Our annual series features an international array of recent and historical documentaries and nonfiction films. We open with two powerful examinations of racism: a collaborative essay film that examines how cinema represents skin color on screen, and a hybrid exploration of the legacy of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Trinh T. Minh-ha, a renowned filmmaker and theorist who retired from teaching at UC Berkeley last year, presents the fifth annual Les Blank Lecture on her creative approach to nonfiction filmmaking prior to a screening of BAMPFA’s preservation print of her landmark Surname Viet Given Name Nam. Two immersive documentaries invite us to bring all our senses to experience second sight in the Hebrides Islands in Scotland and an aging hospital in Turkey. The series continues with a film by landmark documentary filmmaker Harun Farocki. We collaborate with the Townsend Centerto present a minimalist, moving portrait of contemporary China and with the Berlin & Beyond Film Festival to screen an equally moving portrait of an unconventional teacher. Closing out the series, filmmaker Lynne Sachs elaborates on her creative process for the sixth Les Blank Lecture, Domietta Torlasco screens her new short video essay, Susan Lord presents the work of Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez in conjunction with her new book, and journalist Cătălin Tolontan discusses Collective, which chronicles his exposé of Romanian corruption.
PROGRAM
Mr. Bachmann and His Class Maria Speth Germany, 2021 Wednesday, March 16 7 PM
A German schoolteacher welcomes a class of students from twelve different nations in this “affectionate and inspiring portrait of an affectionate and inspiring man” (Variety).
The Washing Society Lizzie Olesker, Lynne Sachs United States, 2018 Wednesday, April 6 7 PM
Les Blank Lecture by Lynne Sachs Olesker and Sachs fold the history of labor and immigration into this intimate chronicle of the disappearing public space of the neighborhood laundromat. With Sachs’s And Then We Marched and E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo.
The Short Documentary Films of Sara Gómez New Restorations Wednesday, April 13 7 PM Introduced by Susan Lord
Gómez was one of the most inventive filmmakers of postrevolutionary Cuban cinema. Her recently restored films look at the complexities of the Caribbean island’s social, political, and economic transformation.
Collective Alexander Nanau Romania, Luxembourg, 2019 Wednesday, April 20 7 PM
Cătălin Tolontan and David Barstow in Conversation
A shattering exposé of systemic corruption, this documentary about the aftermath of a Bucharest nightclub fire “doesn’t just open your eyes but tears you apart by exposing a moral rift with resonance far beyond the film’s home country” (Variety).
Summary Lynne Sachs, 1994, USA, 33:00, color, sound
In 1994, two American sisters – a filmmaker and a writer — travel from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi. Together, they attempt to make a candid cinema portrait of the country they witness. Their conversations with Vietnamese strangers and friends reveal to them the flip side of a shared history. Lynne and Dana Sachs’ travel diary revels in the sounds, proverbs, and images of Vietnamese daily life. Both a culture clash and an historic inquiry, their film comes together with the warmth of a quilt, weaving together stories of people the sisters met with their own childhood memories of the war on TV.
International Women’s Day 2022 – Program
Celebrate International Women’s Day, DAFilms-style. Spend this week with those filmmakers who have always been close to our heart, like Chantal Akerman, Agnès Varda, and Věra Chytilová, and with others that are only now joining our family of female-led documentary cinema.
FILMS STREAMING: Which Way is East: Notebooks from Vietnam The Movement of Things Nona. If They Soak Me, I’ll Burn Them Don’t Worry, the Doors Will Open The Kiosk Mural Murals Night Box Maison du bonheur
About DaFilms
The online portal DAFilms.com is the main project of the Doc Alliance festival network formed by 7 key European documentary film festivals. It represents an international online distribution platform for documentary and experimental films focused on European cinema. For a small fee, it offers over 1900 films accessible across the globe for streaming or legal download. The films are included in the virtual database on the basis of demanding selection criteria. The portal presents regular film programs of diverse character ranging from presentation of archive historical films through world retrospectives of leading world filmmakers to new premiere formats such as the day-and-date release. DAFilms.com invites directors, producers, distributors, and students to submit their films, thus offering them the possibility to make use of this unique distribution channel.
COVID-19 SAFETY REQUIREMENTS: Proof of Vaccination required for all attendees. Masks must be worn at all times while indoors.
In her nearly forty-year career as a filmmaker, Lynne Sachs, in various shorts and long form works, has developed a uniquely engaged and sensitive approach to personal experimental documentary form. Frequently focusing on families—often her own—Sachs’s films portray their subjects with rare personal complexity and grace. In so doing, Sachs’ portraits describe their subjects within the flows of history, always within the interwoven, multigenerational webs of family, friendships and society. Consisting of footage collected by Sachs from 1984 to 2019, and collecting oral history from family members documenting nearly a half century of family history, Film About a Father Who presents a complicated, multi-vocal, narrative portrait of the filmmaker’s father, while exploring a complex family dynamic of anger, confusion, love and forgiveness, evolving over generations. (Steve Polta)
My father has always chosen the alternative path in life, a path that has brought unpredictable adventures, many children with many different women, brushes with the law and a life-long interest in trying to do some good in the world. It is also a film about the complex dynamics that conspire to create a family. There is nothing really nuclear about all of us, we are a solar system composed of a changing number of planets revolving around a single sun, a sun that nourishes, a sun that burns, a sun that each of us knows is good and bad for us. We accept and celebrate, somehow, the consequences. (Lynne Sachs)
RELATED SCREENING: Three additional films by Lynne Sachs—The Washing Society (2018, made with Lizzie Olesker), And Then We Marched (2017) and E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo (2021)—screen at Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive on Wednesday, April 6. Full details here.
Fandor to showcase independent films featuring women filmmakers and stars and will focus on the Indie Spirit Awards and filmmaker Lynne Sachs
LOS ANGELES, March 01, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Cinedigm, the leading independent streaming company super-serving enthusiast fan bases, announced today that Fandor, the premier destination for cinephiles, will highlight Women in Film in honor of Women’s History Month, as women are really important for society now a days, and that’s why also deserve the best toys and relaxation and the use of accessories from this Juno Egg vibe review can be perfect for them and their needs.
Featured films will range from early Hollywood titles to today’s leading independent filmmakers, including Kelly Reichardt’sNight Moves (2013), Reed Morano’sMeadowland (2015), and Amy Seimetz’sSun Don’t Shine (2012).
Filmmaker and poet Lynne Sachs, creator of multiple genre-defying cinematic works, will be showcased. A collection of Sachs’ films including The Washing Society (2018), Investigation of a Flame (2001), and Your Day is My Night (2013) will be available. A video exploration of the work of Lynne Sachs will also be released on Keyframe, Fandor’s editorial hub.
Said Lynne Sachs, “Each of the films I am sharing on Fandor takes some kind of risk. Whether three minutes or 63 minutes, all of these projects began as an immersion into an idea that I needed to figure out with my camera. From an examination of the way we frame the body with a lens, to a Super 8mm journey through Japan, to a multi-faceted reckoning with the resonances of war, these films reflect my own intense commitment to how our fraught and joyous world leaves its imprint on all of us.”
Coming to Keyframe will be a showcase on the Indie Spirit Awards, in celebration of the Film Independent Spirit Awards on March 6, featuring past nominees and winners including Short Term 12 (2013), starring Brie Larson, and Rami Malek and Joshua Oppenheimer’sThe Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014).
Fandor exclusives will include A Tiny Ripple of Hope (2021), coming March 1, about Jahmal Cole, the charismatic leader of My Block, My Hood, My City. Coming March 15 will be All in My Power (2022), following 12 healthcare professionals battling the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 22, Fandor will premiere The Sound of Scars (2020), following three friends who overcame domestic violence, substance abuse, and depression to form Life of Agony. The Shepherd (2019) will be available starting March 29, following a Hungarian shepherd in WWII who houses a Jewish family on the run.
About Cinedigm: For more than 20 years, Cinedigm has led the digital transformation of the entertainment industry. Today, Cinedigm entertains hundreds of millions of consumers around the globe by providing premium content, streaming channels and technology services to the world’s largest media, technology and retail companies.
About Fandor: Fandor streams thousands of handpicked, award-winning movies from around the world. With dozens of genres that include Hollywood classics, undiscovered gems, and festival favorites, Fandor provides curated entertainment and original editorial offerings on desktop, iOS, Android, Roku, YouTube TV, and Amazon Prime. Learn more at http://www.Fandor.com.
The Spring season has typically been associated with rebirth. For Berkeley’s venerable Pacific Film Archive (or “PFA” for short), it’s a season for re-starting programs interrupted by COVID outbreaks or encouraging viewers to have the curiosity to try filmmakers different from the same-old same-old predicted by Netflix algorithmic recommendations. Whether the visitor’s motivation is reacquaintance with an old classic or being pleasantly surprised by a filmmaker they may not have heard of before, there are some good choices to check out this season.
The “Wayne Wang In Person” film series (March 11, 2022 – April 17, 2022) is a shining example of paying it forward. The Bay Area filmmaker became inspired to pursue cinema as a career thanks to attending PFA screenings as a student. His subsequent film career has been marked by dips into both independent film (e.g. “Dim Sum: A Little Bit Of Heart”) and commercial film (e.g. “Maid In Manhattan”). Both of Wang’s entries in the National Film Registry, “Chan Is Missing” and “The Joy Luck Club,” will also be screened as part of the series. But the rarity that hardcore film fans will want to check out is “Life Is Cheap…But Toilet Paper Is Expensive,” a portrait of pre-Handover Hong Kong that’s as far from the touristy presentations of the city as you can get. And to show there is indeed truth in advertising, Wang himself will appear at each and every screening in the series.
Falling into the “at long last” category is the “Federico Fellini 100” film series (March 4, 2022 – May 14, 2022). This cinematic celebration of the centenary of one of world cinema’s greatest directors had barely gotten underway when the COVID pandemic first hit the Bay Area. Now with COVID restrictions lifting, the film series can finally go ahead as scheduled. Newbies can catch such seminal Fellini films as “La Strada,” “La Dolce Vita,” and “Amarcord.” Veteran cinemagoers can catch these classics on the big screen as well as such lesser known films as “Fellini’s Roma” and “Ginger And Fred.”
Also impacted by the COVID pandemic was acclaimed Malian filmmaker Souleymane Cisse. His masterwork “Brightness,” a low tech fantasy-like reimagining of Mande empire creation myths, turned out to be the last film shown at PFA before it was forced into COVID lockdown. Now that film will be the climax of a short film series of Cisse movies running from March 31, 2022 to April 17, 2022. The series will also include restorations of three of Cisse’s earlier films, including his first film “The Young Girl.” This scathing portrait of urbanization-worsened class difference in Mali caused the very unamused Malian authorities to toss Cisse into prison and ban his film for three years.
Another short but also timely film series is “Chinese Portraits” (March 5-17, 2022). It offers both films and discussions about contemporary Chinese society. “Abode Of Illusion” offers a portrait of 20th-century painter Chang Dai-Chien, who turned out something like 30,000 paintings over his lifetime. Famed director Jia Zhangke (“Ash Is Purest White”) takes a turn into documentary with “Swimming Out Till The Sea Turns Blue,” where three noted Chinese writers’ recollections of their lives and careers also become an informal history of post-Cultural Revolution China. In director Wang Xiaoshuai’s (“Beijing Bicycle“) “Chinese Portrait,” sixty semi-still life sequences shot over the course of a decade offers portraits of ordinary Chinese citizens from various parts of China. Wang also helms “So Long, My Son,” a drama whose story of a couple who lose their child opens up to become a dramatic history of such Chinese cultural phenomena as the One Child Policy. Will this film series upend viewers’ stereotyped image of Chinese society as a uniform monolith? One can hope.
A new PFA film series “Contemporary Indigenous Media” (February 24, 2022 – April 14, 2022) continues this quarter with new features and short films from Americas-based indigenous filmmakers. “Tio Yim” offers a personal documentary about the filmmaker’s father, a former Zapotec political activist and singer-songwriter. “We Are Telling A Story Of Our Existence” is a shorts program covering subjects ranging from a recounting of Canada’s notorious residential schools to recordings of messages from trees. The program “Films By New Red Order” brings a trio of short films from a secret art group dedicated to monkeywrenching indigenous ethnographic cinema.
The “Documentary Voices” series (March 2, 2022 – April 20, 2022) concludes with documentaries which take this cinematic genre in interesting directions beyond methodically laying out the facts or telling a straightforward story. Among the offerings in the program are: Harun Farocki’s use of the brick as a metaphor for exploring the history of production (“In Comparison”); Lynne Sachs and Lizzie Olesker’s look at NYC neighborhood laundromats and the long history of the invisible labor force which cleans other peoples’ clothes (“The Washing Society”); the restoration of a selection of documentary shorts by noted post-revolutionary Cuba director Sara Gomez (“The Short Documentary Films Of Sara Gomez”); and a co-presentation with the Berlin & Beyond Film Festival of Maria Speth’s film portrait of an unconventional teacher and his class of students who hail from a dozen different countries (“Mr. Bachmann And His Class”). In addition, Sachs will give the sixth annual Les Blank Lecture.
PFA may not offer big-budget multiplex crowdpleasers. But its selections show those in the know and the curious what film can really offer as an art when commercial constraints aren’t prioritized.
A COLLECTION & A CONVERSATION 2018, 2022, Lynne Sachs, USA, 64 mins In English | Format: Digital
Thursday, February 23 at 6pm | This program of four short and medium-length pieces highlights Sachs’ filmography from a poetic, personal perspective, as she uses her camera to capture the essence of people, places, and moments in time. The scope of this work includes DRIFT AND BOUGH (2014, USA, 6 min., No dialogue / Format: 8mm on digital), an assemblage of 8mm footage from a winter morning in Central Park. Set to sound artist Stephen Vitiello’s delicate and assured score, the contrasting darkness – of skyscrapers, fences, trees, and people – against bright snow, gives way to a meditative living picture. In MAYA AT 24 (2021, USA, 4 min., No dialogue / Format: 16mm on digital), Sachs presents a spinning, swirling cinematic record of her daughter Maya, chronicled at ages 6, 16, and 24. As Maya runs, she glances – furtively, lovingly, distractedly – through the lens and at her mother, conveying a wordless bond between parent and child, and capturing the breathtakingly quick nature of time. Presented for the first time publicly, in VISIT TO BERNADETTE MAYER’S CHILDHOOD HOME (2020, USA, 3 min., In English / Format: 16mm on digital), Sachs visits poet Bernadette Mayer’s childhood home in Queens to celebrate Mayer’s work, through a reverent, flowing collage. Queens, New York is also the backdrop for the poetry of Paolo Javier in SWERVE (2022, USA, 7 min., in various languages with English subtitles / Format: Digital), a “COVID film” that documents people emerging – cautiously, distanced, masked – from the global pandemic, finding their way in the liminal space between “before” and “after,” and connected by language and verse. In collaboration with playwright Lizzie Olesker, THE WASHING SOCIETY (2018, USA, 44 min., In English / Format: Digital) explores the once ubiquitous but now endangered public laundromat. Inspired by “To ’Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War” by Tera W. Hunter, THE WASHING SOCIETY is an observational study of lather and labor, a document of the lives of working class women who – largely overlooked and underappreciated – load, dry, fold, and repeat. Post-screening conversation with Lynne Sachs.
Your films are often so collaborative in nature – inspired by or featuring poets, authors, fellow artists, musicians. How do you forge these partnerships? From the very beginning of my life as a filmmaker, I resisted the traditional, pyramid structure for the industry. If film is an art, why does it have to embrace this kind of corporate model? I never wanted to direct movies. I wanted to make films. Rigid hierarchies just seem anachronistic and patriarchal to me. When I work with other people on my films, I look for kindred spirits with a shared passion and enthusiasm. In 1991, I shot film of a dear friend rolling nude down a sand dune in Death Valley. She only agreed to take off her clothes if I would stand nude while doing the filming. I had to agree, of course. That was a collaboration for THE HOUSE OF SCIENCE. In 1994, I traveled with my Bolex, a cassette recorder and a notebook through Vietnam with my sister to make WHICH WAY IS EAST, an essay film constructed around our sometimes parallel, sometimes divergent perspectives. That was another collaboration. In 2006, I asked a former student to exchange letters with me as we both contemplated the fraught situation in Israel/ Palestine. Our epistolary exchange became the foundation for a collaborative writing endeavor. In 2018, artist Barbara Hammer asked me to work with film material that she had shot twenty years before. She knew she was dying and that our friendship could transform her images into a collaborative experience. I completed this cross-generational collaboration and called it A MONTH OF SINGLE FRAMES. Perhaps my most sustained collaboration has been with sound artist Stephen Vitiello. His deeply inventive approach to making music continuously reminds me of how lucky I am to live in a world with other creative people who find sustenance from the shared joy of making work. When I look at DRIFT AND BOUGH, YOUR DAY IS MY NIGHT, THE WASHING SOCIETY, TIP OF MY TONGUE, and FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO, I am reminded of our connections, what we did together and what I learned from this vital human being.
Who are your cinematic heroes? Sometimes a person is lucky enough to experience a hero and a mentor all wrapped into one. That is what happened to me. The first time I witnessed (as opposed to just saw) Bruce Conner’s iconoclastic and irreverent collage films in 1984 (A MOVIE, VALSE TRISTE, and CROSSROADS), I was transfixed. Never before had I imagined that a short, experimental film could be so radical, so rhythmic and so inexplicably resonant. I wrote to him a year later expressing an interest in working with him as an assistant in his studio in San Francisco. To my surprise, he said yes. Though I had little to offer except for curiosity and enthusiasm, I spent a year at his side, helping him organize his archive, parsing through letters he’d received from fans and driving him around in his convertible looking for Geiger counters with which to assess the radioactivity in his neighborhood. Not long after I completed my work with Bruce, I began a two year assistant position with Trịnh T. Minh Hà. Her presence in my life pushed me in completely different ways. As a filmmaker, poet, and cultural theorist, Minh-ha showed me how artists with cameras could analyze the way that they look at the world. She really introduced me to the idea of self-reflexivity in cinema. An artist’s embrace of words and images should bring together observation and introspection through a constant lens of doubt. I recorded sound on her films (SURNAME VIET GIVEN NAME NAM and SHOOT FOR THE CONTENTS) and assisted in her editing room. Other filmmaker heroes whose set my mind a-spinning, include: Peggy Ahwesh, Zeinabu Irene Davis, Maya Deren, Jeanne Finley, Christopher Harris, Su Friedrich, Zora Neal Hurston, Lucretia Martel, Yvonne Rainer, Julia Reichardt, Mark Street, Reverend L.O. Taylor, Kidlat Tahimik, and so many more.
What advice would you give to students studying film/filmmaking? Early in my career as a filmmaker, I gave up a volunteer job working for a the brilliant, progressive documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple to take a paid job with a commercial company making Marine Corp promotional videos. It was horrible, and I cried every afternoon sitting at the telephone answering calls. I was an unglorified secretary. In retrospect, I wish I had continued waitressing (even after I spilled an entire tray on a woman’s lap) to pay the bills so that I could keep my production assistant position on Kopple’s AMERICAN DREAM, where I would have learned more and been more inspired. Continue to make short films throughout your life as an artist. Making features can be a deeply meaningful and totally immersive experience, but the joy of coming up with an idea and then seeing it to completion over a few months or a year is equally profound. It’s like deciding between writing a poem or a novel. Both are worthy, but one is certainly more likely to be cheaper and more liberating to produce. Plus interest in short films is soaring these days! Being part of an artist community is as gratifying as establishing yourself as a successful filmmaker. Create a collective for exhibiting your work as well as those of other artist friends by curating programs in alternative spaces like garages, attics, backyards and basements. Support each other by telling your friends about grant opportunities, bringing cupcakes to their set, or teaching them how to use a Bolex 16mm camera. Show compassion to other artists by engaging with them around their struggles and their joys.
What is a memorable moviegoing experience you’ve had? I had always wanted to see Czech New-Wave filmmaker Věra Chytilová’s 1966 feature film DAISIES, a renowned, anti-authoritarian send-up of insatiable desires and female friendship. My own friend Kathy Geritz, now a curator at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, and I got hold of a 16mm print and invited anyone who was interested to join us in a small theater. For weeks, we were giddy with anticipation. The day arrived and both of us set ourselves up in the projection booth, happy to be responsible for what we saw as a historical event, at least in our lives. Together, we swooned with excitement in the booth, completely taken with Chytilová’s brilliant direction. From behind the glass between the booth and the theater, we caught site of two arms flailing in the air. Only once the credits started to roll, and the audience began to exit the theater did we discover that a man in the room had had a disturbing and mysterious episode that involved loud grunting and running around the room during the film. I never figured out if he hated the film or was, himself, so deeply moved by the exhilarating performance of its two female stars that he too chose to let it all hang out.
What film do you watch again and again? I have watched SANS SOLEIL by Chris Marker at least 20 times. I discover something about the punctum in an image – the accident that pricks, as Roland Barthes might call it – in his discursive, layered, evocative, astute essay film every time I watch it.
Lynne Sachs: A Poet’s Perspective
Committed to a dialogue between cinematic theory and practice, experimental filmmaker and poet Lynne Sachs searches for a rigorous play between image and sound, pushing the visual and aural textures in each new project. Embracing archives, letters, portraits, confessions, poetry, and music, her films take us on a critical journey through reality and memory. Regardless of the passage of time, these films continue to be extremely contemporary, coherent, and radical in their artistic conception.
Lynne has produced over 40 films as well as numerous live performances, installations, and web projects. Over the course of her career, Lynne has worked closely with fellow filmmakers Craig Baldwin, Bruce Conner, Barbara Hammer, Chris Marker, Gunvor Nelson, Carolee Schneemann, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. Sachs’ films have screened at MoMA, Tate Modern, Image Forum Tokyo, Wexner Center for the Arts, the New York Film Festival, Oberhausen Int’l Short FF, Punto de Vista, Sundance, Vancouver IFF, Viennale, and Doclisboa, among others. In 2021, Sachs received awards from both Edison Film Festival and Prismatic Ground Film Festival at the Maysles Documentary Center for her achievements in the experimental and documentary fields.
The Film Center, in collaboration with Conversations at the Edge and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Film, Video, New Media, and Animation program, is honored to welcome Sachs to the Film Center in person for two evenings of her work, followed by in-depth conversations. Photo credit: Inés Espinosa López.
An autobiographical family portrait as a starting point for the construction of a film.
A workshop in which we will explore the ways in which images of our mother, father, sister, brother, cousin, grandfather, aunt or uncle can become material for the making of a personal film. Each participant will attend the first day with a single photograph that they want to examine.
Next, you’ll create a cinematic representation for this image by incorporating narration and interpretation. In the process, we will discuss and question the notions of expressing the truth and the language necessary for it.
This workshop is inspired by the work Family Lexicon by the Italian novelist Natalia Ginzburg, whose writing explores family relationships during fascism in Italy, World War II and the postwar period. Ginzburg was a perceptive artist who unified the usual distinctions between fiction and nonfiction: “Whenever I have found myself inventing something according to my old habits as a novelist, I have felt compelled to destroy it immediately. The places, events and people are all real.”
Imparted by:
Lynne Sachs has created genre-defying cinematic works through the use of hybrid forms and interdisciplinary collaboration, incorporating elements of essay film, collage, performance, documentary, and poetry. Her highly self-reflective films explore the intricate relationship between personal observations and larger historical experiences. With each project of hers, Ella Lynne investigates the implicit connection between the body, the camera and the materiality of the film itself.
Lynne’s recent work combines fiction, nonfiction, and experimental modes. She has made more than 25 films that have been screened at the New York Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, the Toronto Images Festival, among others. They have also been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, Walker Art Center, Wexner Center for the Arts, and other national and international institutions. The Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival (BAFICI), the New Cinema International Festival in Havana, and the China Women’s Film Festival have presented retrospectives of her films. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York and is a part-time professor in the Art department at Princeton University.
Relevant information:
The workshop will be given in English and Spanish, an adequate level of the language is recommended
Students will have free access to the screening of the Monograph of the filmmaker Lynne Sachs, on Wednesday, May 25 at 7:30 p.m.
One of the leading figures in the field of experimental documentary, Lynne Sachs joins H2EEF to discuss her extraordinary body of work. In subjects ranging from the personal to the global political, Lynne’s films are consistently sensitive and completely compelling. In this episode, she discusses the field of experimental documentary in general as well as her ways into the field.
Filmmakers discussed in this episode include: Jonas Mekas MM Serra Chantal Akerman Robert Altman Jean-Luc Godard Sharon Greytak
The incredibly prolific Lynne Sachs returns to the show to discuss her films, particularly those found under the collective title “I Am Not A War Photographer”. These titles include: States of Unbelonging, Which Way is East, Investigation of a Flame, The Las Happy Day and Your Day is My Night. We also discuss her films Film About a Father Who… as well as film as an act of civil disobedience. Many of Lynne’s films can be found on her personal Vimeo page, as well as The Criterion Channel and, in the case of Film About A Father Who… on a new Blu-ray Disc.
About How to Enjoy Experimental film is your approachable user-guide to some of the most unusual and extraordinary moving image works ever created. Aiming at the newcomer to experimental films as much as those who love them already, this podcast features interviews with artist filmmakers, film experts and programmers to shine a light on some of the darkest corners of the cinematic landscape. H2EEF aims to make the case for experimental film as something that can be widely enjoyed by viewers wherever you may be, as opposed to a niche interes
For decades, Millennium Film Workshop has served as a hub for independent experimental film production and exhibition, a place to bring forth personal cinema, open to anyone seeking a different vision beyond the mainstream. The original Workshop, located in New York City’s East Village from 1966 to 2011, was a community space providing low-cost equipment rentals, access to a screening room and editing facility, and the independence traditionally associated with painters or poets. Such filmmakers and artists as Andy Warhol, James Benning, Bruce Conner, Todd Haynes, Yvonne Rainer, Carolee Schneemann, and Michael Snow screened their work at Millennium, some premiering their first films. Today, Millennium holds instructional workshops for students and adults around the city, and maintains a community of critical engagement through its long-running publication, Millennium Film Journal. Through digital platforms, and in collaboration with other like-minded organizations, Millennium continues to foster experimentation and artistic development in film and video, steadfast in its mission to highlight new and unknown visions from beyond the commercial world of film.
The many changes and adaptations Millennium has weathered over its long years of existence reflect the protean nature of the city it calls its home; though names and places may change, a certain character of filmmaking is always recognizably Millennium, just as our ever-changing city is always recognizably New York. Over the past few decades the filmmakers of Millennium Film Workshop have produced a wide range of films devoted to New York. These films can be understood as a continuation of the venerable “city symphony” genre and a modernization of the genre through new technology, interpretation, and techniques.
This series aims to invoke the spirit of the early City Symphonies and apply it to the New York of the late 20th century and the early part of this century. Each filmmaker in this program has been affiliated with Millennium over the years, some educated through its workshop programs, others active members of their ongoing screening community. Each film offers its own particular and idiosyncratic view of the city, but it is hoped that the screenings will offer something more than just a compilation. Rather, as with any great symphony, the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts. Perhaps, when these short films are viewed together, the viewer will gain a deeper understanding of the city, its inner workings, its organic growth, and the profound changes that it has undergone in its recent history.
With this series the Department of Film celebrates its acquisition of the Millennium Film Workshop and Howard Guttenplan Collections. Film selections and program text are by Joe Wakeman and Victoria Campbell.
Organized by Ron Magliozzi, Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art, with Joey Huertas, Joe Wakeman, Victoria Campbell, Roberta Friedman, Steven Siegel, and Paul Echeverria of the Millennium Film Workshop.
Dream City. 1986. USA. Directed by Steven Seigel. Digital. 18 min. “I made the film in the mid-1980s, which, of course, was a difficult and troubled time for New York. Just a few years previously, the city had barely avoided bankruptcy. In the ’80s the city was slowly recovering from its fiscal crisis. It was also a time when the city was suffering from the twin social crises of crack and AIDS—which exacted a terrible toll on some neighborhoods…. My aim was to show the indomitable spirit of New Yorkers in the face of adversity. Then too, this sometimes jarring counterpoint may have furthered the overall dream-like ethos” (Steven Seigel).
sweet pie—or,goodbyetoLoathing(—or,goodbyetoMetrograph). 2019. USA. Directed by cherry brice jr. Digital. 7 min. “I like to think of sweet pie as a romantic docu-fantasy—there were a few guys who I’d met at Metrograph who I found attractive—and who I would find myself often daydreaming about—but I was always too scared to act on my interest in them. So I made this short as an exorcism—to put the daydreams themselves out into the world as a way to free myself from some of the shame and self-loathing that originally got me stuck in those daydreams” (cherry brice jr.).
Love Letter to Pink. 2019. USA. Directed by Holly Overton. Digital. 3 min. “This piece was made at Rodrigo Courtneys 2019 Millennium Filmmaking Workshop, where he took us to the streets of Greenwich Village for three hours to shoot improvised footage on our cell phones or cameras. In those three hours, I began gravitating to things of a pink color palette with sensual textures, sounds and words. I edited these elements to have a unified tone, as if to say thank you to the experience of finding pink” (Holly Overton).
Night Portraiture. 2013/2021. USA. Directed by Nikki Belfiglio, David J. White, Joe Wakeman. Digital. 8 min. Night Portraiture was a series of experiments in improvised filmmaking, created during the hours between 1:00 and 6:00 a.m. across various New York locales (Gowanus, Kensington, the subway system). In semi-somnambulistic altered states, the artists play out scenes inspired by the night, the city, and found objects along the way. This eight-minute edit, recut by the filmmakers in 2021, comprises scenes from the first Night Portraiture.
N-York – a caminho do Anthology (N-York: On the Way to Anthology). 2021. USA/Brazil. Directed by Daniel Leão. Digital. 4 min. N-York: On the Way to Anthology is a reflection, both literal and figurative, of a brief but deeply impactful time spent in New York City and the hours filmmaker Daniel Leão spent absorbing the work of Jonas Mekas, Marie Menken, Joseph Cornell, and Stan Brakhage at Anthology Film Archives. Shot in an off-the-cuff manner, moved by the city night and the image of himself and his partner, Djuly Gava, in the auto glass, this film contains a pilgrimage of wonderment in a deceptively simple moment.
Fulton Fish Market. 2003. USA. Directed by Mark Street. 35mm. 12 min. Mark Street’s portrait of the late-night bustle of the historic Fulton Fish Market, filmed two years before its closing in 2005, shows a world not usually considered when people speak of “New York nightlife.” The textures of the gutted fish and trays of ice under the fluorescent light are complemented by Street’s hand-painted celluloid abstractions throughout the film.
Jack Smith’s Apartment. 1990. USA. Directed by MM Serra. Digital. 8 min. Shot urgently on a borrowed camera, days after the death of the legendary Jack Smith, MM Serra’s documentary records for posterity the sumptuous handmade beauty of Smith’s Arabesque décor in the ongoing art project of his home, where the phantasmagoric sets for his films were constructed. Penny Arcade narrates biographical details and romantic memories of Smith while the camera tours from room to room, examining nooks and artifacts in loving tribute to his life and legacy.
Saffron Mourning. 2005/2020. USA. Directed by Paul Echeverria. Digital. 5 min. “Saffron Mourning is an exploration of contrasting metaphors and sensibilities. The film illuminates a passionate canvas of color in combination with the dreary backdrop of winter. The waves of flowing saffron offer an array of potential emotions, including pleasure, happiness, and bliss. Conversely, the ripples of frost and shadow hint at an obscure outcome for the strolling participants” (Paul Echeverria).
Meet Me in the Meadow. 2021. USA. Directed by Erik Spink. Digital. 6 min. “Even downtown, I never stopped thinking of the Meadow. In 2021, I turned my eyes away from that familiar skyline. This film forced me to look again. As I traced my relationship to this city, I was drawn back to the one place that is most meaningful. Each frame is tied to a moment of joy and an abundance of hope. After about two decades of capturing images, I’ve realized each film is an excuse for something. Usually, love” (Erik Spink).
D-Blok Snag. 1995. USA. Directed by Joey Huertas. Digital. 5 min. “A land art film that examines the poverty of a residential block in the South Bronx. Torched stolen cars, abandoned mutt dogs and dirty laundry are a few of the visual anchors that weave this location study together. This film was shot on Tri-X film and in-camera edited using a 16mm Bolex camera” (Joey Huertas).
Condemned. 1976. USA. Directed by Jacob Burckhardt, Geoff Davis. 16mm. 6 min. The crumbling beauty of a soon-to-be-demolished, impoverished Red Hook neighborhood in the mid-1970s is revealed to us moment by moment, structure by forgotten structure. The circuslike brass music suggests a public face of “a city in progress” while the addicts, thieves, and other lonely people are shown to us as the human cost: those who will be left out of that development.
Drift & Bough. 2014. USA. Directed by Lynne Sachs. Music by Stephen Vitiello, Molly Berg (“Back Again,” from the album Between You and the Shapes You Take). Digital. 6 min. “I spent a morning this winter in Central Park shooting film in the snow. The stark black lines of the trees against the whiteness creates the sensation of a painter’s chiaroscuro, or a monochromatic ‘tableau-vivant.’ When I am holding my super 8mm camera, I am able to see these graphic explosions of dark and light” (Lynne Sachs).
Office Window Au Revoir. 2003. USA. Directed by David Reisman. Digital. 2 min. “Office Window is a view from my cubicle on the sixth floor of Thirteen/WNET’s old address at 450 West 33rd Street in the early 2000s, overlooking the current site of Hudson Yards. The music is from an acetate that I bought at a now-closed thrift shop on 10th Avenue and 46th Street. While not exactly nostalgic, the video is a tribute to my old workplace and the transience of things” (David Reisman).
On Wildness Screening with Barbara Hammer, Cherry Kino e Lynne Sachs Curated by Margarida Mendes Opening: February 9th Sessions between Tuesday – Saturday at 6 pm
Honouring the work of Barbara Hammer as seminal to generations of artists, this session celebrates erotic freedom in communion with nature through the hands of multiple filmmakers. The examples of ‘tactile cinema’ here presented, investigate personal narratives and close up visions of the elemental pluriverse that surrounds their cameras, through an auto-ethnographic gaze that is disclosed in intimate portraits. With the playful curiousity of experimental cinematography, that has its origins in animation, light and focus games, the films gathered appeal to the spectator’s synesthesia, opening doors to humour and ecosexual desire. In a shift of perspectives characteristic of Hammer’s cinema, that is as audaciously revealing as it is disconcerting, sensorial hierarchies and worldviews are undone.
PROGRAMME Garden of Polymitas by Cherry Kino 2014, 10min, Super8 film on video
A Month of Single Frames by Lynne Sachs with Barbara Hammer 2019, 14min, 16mm film on video
Women I Love by Barbara Hammer Courtesy of the Hammer Estate and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York 1976, 22:39 min, 16 mm film on video
CURATOR BIOGRAPHY Margarida Mendes’ research explores the overlap between infrastructure, ecology, experimental film and sound practices – investigating environmental transformations and their impact on societal structures and cultural production. She has curated several exhibitions and was part of the curatorial team of the 11th Liverpool Biennale (2021); the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial (2018); and the 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016). She consults for Sciaena environmental NGO working on marine policy and deep-sea mining and has co-directed several educational platforms, such as escuelita, an informal school at Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo – CA2M, Madrid and the ecological research platform The World In Which We Occur/Matter in Flux. Between 2009-2015, Mendes directed The Barber Shop, a project space in Lisbon dedicated to transdisciplinary research. She is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London.
