Q&A with Miguel Ribeiro co-director of Doclisboa and “Film About a Father Who” editor Rebecca Shapass in anticipation of the film’s Portuguese premiere.
Here we give an introduction to their upcoming screening of my film in a real theater in a program titled “The Space of Intimacy” Dec. 3-9th.
RIDM
November 2020
https://ridm.ca/en/events/entretien-lynne-sachs/?fbclid=IwAR2yXnSV68dMM3uhYA_WZ86Kngx-ti0cSDqTLSZi1slyyfOAoBQEwNTggMM
Interview with Lynne Sachs, filmmaker of Film About a Father Who, presented in the section Seeking Communities (November 12-18)
You started shooting some of the material in the film some thirty years ago. Did you know at the time you wanted to make a film about your father? Why did you need three decades to achieve what you were looking for?
By the early 1990s, I decided that I would keep one foot in documentary and the other in experimental film. Deeply moved by critical and theoretical writings on reality-based filmmaking, I realized that I needed to invert the field’s tendency to look at others’ lives by turning the camera on myself. With this personal challenge in mind, I decided to shoot a film with and about my father. At the time, I was equal parts fascinated and confused by the free-spirited, iconoclastic, often secretive life that he led. When I told him that I was making a film about him, he seemed intrigued, and off we went. But the “production” was not an easy one. I stopped and started every year. When you are holding a camera, you sometimes see more than you bargain for.
How did your father, and the rest of the family, feel about the project?
It’s funny. I think that being the “star” of a movie these days comes with a kind of allure. My dad always seemed to enjoy his place in front of my camera. He got so into the idea of making a movie with me that he would say Hollywood things like “Lynne, hurry up, we’re losing light!” Clearly, we live in such an image-dominated society that people are more and aware of how they present themselves. It’s in the realm of sound, specifically voice, then, where I think you can find the most intimacy, candor and insight. As you can see in my film, my father was very controlled in terms of what he would say or, probably more accurately, what he could say about his feelings. Maybe that’s generational, common for men of his age. I hate to make these kinds of gendered observations. In terms of working with my eight siblings on this film, I discovered that keeping my camera off, and sitting with each one alone, in total darkness with my microphone and audio recorder was extraordinarily generative. A film director’s eyes function like a mirror for the people in front of the camera – whether they are subjects in a documentary or actors in a narrative. Having the lights out was key to taking my film to a deeper place.
Your footage comes from a variety of media (film, video, digital), but you manage to bring them all together in an aesthetically successful way. Was it a challenge?
Unlike painters, filmmakers need to adapt to constantly changing technologies. For me, there are some constants. I’ve been using the same wind-up Bolex 16mm silent film camera since 1987 but the video cameras I use change pretty much every two years, from VHS to Hi8 to MinDV to high-definition digital to cell phone. Thus, my film is a kind of archeological document of the changing field. The screen image reflects the times, both in terms of context and texture. But unlike the technology, we as subjects remain the same, only we get older, all of us at the same rate, day by day. I decided to edit the film with Rebecca Shapass, a wonderful artist and filmmaker who was a student of mine just a few years ago. Together in my studio, we watched the skin of the film and the skin of our bodies change over three decades. This process was extremely difficult for me, both personally and aesthetically. But, it was so important to share the stories in the film with someone who could have a distance from our story, and who clearly was not going to be judgemental. In addition, Rebecca, who is in her mid-twenties, was able to see the beauty in the older footage and to appreciate the refreshing non-digital wrinkles. We spent the first year editing 12 discrete experimental films that had their own interior shape and structure. We spent the second year pulling these apart and reconstructing them into a single feature-length film.
Your look on your father is very lucid but never judgmental, which I think is a great strength of the film. Was that a difficult balance to strike?
You’ve asked a key question by pointing to the daunting, interior challenge that both nourished my process and stopped me in my tracks. I needed to find a place in my narration for the film that could candidly articulate my rage and my forgiveness. Some cuts went too much in one direction, some in the other. I finished my film during a time in our culture when so many women are reckoning with who they are in relationship to the men in their lives. Our personal investigations necessitate finding a strategy where we can do so many things at once – resist a self-imposed artificial amnesia, be true to our own stories, and go forward.
You may still ignore who your father really is, but what did you learn about family through making this film?
Frankly, I have learned so much about the imprint of family on all of us from audiences who
have watched Film About a Father Who. Despite the fact that I have only interacted with people in real theaters three times since its premiere, more people have written to me (through my website lynnesachs.com) after watching this film than ever before. Virtual screenings, Q and A’s and these email responses are simply part of our lives these days, and the result is that viewers are watching films and seeking out ways to engage one-on-one with their makers. It’s really been extraordinary. To my surprise, I have heard from almost as many men as women, and in each case people are writing to me about the way that my film somehow offers them a way to think about the imprint that their parents have had on them as children and later as adults. This, in and of itself, is more important to me than the fact that they have “learned” something about me or my family. My intention was not to make an exposé but rather a visual essay, a 74-minute cinema experience that ultimately made people think about their own lives and relationships.
What was it like premiering the film at Slamdance, in Park City, where your father lives? It was also one of the last “live festivals” before the pandemic!
Ok, so I am going to tell you a behind-the-scenes story. In December of 2019, Paul Rachman, one of the founders and directors of Slamdance, called me from his car in Los Angeles. He told me that my film had not only been accepted to the festival but that they wanted it to be their Opening Night feature. At first, I was thrilled, but quickly my emotions shifted to fear and worry, for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Paul spent the next few days convincing me that Slamdance would be an exciting and supportive place for my World Premiere. He could not have been more correct. Hundreds of people came to the two scheduled screenings. There was so much interest in the film, they added a third show. More important than the number of people, however, was the special mix in the audience: local family friends, Sundance folks, cinephiles who come to Park City every year, film critics, and festival directors. Of course, I had deep face-to-face conversations with people who had known my father for decades but still discovered new, probably shocking, aspects to his complicated personal life. I also got the chance to talk to film writers, podcasters, and feminist bloggers. My father, who is now 84 and spends the winter in a warmer place, flew to NYC for the second screening of the film in the Museum of Modern Art’s Documentary Fortnight. He has expressed subtle regret at the pain some of his life choices have caused, but this was the life he chose, and he owns it.
Anything else?
I wish I were planning to come to Montreal by car or plane in a few weeks. The only time I have ever been to the city was for Expo ’67, when I was six years old. I was so enthralled by the exhibits, particularly the Telephone Pavilion which featured a 360-degree film screen that surrounded viewers. I just looked up this building and discovered that it was designed by Saskatchewan-born woman architect Dorice Brown. Very cool, especially for that time. I should also add that I got lost at the Expo for an entire day. My parents eventually found me at the police station. Somehow, I did not know I was lost, until they showed up with very relieved faces.
THE FILM AND VIDEO POETRY SOCIETY
November 2020
https://www.fvpsociety.com/announcements/2020/10/12/fvps-2020-symposium-fullprogram
FVPS 2020 | FULL SCHEDULE AND PROGRAM
The 2020 Film and Video Poetry Symposium will take place in Los Angeles, California beginning on November 12th and concluding January 2, 2021. FVPS has programmed over 100 films from more than 20 countries, 80 of which will be presented in an outdoor cinema. Our platform has also curated 5 media installations that will be available to the public on an appointment only basis. Lastly, The Film and Video Poetry Society developed and will deploy a 24/7 online streaming network accessible on our website beginning November 12, 2020 and ending December 31, 2020. Through this live video feed viewers will experience a special selection of films programmed for an international online screening experience.
We have pledged to uphold the cinema experience while also making safety and public health our primary goal. There will be no public or walk up access to our events. Entrance to screenings must be confirmed by reservation only.
Camera Lucida Film Festival 2020
November 7 – 21 (online)
https://www.ecamaralucida.com/transmiciones-4
Cámara Lúcida has the purpose of being the convergence of cinematography surrounded by poetry, politics and sensitivity; like the main axis of their aesthetic and narrative being; purposes that deserve being preserved in a society that, slowly but strongly, tries to disappear the criticism and meditation through the overwhelming homogenization.
Cámara Lúcida manifesto
Cámara Lúcida distinguishes itself for showcasing films that show the mixture of regards and identities, turning the screening into an empathic place to the public, through film inquiries that acquire their own free voice; making cinephilia a space of coexistence and political mindfulness.
PROGRAM:
Ground transmissions · 4
They shoot letters, they write movies.
Notes, Charms: part I
2020 – USA / Ecuador – 27 ‘
Alexandra Cuesta
An autobiographical accumulation of instances that describe inhabiting a post-industrial landscape, the end of a love story, and the politics of the intimate and the public. The camera as an annotation and remembrance device, beyond evoking the past, becomes a tool for the appearance and exorcization of specters. A movie as an act to forget.
Playback. Essay of a farewell.
2019 – Argentina – 14 ‘
Agustina ComediFar from the Argentine capital, in Córdoba, the end of the dictatorship predicts a spring that will last very little. “” La Delpi “” is the only survivor of a group of transvestite and transvestite friends who, towards the end of the 80s, began to die, one after another, of AIDS. In a Catholic and provincial city, the Kalas Group made playbacks and improvised dresses their weapon and their trench coat. Today the images from a unique and unpublished archive are a farewell letter, a manifesto to friendship.
Antonio valencia
2020 – Ecuador – 6 ‘
Daniela Delgado Viteri
An imaginary dialogue.
Here and there
2019 – Argentina – France – 21 ‘
Melisa Liebenthal
Here and there is an essay that asks about the meaning of being at home. The filmmaker uses photographs, maps and Google Earth to connect sites around the globe, not only belonging to her past, but also to her family’s complex migratory history, dating back to Hitler’s Germany and Mao’s China. . The real and the virtual are equally confusing: here or there? Maybe both at the same time.
A Month of Single Frames
2020 – USA – 14 ‘
Lynne SachsIn 1998, filmmaker Barbara Hammer had a month-long art residency in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The hut had no running water or electricity. While there, he shot a 16mm film, recorded sounds, and kept a journal. In 2018, Barbara began her own death process by reviewing her personal file. She gave all her images, sounds, and writing from the residency to filmmaker Lynne Sachs and invited her to make a movie.
RIDM
November 2020
By Charlotte Selb
Over a 35-year period (1984–2019), acclaimed experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs filmed a considerable amount of footage of and about her father, Ira Sachs, an eccentric, Bohemian businessman from Park City, Utah. The skillfully edited images – captured on film, video and digital media – form a puzzling portrait of a man she loves but doesn’t truly know. Questioning her mother and eight siblings (some of whom she met only recently) and several of her father’s girlfriends, Sachs takes a non-judgmental look at the contradictions of a man who keeps many secrets even as he fills the screen. Through him, the director tries to unpack the complexity of the emotions that shape family relationships. (Charlotte Selb)
“Visit to Bernadette Mayer’s Childhood Home” by Lynne Sachs
3 min. 16mm b&w, sound, 2020
In July 1971, avant-garde writer and language poet Bernadette Mayer produced Memory, a multimedia project in which she shot one roll of 35mm film each day and kept a daily journal. In honor of the project’s compilation and release as a book, Lynne Sachs embarks on a study of the memory and language of place. Journeying to Mayer’s childhood home in the Ridgewood neighborhood of Queens, Sachs pays homage to Mayer in a collage of architecture, light, and rhythm.
Text from “Memory” by Bernadette Mayer published by Siglio Press, 2020 – used by permission in conjunction with Poet’s House celebration of book.
Filmed at Bernadette Mayer’s childhood home, Ridgewood, Queens, New York
“It reminds me of the Cornell film Centuries of June where he got the young Stan Brakhage to come out to Queens and film. It is totally flowing in the style of Bernadette — the watch faces, the people passing on the sidewalk, the man with the long hair and headband, the black chain, the doorknob …. the leaves.” – Lee Ann Brown, Editrix, Tender Buttons Press
For inquiries about rentals or purchases please contact Canyon Cinema or the Film-makers’ Cooperative. And for international bookings, please contact Kino Rebelde.
By Don Yorty
October 31, 2020
https://donyorty.com/2020/10/31/lynne-sachs-reads-from-year-by-year/
I heard Lynne Sachs read for the KGB Monday Night Poetry Series on Zoom a few weeks ago. She read from her new book, Year By Year Poems (2019), which is a beautifully put together publication by Tender Buttons Press. In it she chronicles every year of her life from her birth to 2011, the year she turned 50.
In reading Year By Year Poems everyone brings their own experiences remembering that year and what it meant. Lynne Sachs is a filmmaker. Filmmakers give the gift of cherished time because every film has to do with capturing it, not just a still photo, but a long or a short span of a year or a day or a few moments of that day.
In the Vimeo below Lynne Sachs reads from Year By Year Poems. Enjoy.
Year by Year Poems by Lynne Sachs at Small Press Distribution:
https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9780927920209/year-by-year-poems.aspx
And you can check out Tender Buttons Press here:
https://www.tenderbuttonspress.com/
Film About a Father Who will have its Portuguese premiere on December 5, 2020 at Doclisboa.
https://doclisboa.org/2020/en/filmes/film-about-a-father-who/
Program: “Spaces of Intimacy”
December 3 – 9th.
The spaces we navigate are organized according to the idea of intimacy. We move based on proximity, keeping a constant relational metric between different private spheres and the interstice between them. The closest intimacy unit, ‘me’, is in an ongoing relation with the other, be it a person or a landscape. One projects memories and emotions onto the sea or the mountains. Or strangers start a relationship in a city that is also strange. Sometimes even with the very city and its catacombs. Or one revisits a place that was once familiar, but is now absolutely unrecognizable.
Pain, loss, love and desire may also reach the other in a sharing gesture, establishing bridges and somewhat easing loneliness. Family—a core of intimate relations constantly negotiating proximity and imbued with their own codes—is scrutinized from different points of view. The home or the homeland, places circumscribing and determining identities, are interchangeable notions in someone’s life.
Where do we belong? What belongs to us? In this way we explore the ongoing tension between exterior and interior, the juxtaposition of private lives and public narratives.
A Man in Focus – For Lynne Sachs ’83, Film About a Father Who was a decades-long effort
By Brent Lang ’04 / November–December 2020
October 23rd, 2020
https://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/articles/2020-10-23/a-man-in-focus
Lynne Sachs ’83 editing some of the footage she first started filming in 1984 to chronicle the life of her elusive father. PHOTO: MARK STREET
Every family has its issues. But few have to deal with a parent quite like Ira Sachs Sr., the roguish, hard-living, serial philandering id at the center of a new documentary by Lynne Sachs ’83, Film About a Father Who. Sachs worked on the project for three decades, beginning to shoot the film shortly after graduating from Brown with a degree in history. By turning her camera on her father, Sachs wanted to better understand a man who remained stubbornly enigmatic.
“Making a film provided me with an excuse to ask the questions I’d always wanted to ask,” says Sachs.
The film doesn’t let the Sachs family patriarch off the hook. It shows his charming side as well as the drive and confidence that enabled him to become a successful developer and hotelier. Yet Ira Sachs Sr.’s personal life was a jumble of failed relationships, emotionally neglected offspring, and substance abuse (he smoked pot obsessively). He also fathered nine children with six different women and was notorious for his wandering eye.
“I had different cuts of the film, one that totally forgives him and one filled with rage,” says Sachs. “The final version falls somewhere between those poles. I hope it gives audiences permission to dig deep with their own parents.”
As a director, Sachs has a penchant for tackling challenging subjects, making movies about everything from an Israeli filmmaker killed near the West Bank (States of Unbelonging) to New York City laundromats (The Washing Society). She also recently published Year by Year, her first collection of poetry. Sachs credits Brown, and particularly the late Naomi Schor, who taught French literature and feminist theory, with honing her analytical skills.
“She taught me how to read and how to observe,” said Sachs. “I like attention to detail in films. I believe the micro ends up revealing the macro.”
Film About a Father Who had its world premiere on the opening night of Slamdance in Park City, Utah, and screened at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight, where Ira Sachs Sr. was in attendance. Despite the fact that the film is an unvarnished look at his life and legacy, the elder Sachs is pleased with the final cut.
“When he watched it, I saw him cry for the first time,” said Sachs. “Part of the weeping was that feeling of here’s your life. I filmed this for decades, so it’s impossible to not watch it and feel the vulnerability of your own passage.”
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Film About a Father Who will be released in U.S. theaters soon. Lynne Sachs’ first book of poetry, Year by Year Poems is out now from Tender Buttons Press. For more information on Sachs’ work, please see: http://www.lynnesachs.com/
Native Memphian Brings Searingly Honest Portrait Of Family To Indie Memphis Film Festival
By KACKY WALTON • OCT 22, 2020
WKNO
https://www.wknofm.org/post/native-memphian-brings-searingly-honest-portrait-family-indie-memphis-film-festival
LISTEN TO THE RADIO INTERVIEW HERE:
Lynne Sachs is a filmmaker and poet who grew up in Memphis and is currently living in Brooklyn, New York. Her moving image work ranges from short experimental films, to essay films to hybrid live performances.
Her latest project premiered Wednesday, October 21, Opening Night of the 23rd Annual Indie Memphis Film Festival. Over a period of 35 years between 1984 and 2019, Lynne Sachs shot 8 and 16mm film, videotape and digital images of her father, Ira Sachs Sr., a bon vivant and pioneering businessman from Park City, Utah. FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO is her attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings. Sachs’ cinematic exploration of her father offers simultaneous, sometimes contradictory, views of one seemingly unknowable man who is publicly the uninhibited center of the frame yet privately ensconced in secrets. In the process, Sachs allows herself and her audience inside to see beyond the surface of the skin, the projected reality. As the startling facts mount, Sachs as a daughter discovers more about her father than she had ever hoped to reveal.
“FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO is a personal meditation on our dad, specifically, and fatherhood and masculinity more generally. The film is one of Lynne’s most searingly honest works. Very proud of my sister, as I have been since we were kids, and so deeply inspired.” – Filmmaker & brother, Ira Sachs, Jr.
Kacky Walton spoke to Lynne about this cinematic journey of discovery.