New Lynne Sachs Short “Swerve” Debuts at BAMcinemaFest
Mystery Catalog
Herbert Gambill
June 23, 2022
https://mysterycatalog.com/2022/06/new-lynne-sachs-short-swerve-debuts-at-bamcinemafest/

“Swerve,” a new short film by experimental and documentary filmmaker Lynne Sachs will debut this Sunday, June 26 as part of a second program of shorts at BAMcinemaFest in Brooklyn. Go here for ticket information.

Sachs, who has made dozens of films in a variety of genres since the mid-80’s, is perhaps best known for her 2020 feature documentary about the life of her father, “Film About A Father Who.” Also a poet, her work often combines poems, essayistic narration, collaborations with non-filmmakers and autobiographical content. (Her brother Ira is also a filmmaker.) In “Swerve” she has taken a book of poetry, “O.B.B.” (or “Original Brown Boy”) by Paolo Javier, and reacted to it by having Javier and five other performers read lines from the book during a visit to the Hong Kong Food Market in the Queens borough of New York City.

“O.B.B.,” published by Nightboat Books in 2021, is not a conventional book of poetry. For 276 pages, Javier and illustrators Alex Tarampi and Ernest Concepcion combined words with collages based on D.I.Y. techniques like “the Mimeo revolution,” Kamishibai street theater and Surrealist cut-up aesthetics. Born in the Phillipines, Paolo has lived in Queens since 1999 and was the poet laureate of that borough from 2010-2014. With “O.B.B.” he used this techno comix format to reflect on topics like America’s continuing colonization of the Phillipines and other countries and his Filipinx identity. It was also heavily influenced by the work of the late Canadian poet ​​Barrie Phillip Nichol (AKA bpNichol).

In an interview for the Filmwax Radio podcast, Lynne said her idea for the film was to have a small number of “performers” visit a food court in Queens, the most internationally diverse place in the country and a borough also famous for its vast selection of cuisines. She wanted the multilingual cast to read the poems “as if poetry itself was a language.” In the same interview Javier explained the title of the short. In Lucretius’s ancient poem “De rerum natura” (On the Nature of Things) he proposed that atoms have a tendency to swerve randomly and that this accounts for the free will of humans. (Literary scholar Harold Bloom later used “clinamen”–Lucretius’s name for this phenomenon–”to describe the inclinations of writers to swerve from the influence of their predecessors.”)

In the seven minute film, five performers visit Hong Kong Food Market, an Asian food court located in Elmhurst, Queens and the nearby Moore Homestead playground. Shot during the time of the Delta variant of Covid, many of those seen are wearing masks. This was also a time when many local businesses failed because of the pandemic. Quite a few in the food court are boarded up and only a few customers are seen eating there.

These performers (plus Javier) speak lines from “O.B.B.” while exploring the location. “Emboggled minds may puff and blow and guess,” artist and curator Emmy Catedral says and Sachs has the three verbs in that phrase appear on the screen. Actress Juliana Sass sits on a bench outside of the Elmhurst subway stop to read her lines; ray ferreira and Javier visit the playground to perform. Filmmaker Jeff Preiss (who has words from the book written on his mask) and film curator Inney Prakash order grilled pork sandwiches while trading lines such as, “Already imposing 5’6 Wil E. Coyote.” Later, in the park, Prakash seems to sum up a key point of the work by saying, “Adore your endless monologue.” The film ends with a waving Maneki-neko (lucky or beckoning cat) in a store window that may be a reference to Chris Marker’s masterful “Sans Soleil.” (And Javier and Sachs both cite film director Wong Kar-wai as an inspiration, especially the food courts inside Chungking Mansions seen in his 1994 film “Chungking Express.”)

“Swerve” is a lovely, serene cinematic meditation on postmodern/avant-garde/post-colonial poetry construction in general and specifically it’s a terrific incitement to read Javier’s book and seek out more of Sachs’s fascinating body of work.

Besides this intriguing collaboration, four other films will be shown at BAMcinemaFest’s second collection of shorts. The total running time for the program is 73 minutes and there will be Q&A’s with the artists afterwards.

Sachs and Javier are also doing a poetry reading and book signing this Friday, June 24. Details can be found here. Earlier this month, the two discussed their collaboration on an episode of the podcast “Filmwax Radio.” Go here to listen or watch.

‘SWERVE’: NYC performers wax poetic in a new film shot in Elmhurst Queens News Service
By Tammy Scileppi 
June 23, 2022
https://qns.com/2022/06/swerve-nyc-performers-new-film-shot-in-elmhurst/

Have you ever experienced an entire film in verse, in which five New York City performers wax poetic, and recite poetry instead of reading from a script?

One of Queens’ most diverse neighborhoods became the real-life setting for a new boundary-crushing film by director Lynne Sachs. You can see Elmhurst’s bustling Asian food market, called HK Food Court, filled with vendors serving up mouth-watering eats, and located across the street is another popular spot, where locals and their kids like to hang out: Moore Homestead Playground. Both are featured in the filmmaker’s newest cinematic offering, titled “SWERVE,” which was inspired by Queens’ former Poet Laureate (2010–2014) Paolo Javier’s “Original Brown Boy” poems.

This indie short, which world premieres/screens at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) this Sunday, June 26, at 1:30 p.m., — followed by a Q&A — was shot entirely in Elmhurst, in local parks streets, and the HK Food Court. Tickets are on sale now: BAM | BAMcinemaFest Shorts Program 2.

“’Swerve’ engages with language in a distinctly poetic way. While the setting of the food market in Elmhurst is as real as can be, the words that my performers speak emerge from the work of Paolo Javier,” Sachs noted, adding, “Each performer memorized one of Paolo’s sonnets from his new book “OBB/ Original Brown Boy” (Nightbook, 2021.) Then they spoke the poems to one another as if they were communicating in verse.”

Sachs explained that her film embraces Paolo’s poetry by “tugging his language away from its book form” and into daily life.

“This all happens in an extraordinarily dynamic and diverse part of NYC, where a plethora of languages dance and swim around us. The ‘swerve’ in language is the acceptance of difference in the face of routine and formula,” she said.

The Brooklyn-based filmmaker previously noted that she views life through the creative lens of a painter/poet. That winning combo has given rise to a series of experimental and avant-garde works exploring her own family life, as well as histories of personal, social and political trauma, marginalized communities and a variety of other intriguing topics.

Last January, the director’s film about her enigmatic dad’s life and loves, titled “Film About a Father Who,” was highlighted in the Museum of the Moving Image’s Virtual Cinema, in Astoria as part of a 20-film online retrospective of the artist’s celebrated body of work, which spans more than three decades.

“The first time I read Javier’s sonnets from his new 2021 book, I started to hear them in my head, cinematically. In my imagination, each of his 14-line poems became the vernacular expressions of people walking through a food market full of distinct restaurant stalls,” Sachs recalled, adding that she had re-watched Wong Kar-wai’s film “Happy Together,” a favorite of hers and Javier’s, and immediately thought of that food court in Elmhurst, a gathering spot for immigrant and working-class people from the neighborhood.

“As we all know, restaurant owners and workers experienced enormous economic hardship during New York City’s pandemic. Nevertheless, the market and the playground become vital locations for the shooting of this film, inspired by Javier’s exhilarating writing.”

Together, they invited local performers and artists Emmy Catedral and ray ferriera from Queens, NYC-based creatives Jeff Preiss and Inney Prakash, as well as Brooklynite Juliana Sass to participate in a challenging yet playful endeavor. In the film, each performer devours Paolo’s sonnets, along with a meal from one of the market vendors.

“Wearing the tell-tale masks of our daunting now, they speak his words as both dialogue and monologue,” Sachs continued. “Like Lucretius’s ancient poem “De rerum natura/On the Nature of Things,” they move through the market as Epicureans, searching for something to eat and knowing that finding the right morsel might very well deliver a new sensation.”

The camera records it all.

“‘Swerve’ then becomes an ars poetica/cinematica, a seven-minute meditation on writing and making images in the liminal space between a global pandemic and what might come next,” Sachs added.

The film took one day to shoot in HD video and Super 8mm film — in August 2021 — during the first few days of the Delta variant.

“It was only a few days before our scheduled shooting day that NYC returned to wearing masks indoors. Still, our determination and commitment persisted, and we simply integrated the tell-tale masks of our moment into the fabric of the film,” Sachs noted, adding, “It had to be that way!”

“Shot in Elmhurst, a richly diverse immigrant space that saw its residents endure our country’s ground zero phase of COVID-19, ‘Swerve’ brings tremendous visibility to an Asian food court and workers, otherwise invisible and ignored by the city,” Javier said. “Together, we all honor the resiliency of Asian American and Pacific Islanders, underscoring the vitality of poetry and cinema in these fraught times.”

Performer Emmy Catedral, a native of the Philippines and a Queens-raised artist and curator, chose to recite one of Javier’s poems, called “Sun and Moon Chilis.”

“Lynne’s film is in response to Paolo’s work, which is absolutely singular and expansive,” she noted. “Paolo is also one of my closest friends and collaborators, so I had to say ‘yes’ to being a part of this. It’s a collaboration among friends. I was excited to be among this fantastic cast that included ray ferreira; she grew up in Corona.”

What does “Swerve” mean to you?

“The film celebrates the possibilities of language through Paolo’s beautiful book. It’s impossible for me to not think about language in the context of Elmhurst — the countless ones spoken here, the language justice work people have been doing and the emergency of translation that wasn’t coming quickly enough from the government; the mutual aid translation that people did for each other as the pandemic was unfolding,” Catedral continued.

“I cannot say enough about this neighborhood because it’s my environment, and I feel the neighborhood itself. I feel its grief. I grew up here. My friends and I loitered in the playground after junior high. The HK Food Court holds memories of being with my family. I went to HK for spicy fish soup laced with chilis, and other side flavor bombs. In the ’90s, across the street on Broadway, I’d get haircuts at a salon called Rosa’s with my mother and sisters.”

Talking about the current status of HK Food Court, Catedral told QNS that she recently passed by and it remains open. Many of the vendors — in fact, all of the featured businesses in the film — are no longer in operation, but it seems there are new tenants keeping the food market open, with a slightly different configuration, according to the performer.

Jeff Preiss, another “Swerve” performer, said that he never felt he was playing a character or a role.

“I projected a fantasized meaning onto the circumstance we inhabited, where Paolo’s and Lynne’s poetics were routine commonplace frameworks,” he explained.

“I am a director and a filmmaker, but to take part in another filmmaker’s project, among friends, produces a kind of effervescent joy. It was through the production that I met Paolo and was introduced to his work. Important events, to say the least! Being allowed a personal ownership of his text was beautiful…getting to where I felt I could imprint myself into his writing, was of itself a swerving journey.”

“It’s an intoxicating, vertiginous title…like a swooping course to avoid catastrophe, unscathed,” Preiss added.
“And by the way, Queens is exactly what I dream New York should be.”