pritz’s “The Territory,” Reid Davenport’s “I Didn’t See You There,” and Margaret Brown’s “Descendant” are among the Sundance 2022 docus screening at CIFF. Jason Kohn’s “Nothing Lasts Forever,” which premiered at the Berlin Intl. Film Festival in February and Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Hall’s “Subject,” which debuted at Tribeca Festival in June, are also part of this year’s lineup.

“We were drawn to films that were aesthetically and politically urgent, that transformed us and that transported us somewhere new as viewers,” says Fowlie. “We are always looking for films and filmmakers that are taking creative risks and pushing the boundaries of traditional cinematic language with bold, singular visions. For all of the selected work, it is important for us to have an understanding of the film and filmmaker’s relationships with the communities, contributors, and collaborators involved.”

A program of Points North Institute, CIFF will also present two world premieres: Mike Day’s “Cowboy Poets,” about American national cowboy poetry gatherings and “Lily Frances Henderson’s “This Much We Know,” about the investigation of Las Vegas teenager Levi Presley’s suicide, which leads to the story of a city with the highest suicide rate in the country, and a nation scrambling to bury decades of nuclear excess in a nearby mountain.

The festival will present seven North American premieres, including “Foragers” by Jumana Manna, recent Locarno premieres “It Is Night in America” by Ana Vaz and Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s “Matter Out of Place,” as well as “Polaris” by Ainara Vera, which premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.

In honor of Diane Weyermann, the industry veteran and former chief content officer at Participant who died in October 2021, CIFF will screen several of the last films she executive produced, including James’ “A Compassionate Spy,’ Geeta Gandbhir and Sam Pollard’s “Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power” and Margaret Brown’s “Descendant.”

For the third consecutive year, CIFF will present its filmmaker solidarity fund. The fund will provide $300 honoraria to all feature and short filmmaking teams participating in the virtual festival. This year also marks the return of in-person panels and masterclasses through the festival’s Points North Forum program, which will feature conversations around the ethics of film financing, an exploration of experimental filmmaking about the climate, a masterclass led by veteran editor Maya Daisy Hawke and a special performance lecture on sensorial cinema led by award-winning Iranian artist Maryam Tafakory.

The forum program will conclude with a “town hall” gathering of the documentary community following the screening of “Subject,” which explores the life-altering experience of documenting one’s life on screen through the participants of five acclaimed docus.

The 2022 festival will run concurrently with Points North Artist Programs, a fellowship that supports early- and mid-career filmmakers. This year 21 projects will be supported through four fellowship programs.

A complete list of the program’s features and short can be found below.

Features Program

“5 Dreamers and the Horse”
“A Compassionate Spy”
“After Sherman”
“All Of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars”
“All That Breathes”
“Burial”
“Cowboy Poets”
“Crows Are White”
“Day After… “
“Descendant”
“Detours”
“Dos Estaciones”
“Foragers”
“Geographies of Solitude”
“Herbaria”
“I Didn’t See You There”
“In Her Hands”
“It Is Night in America”
“Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power”
“Matter Out of Place”
“My Imaginary Country”
“Nothing Lasts Forever”
“Polaris”
“Rewind & Play”
“SR.”
“Subject”
“Terranova”
“The Afterlight”
“The Territory”
“This Much We Know”
“What We Leave Behind”

Shorts Program

“Aralkum”
“The Ark”
“The Artists”
“Belongings”
“Bigger on the Inside”
“Brave”
“Call Me Jonathan”
“Congress of Idling Persons”
“Constant”
“Dapaan”
“Deerfoot of the Diamond”
“Echolocation”
“Everything Wrong and Nowhere to Go”
“Fire in the Sea”
“The Family Statement”
“The Flagmakers”
“Irani Bag”
“La Frontiere”
“Handbook”
“Life Without Dreams”
“Lungta”
“Masks”
“Moune O”
“Murmurs of the Jungle”
“My Courtyard”
“Nazarbazi”
“One Survives by Hiding”
“Pacman”
“Paradiso”
“Seasick”
“Solastalgia”
“Somebody’s Hero”
“The Sower of Stars”
“Subtotals”
“Swerve”
“Unsinkable Ship”
“Weckuwapok”
“Weckuwapasihit”
“When the LAPD Blows Up Your Neighborhood”

Ela Bittencourt’s Essay on “Film About a Father Who” / Cinema Guild

Essay on Cinema Guild’s DVD & Bluray monograph insert for Film About a Father Who directed by Lynne Sachs

Information on the DVD & Bluray here.

“He knows he will live in me
after he is dead, I will carry him like a mother.
I do not know if I will ever deliver.”
Sharon Olds, from the book of poems, The Father

There are so many possible entry points into Lynne Sachs’s A Film About a Father Who, an incredibly poignant and astute film sonnet on the director’s father, Ira Nathan Sachs, that over my repeated viewings I’ve begun to think of the film as a kind of quilt. Each of its patches unique and carefully hand-stitched into the fabric of its mosaic parts. Or perhaps a wondrous maze that a viewer winds her way through, and out, by pulling a delicate Ariadne’s thread.

I think it’s apt that the Greek mythology should have sprung to my mind. Aren’t all families somehow mythic, especially the troubled ones? The patriarch of the Sachs clan is certainly very Sphinx-like: an object, at once, of boundless adoration and love, but also a slippery man of mystery whose acts arouse genuine puzzlement in all his children. A god whose many faces are like a visage of a broken statue — bits that can never be whole again, but only awkwardly pieced, with glue, disjointed surfaces showing through, sharp edges painful to the touch.

In the film’s first introductory clip, the scionSachs, Sr. appears with his characteristic wisps of blond hair clinging to his skull, his bushy moustache, and somewhat restless and piercing blue eyes. He’s a “hippie businessman,” who “works as little as possible,” and “bottles water he can never stock.” In one shot, he stands framed by a mountainous vista (it turns out that Sachs developed hotels in Park City, Utah, where the Sundance Film Festival is held). The father speaks of his love for skiing, where you “go up slow and come down fast.” A comment that Sachs comments on in her own presciently clipped way: “To own a mountain from which there is nothing you can do but come down.”

I was struck by how this sentence is a gorgeous metaphor for pretty much how we relate to our parents — the most primordial love, which turns them into heroic, mythical, statue-like beings, mountain slopes from which, indeed, they can only come down. And how much of growing into adulthood is about the sudden vertigo of having to rewind, recalibrate our memories of the familial bind, from the times when we were still too innocent, too small, to have truly understood it. If we love them enough, we catch them coming down. We are mindful to pick up the pieces, glimpsing in their downfall from immortal heights the first sightings of our own fragility.

A Film About a Father Who is then an origin story, but one that’s never smug about its certainties, and always self-doubtful of how “it all” began. Sachs opens the film with a scene in which she’s cutting her elderly father’s hair, a moment so low-key yet so potent, because it is non-verbal. Everything else in the film – the tale of how the father managed to lie and cheat for so many years, how he hid his multiple affairs and his many children by different women from each other, for decades – all this will need to be explained. But the hair-cutting, with Sachs holding the scissors, untangling the knots, so that to snip them, lives outside language, time, it is an act of generosity and love, through which a small portion of care may me given back. Then there’s the scissors, which once again circle back to the metaphor of quilting, cutting things to pieces, and stitching them together — film editing itself like quilting, the kind of hands-on experimental cinema that Sachs practices, in particular, like the intricate, patient, artisanal task.

Sachs begins her story with the immediate family nucleus, her father, mother and her siblings, Dana and the filmmaker Ira Sachs. In this first central patch, there is still a certain sense of cohesion, as if the rest of the film could shoulder the illusion of producing a unified body of work; as if the process of delving into the past could heal, through rendering the small patches whole. Nothing like this occurs, it turns out. The more there is to discover, the more women and children enter the picture, the more quilt-like the film’s overall composition becomes. It demands to be seen as unruly, with each person, each story and heartache, finding its own proper place.

Among the father’s lovers are Diana, whose faint voice betrays terrible shyness, both on the subject’s part, but perhaps also the filmmaker’s. The inherent question of how to probe without hurting, how to make space for learning and empathy, but also establish a critical distance, is always keenly felt. Over the course of the film, this empathetic investigation becomes emboldened — either reflecting the director’s natural progression, or perhaps a mere artifact of thoughtful, painstaking editing, through which each woman’s testimony enriches the others. With Diana, for example, Sachs plants the idea of “companionship,” which apparently Sachs’s father used to seduce the young immigrant, Diana. And yet, Diana’s profile, cast against a dim window, is so lonely, so desolate, the word gains a heartbreaking, bitterly ironic twang.

If, as Tolstoy believed, all happy families are alike, but the unhappy ones suffer in distinct ways, Sachs’s film is indeed an epic that embodies a Tolstoian ethos. “I’ve been making this film about my father for twenty-six years now,” Sachs says at one point. In another she adds, “Can I make myself forget that for the first twenty years of my sister’s life I didn’t know of her existence?”

It’s a challenge to tell a story of such breadth without giving in to the tyranny of summary. But Sachs is never guilty of it, perhaps because, from the start, she strikes a patient but also an ironic tone. She holds out each cesura and is never rushed. Her carefully planted voiceovers, which echo, like refrains, emphasize dissonance, slippage, and paradox—as if to borrow Emily Dickinson’s motto, “Tell the truth, but tell it slant.” It’s a particularly poignant approach to a subject who is himself quite unable to offer this level of complete honesty, or transparency. We might have grown frustrated with such a subject, as too illusive, too coy, and yet, when centered in and filtered through Sachs’s voice, her father’s slipperiness becomes part of the game, a psychological, moral, philosophical quest for a glimmer of comprehension, and solace.

Again and again, this filmic richness emerges, where the previous parts of the film serve as a commentary on what comes next. Take the early family videos, for example. There is so much light, the children bouncing about, the colors overexposed, pushed, which on one hand reminds us of the fragility of earlier technologies, but on the other, doesn’t let us forget that family videos are a particular brand of narrative—or, one might say, fantasy. One makes a family. One constructs a memory. The film contains these small patches of idealized moments, frozen in time, it holds them in, like quilted patches, but it can also reveal them as such.

What’s brilliant about A Film About a Father Who is that this commentary on the past, on the nature of memory, on storytelling, on love, so often arises directly through its own filmic material. For example, the first dialogue with the mother is framed by a window with a bright light behind it, and it too seems part of the established idealized childhood space. As if the previous Impressionist brushes of light and movement, it too seems to point to brighter times. But when the dialogue continues, with some footage in the kitchen, a subtle change can be felt: It’s as if in a Rorschach test, what first seemed like light, now is the reverse, the shadow, the impermeability that beams into the kitchen, whereas the light is shut out, outside.

Thus the film builds and sustains its own cognitive dissonance. Sometimes, Sachs’s commentary seems to almost spill over, frame to frame, like a river, sometimes lyrical, sometimes critical, on her father’s behavior—while the image occasionally stops, holds almost still, desperately focusing the lens, surrendering to a blur. Somewhere in this tension, there’s language that fails, phrases like “a hippie businessman,” which try to establish just what the father is, how he might be summed up, then slowly letting go of substantive terms, and allowing adjectives, “caring,” “selfish,” “careless,” “loving” to cast their spell. If there’s a vertigo in these descriptions, it’s once again because the Sphinx-like puzzle isn’t meant to be solved. The film presents no solution; it can only ask, but this asking is also somehow enough. It is the necessary work.

The extended family grows, and so do group meetings, to include the younger generations. Some of the father’s children are born roughly around the same time as Sachs’s own daughter, Maya. In one scene, the young woman, Beth, expresses anger at having been cast out, and grown up in a harsh financial situation. Yet another mentions that she felt like the family’s powerful matriarch, Grandmother “Maw-Maw,” was going to disinherit her son, if more children surfaced, and so her existence was hidden. Earlier hesitations or questions are recast in a more discerning light. The careful trudging around fraught issues give in to Sachs’s direct question to her father about the lies. And if there is no immediate healing within the film’s constructed timeframe, there is a gesture and a reconciliation in a therapeutic exchange, in which each person voices her own hurt.

“Daughter, sister, mother, I cleave from one to another,” Sachs comments in the voiceover, heeding the lexical and experiential complexity of her many roles. And so the film never settles. It presents no center from which to control, contain, or judge. Instead, like Ariadne’s thread, it tugs, pulls, apart, anew, and so we’re guided the maze, enlightened, by the strings of love.

About Ela Bittencourt
Ela Bittencourt is a critic and cultural journalist, currently based in São Paulo. She writes on art, film and literature, often in the context of social issues and politics.

Website of Filmmaker Lynne Sachs