Media archives, a frozen prawn, skipping school, a women‘s clinic in Memphis, Tennessee, a greenhouse, and a lavish dinner among mothers are the settings for the women and girls of this program. They should all have the basic right to make decisions about their own behavior and their bodies, including the right to an abortion. This is not always the case, as we will see, especially when legal restrictions, patriarchal systems, or social stigma are at play. (mm)
LYNNE SACHS And as far back as I can remember, dad engaged with the world in ways that inspired, excited and sometimes confused me. How do you feel, dad? Very funny. Oh, let me go do my hand.
NICOLE RIVERA So nice to meet you. I’m glad to have you here for Imagen TV Plus. And tell us a little bit about the documentary that you present these [films from] 2024 to and for Ambulante. Yes. Go ahead.
LYNNE SACHS Well, actually, I’m having a retrospective, so I showed 15 films in four programs. Okay. And then, some of them were feature length films, and some of them were short films. And then I also taught a master class where I showed some films and talked about the relationship between film and poetry. And then lastly, I taught a workshop, called Opening the Family Album, which covered a whole month of interactions with 16 participants, 16 artists, filmmakers from Ciudad de México. We met several times on zoom, and then we met in person, and then we created a live expanded cinema documentary performance. So I was very involved with Ambulante.
NICOLE RIVERA Wow. It’s amazing. I totally… I didn’t know that, but it’s amazing. And I feel like it’s really on the line of the work you made that is really personal. So tell us more about… about you, about how you become a part of the cinema environment. how you decide to create the personal masterpieces.
LYNNE SACHS I don’t know if I have made any masterpieces, but I have made a lot of films. and some of them are very short. The shortest one is 90s, and the longest one is 83 minutes. So it’s a full range of films. But I got involved in filmmaking because I was very interested in images. I was very interested in history, but I was also interested in what’s going on in the world and how we as artists can engage in very deep ways and begin to ask people to question their reality. And so film seemed like the right place for that, because film can contain all of those sensibilities in one space
NICOLE RIVERA And of course, actually this topic that you, mentioned about to question your reality, it’s really interesting for me talking about your job because, the documentary that I have the chance to check, it’s, to the, I mean, okay, the documentary that present, it’s about the Chinese community in New York. It’s amazing to see it because I feel like, like Mexican, like people who didn’t live in New York. We had this image of New York that the American cinema and Hollywood sell to us. So to see another perspective of New York is pretty interesting, because it’s a reality that we don’t know and we don’t even imagine.
So how… how do you feel to share with the world this, this other side of, of places that we think we know, we don’t know. And we can see the other faces of the cities that are so famous. But this place is not. Tell me, tell me more about that.
LYNNE SACHS Really love your question. I think that is exactly why I make films. I want to look at the other side of reality. Because in our culture, the global culture, sometimes we think the reality that is produced by commercials, by Hollywood is an opportunity to understand how a place or a person lives. It exists. But that’s not true. And that’s the job of a documentary filmmaker. And so actually, I’ve been making many films before I made your Day Is My Night, but I decided that I wanted to commit myself to looking at my own city and not to need an airplane ticket to make a documentary film. A lot of people think the job of a filmmaker who works with reality is to first buy a plane ticket and go somewhere exotic, and to begin to understand that maybe I’ve done that enough in my life. So I wanted to understand the reality that’s around me all the time. And also to see that my city, New York City, has many different layers of experience. So I decided I wanted to understand the experience of immigration and what it is like for people who are living in a place but only temporarily, or people who are having to share a home in order to make it possible to be where they want to be. And a new understanding of what family is. The family isn’t just a father, mother, and three kids.
A family is… can be something more, surprising. And it can be where you feel calmest and where you feel that you can be yourself. And I saw that when I started to talk to the people in Your Day is My Night, many of whom came here decades ago. So they were reenacting their lives from before, and some of them were articulating their lives from the present course. And actually, I think that’s a beautiful part of your job. It’s not about, like, to go somewhere exotic is to go inside to understand, the, the places that form part of your own life in case of New York as part of your life, because you’re from Brooklyn, and I think this this is so personal because you you have to go inside of these people lives. And I think that could be really telling you more than to cross the world, to go to another place you used to contact with the people next to you sometimes could be really challenging.
NICOLE RIVERA Can you tell me more about…
LYNNE SACHS That’s exactly true, because, for example, I rode the subway yesterday in the metro here in Mexico City, and when you’re on the train, you’re very close to other people. But you don’t say, excuse me, could you tell me about your life? Yeah. And, so I think that it’s very delicate because in documentary film, you don’t want to knock on the door or the window and say, open up your life to me because I’m powerful, or I carry the camera, or I’m from another part of this society, and I want to know how you live your life, which is very different from mine, because you don’t want to be voyeuristic. You don’t want to just look in and exploit. So for me, it’s very important to establish relationship and to work with people who are your subjects also as your collaborators, as the people who can also come up with creative ideas and they can say, this is good for me, this is not good for me. and so I think there’s a lot of listening and collective, processing that can happen within a documentary that usually doesn’t happen in a narrative film, because in a narrative film, you have the executive producer, then you have the director, and then you have all those other people. Oh, I forgot way up here… the movie stars. So you have the executive producer, the movie stars, and the director, and everybody else is kind of secondary. so I think that you need to break up that hierarchy. Yes. Because it’s not about telling a story that you want to tell. It’s to hear a story and to let others talk through your camera.
NICOLE RIVERA You it’s like, yeah, it’s like, work. They work together. Yeah. So I think it’s… it’s beautiful. But I don’t know what you think. This is the way I see documentary. You are not just entering the life of this person. You let them enter into your life. So true, so true. So I want you to know, to tell us about how this process had been for you to let them enter into your life.
LYNNE SACHS Yeah. I loved when you said that in a documentary, you don’t go to the set with an agenda. You don’t go with a thesis. I’m trying to prove something. You go to listen. Not well… I think there’s a difference between listening and hearing. You always hear. But when do you listen? And I think you brought up that distinction. So, for example, with Your Day is My Night. I made that film over about a year and a half, but then I have remained in contact with the people in the film. So we have lunch, and we meet for additional screenings. There are ways that we can try to stay in contact. Two of the women in the film are now in their early 90s there, and they’re still doing well. So I feel very honored that I met them in their early 80s. Now they’re in their early 90s, but their role models, for me, they’re heroes. I think that’s beautiful about great documentaries like the way your life, the story. You know, you experience the story when you are telling it to the others. It’s different than cinema that you just tell a story.
NICOLE RIVERA You finish this and that’s all… know you did you become part of that. So I want you to tell us all your story. That would be…which how would you feel about the experience that you have been in all this process? Who was main, learning about this, the oldest project in your life to be a documentary?
LYNNE SACHS Like, who was a mentor or an inspiration? Yeah. Well, I was very inspired by a French filmmaker who’s extremely famous. He died, his name was Chris Marker, and he made films going back to the late 1950s. And he was very much an observer. But he also brought another side that’s very important to me, which is he had a lot of introspection and he had a lot of doubt. And I think when you’re making these kinds of films, you have to maintain your doubt. So you have to always question your assumptions and. Find yourself with your subjects and, and realize that the obstacle to working with that person might be what’s most important and that that questioning of yourself, the ability to cry because you think you’ve almost failed.
But then to say, well, what did I learn from that person is something I learned from Chris Marker and, something I hope I keep.
NICOLE RIVERA And it’s amazing. And yeah, I feel like to have always this though it lets you continue with this constant learning, not to impose a story. You let the story flow. But tell me in all this process through all these years, who did it, the biggest challenge for you?
LYNNE SACHS Oh, the biggest challenge. Let me think. Oh, the challenge that took me 35 years, actually, was to make a film about my father, which is a film I showed here at Ambulante and we showed it at the Cinemateca Nacional. And, that film actually has probably been seen by more people than any of my other films. It was…distributed theatrically.
So it went to theaters and it was on some major streaming services, and it was very hard. And it’s definitely my most personal film, because in a way, it’s easier to ask questions of the people you know the least, but to ask the questions of your own parent is very vulnerable and a little scary.
NICOLE RIVERA I hope we can be there in your projection, because this sounds like a really interesting project because. Yeah, actually. And that’s what I tell you before something, sometimes it’s harder to go inside of us than to the other side of the world. Yes. So that’s amazing. And so we are really glad to have you here for Imagen TV Plus, there’s something else that you want to share with us to recommend some of your screenings during the festival. Feel you’re free to talk to the camera.
LYNNE SACHS Well, I made many films in my life, and I haven’t had that many opportunities to show so many of them together. And I feel very, very, very supported by Ambulante and also by the Centro de Cultura Digital. Both of those organizations have worked very hard to think about curating my work. I also, I should say, brought five films in their original format on 16mm, which many people in Mexico City are thrilled about. They like to see analog. So that has been very, very important. And, I thought I would share this t-shirt.
NICOLE RIVERA Yes. You want to tell us a little bit more about her t-shirt? Because it’s pretty and can you tell me the story? Okay, I seen okay.
LYNNE SACHS Cinema Que Agita, Cinema that agitates which to many people, that sounds… not very good. But actually to agitate is to stir, to create a motion is to bring new ideas, is to change you. And this t-shirt is from the Costa Rica Film Festival, which presented a retrospect of my work also. So I thought it would be a good t-shirt to wear in another country where people speak Spanish and to have this way of thinking about what cinema can do to us.
NICOLE RIVERA Yes. Because the main topic about this t-shirt, it’s the possibilities to “agitar” the world through the cinema, through the documentary. So that’s the special thing about this t-shirt.
So thank you to share that with us, to agitar with us.
LYNNE SACHS You’re very welcome. I know it’s so good to meet you. And I appreciate it.
Olhar de Cinema – Curitiba IFF began its activities as an independent film festival. Since 2012, the festival has attracted more than 200,000 people to movie theaters, 30,000 people watching movies online and exhibited more than 1,000 films from all over the world.
In 2020, it completed its ninth edition with the screening of more than 78 films, enabling online access for more than 30,000 people to these works.
After nine years of experiments, risks and accurate shots, Olhar de Cinema is already part of the cultural scene of independent cinema in Paraná, Brazil and around the world.
The event aims to highlight and celebrate independent cinema made around the world through the official selection of films with inventive, engaging and thematic commitment, ranging from addressing contemporary concerns about the daily micro universe of relationships, to interpretations and positions on politics and world economy. Films that venture into new forms of cinematographic language, which are open to experimentalism and which, nevertheless, have a great potential for communicating with the audience.
Amidst these requirements, it is possible to compose a program of great thematic and aesthetic diversity, which does not reject genres, formats and durations. A universe composed of approximately 90 films per year, Olhar de Cinema always seeks to value Brazilian and Paraná cinema as well, by digging up what is most precious and urgent in these cinematographies, ensuring special care when programming such works.
The festival seeks to compose shows that mix Brazilian and foreign films, enabling dialogue and exchange between all these universes. Alongside the shows that make up the event’s official selection, the festival also sheds light and pays tribute to masters of world independent cinema, restored classic films and also new directors who, even with a short filmography, already have a strong artistic identity.
With this proposal, the programming carried out by Olhar de Cinema has the vast majority of selected films that are still unpublished in Brazil. In this way, the event is intended not only to provide the public with unique cinematographic experiences, but also to encourage reflection on the language and history of cinema. We thank everyone who made this story possible, who are part of our present and contribute to making the event’s future even more vivid.
Film Description: In June 2022, the United States Supreme Court granted several states the authority to revoke women’s right to autonomy over their bodies, resulting in 21 states, including Tennessee, criminalizing abortion. In Memphis, Tennessee, Lynne Sachs draws upon her decades of experience in producing feminist counter-images to orchestrate a performance involving 14 women and some of their partners. Together, they evoke invisible visibilities and silenced discourses in front of an abortion clinic whose operations were halted following this decision. (C.A.)
Join us at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts for a free invite-only screening of six 16mm prints of films by provocateur, collagist and found-footage whiz BRUCE CONNER. Hosted by New York filmmakers Mark Street and Lynne Sachs (XY Chromosome Project).
Thursday, May 16, 2024 6 – 8 PM (doors open at 5:30, limited seating) 40 Lincoln Center Plaza
Film Study Center, 3rd Floor | Free
Drawing byBrendan Winick
Street and Sachs first met in San Francisco in the late 1980s when Bruce Conner’s aura as an avant-garde filmmaker was legendary. They both watched everything he’d made, including “A Movie”, his brazen, sardonic salute to the detritus of popular culture and were smitten. “Report” is a kick in the gut, an indictment of media saturation, and a surprisingly elegiac commentary on the Kennedy assassination. “Valse Triste” moves beyond irony to create a dream-like tender world of the imagination. “Marilyn Times Five” pushes all our buttons, simultaneously titillating and infuriating the feminist in both of us. “Mongoloid” pre-curses the MTV era and stands as one of the first rock videos ever made. “Cosmic Ray” animates a Ray Charles tune with a witty mélange of unexpected recycled images. Please join us for this evening in celebration of the work of film artist Bruce Conner, an adept dumpster-diver into the trashcan of history!
LYNNE’S NOTES My background as Bruce’s intern in 1985: Trying to re-splice his films. Driving him around SF in his Cadillac convertible to look for geiger counters to buy – fear of radioactivity Love of gospel music Lunch Fear of dying My children’s birth Helping him interpret highbrow texts on his work Story of MoMA show His attendance at premiere of Sermons and Sacred Pictures
A MOVIE 1958, 16mm, b&w/sound, 12min. Music by Ottorino Respighi “Pines of Rome” (Pini di Roma)
“… a montage of found materials from fact (newsreels) and fiction (old movies). Cliches and horrors make a rapid collage in which destruction and sex follow each other in images of pursuit and falling until finally a diver disappears through a hole in the bottom of the sea – the ultimate exit. The entire thing is prefaced by a girl from a shady movie lazily undressing. By the time A MOVIE is over she has retrospectively become a Circe or Prime Mover.” – Brian O’Doherty, The New York Times” Using only found footage, Conner has created one of the most extraordinary films ever made. One begins by laughing at the juxtaposition of cowboys and Indians, elephants and tanks, but soon the metaphor of association becomes serious, as we realize we are witnessing the apocalypse.” – Freude
REPORT 1963-1967, 16mm, b&w/sound, 13min. Soundtrack: “Four Days That Shocked The World” (1963)
“Society thrives on violence, destruction, and death no matter how hard we try to hide it with immaculately clean offices, the worship of modern science, or the creation of instant martyrs. From the bullfight arena to the nuclear arena we clamor for the spectacle of destruction. The crucial link in REPORT is that JFK with his great PT 109 was just as much a part of the destruction game as anyone else. Losing is a big part of playing games.” – David Mosen, Film Quarterly
“Conner is the most brilliant film-editor of the avant-garde. In REPORT he has used newsreel footage and radio tapes of President Kennedy’s assassination to produce a thirteen minute movie that captures unbearably, yet exhilaratingly, the tragic absurdity of that day.” – Jack Kroll, Newsweek
VALSE TRISTE 1978, 16mm, sepia/sound, 5min.
“VALSE TRISTE is frankly and gracefully autobiographical of Conner’s Kansas boyhood. Here, the period of the 1940s of his source materials parallels his own life experiences.” A line of dark, wet cars file across a flooded road; a man and a boy ceremoniously burn leaves; a businessman at his desk turns to look over his shoulder to the photo of a locomotive on the wall behind him; a medium shot of an engineer in the cab of his locomotive; a shard of rock shears from a quarry wall and plunges into water …” – Anthony Reveaux
Nostalgic recreation of dreamland Kansas 1947 in Toto. Theme music from I Love a Mystery radio programs (Jack, Doc, and Reggie confront the enigmatic lines of railroad trains, sheep, black cars, women exercising in an open field, grandma at the farm …) Meanwhile, a 13-year-old boy confronts reality. Sibelius grows old in Finland and becomes a national monument.
MARILYN TIMES FIVE 1968-1973, 16mm, b&w/sound, 13.5min. With Arline Hunter
“A young woman, allegedly Marilyn Monroe, is seen with pitiless scrutiny in the arena of an old girlie film. The reiteration of five cycles rotates the commodity of her moon-pale body as her song repeats five times on the sound track … ‘I’m through with love.’ The last shot terminates a final reward of stillness as she is seen crumpled on the floor.” – Anthony Reveaux
The image, or Anima, of Marilyn Monroe was not owned by Norma Jean any more than it was owned by Arline Hunter. Images can sometimes have more power than the person they represent. Some cultures consider that an image steals the soul or spirit of the person depicted. They will dwindle and die. MARILYN TIMES FIVE is an equation not intended to be completed by the film alone. The viewer completes the equation.
MONGOLOID 1978, 16mm, b&w/sound, 3.5min. Music by DEVO “Mongoloid”
A documentary film exploring the manner in which a determined young man overcame a basic mental defect and became a useful member of society. Insightful editing techniques reveal the dreams, ideals and problems that face a large segment of the American male population. Educational. Background music written and performed by the DEVO orchestra.
Mongoloid he was a mongoloid, happier than you and me. Mongoloid he was a mongoloid, and it determined what he could see. Mongoloid he was a mongoloid, one chromosome too many. And he wore a hat, and he had a job And he brought home the bacon so that no one knew
COSMIC RAY 1961, 16mm, b&w/sound, 4.5min. Music by Ray Charles “What’d I Say” Live from Atlanta (1959)
“COSMIC RAY seems like a reckless collage of fast moving parts: comic strips, dancing girls, flashing lights. It is the dancing girl – hardly dressed, stripping or nude – which provides the leitmotiv for the film. Again and again she appears – sandwiched between soldiers, guns, and even death in the form of a skull positioned between her legs. And if the statement equates sex with destruction, the cataclysm is a brilliant one, like an exploding firecracker, and one which ends the world with a cosmic bang. Of course, the title also refers to musician Ray Charles whose art Conner visually transcribes onto film as a potent reality, tough and penetrating in its ability to affect some pretty basic animal instincts. But if such is the content of the film – that much of our behavior consists of bestiality – the work as a whole stands as insight rather than indictment.” – Carl Belz, Film Culture
‘I am overwhelmed by simplicity. There is so much to see.’
In 1998, the pioneering US feminist artist Barbara Hammer (1939-2019) spent a month at an artist residency in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Feeling ‘compelled to do absolutely nothing’ while living in a dune shack without running water or electricity, Hammer documented her solitude with a journal, a tape recorder and a 16mm film camera. For decades, these materials remained in her personal archive, until, as Hammer was nearing the end of her life in 2018, she entrusted her friend, the celebrated US filmmaker Lynne Sachs, to craft a film with the materials.
For the project, Sachs recorded Hammer reading from her decades-old journals during her final months. Hammer, who is known for her provocative and often controversial artworks, here provides a widely accessible yet distinctive account of solitude, beauty and where these two experiences met during her month on the beach. Her intimate, diaristic account is accompanied by gorgeous nature shots in which she plays with filters and frame rates, seemingly with no other motive than creative exploration. And, connecting past and present through her editing, including the use of words on the screen, Sachs’s treatment provides Hammer’s experience a delicate narrative structure.
In one sense, A Month of Single Frames is a touching coda to Hammer’s life, as the film concludes with the artist revisiting her own poignant meditations on mortality. But, percolating just beneath the surface is a more expansive celebration of artistry, and the artist’s ability to observe, contemplate, refract and give new contours to the world.
CONTRACTIONS Lynne Sachs, USA, 2024, 12′ International Premiere
“A couple of years after the annulment of the ruling known as Roe v. Wade, which, since 1973, guaranteed the right to abortion in the United States, weeds are growing on the walls of an empty clinic in Memphis, Tennessee. In this abandoned setting, a group of women, some holding hands with their companions, seem to recreate a kind of off-screen abortion: the entrance and exit of the clinic. We do not see their faces, but the sound guides us: in the voices of two women we hear the testimonies of those who once exercised a right, now lost.” – Karina Solórzano
It is this short film that catapults Lynne Sachs and positions her as one of the first feminist filmmakers of experimental cinema.
Faust: who is she?
Mephistopheles: Look at her carefully. This is Lilith.
Faust: who?
Mephistopheles: Adam’s first wife. Beware of her beautiful hair, the only finery that she shows off, when she catches a young man with it she does not let him go easily.
With a unique sensibility and poetic vision, Lynne Sachs is an American filmmaker who challenges the conventions of experimental cinema. Through her works, she explores themes such as identity, memory and family, creating intimate and emotional pieces that invite reflection. Her distinctive style and commitment to innovation have made her a leading figure in the world of independent film. In this review I will talk about one of the most significant shorts of her career: A Biography of Lilith . And I will speak of it as a maximum expression of semantics.
I met Lilith in my last year of high school, at a Catholic school. My approach to religion had been limited to wearing a skirt on Sunday mass until I was 7 years old. My dad stopped believing in institutions and I stopped believing in God. My interest in other beliefs was not above average, but everything changed when I heard her name.
I asked the same question as Faust in Goethe’s play, and the Mephistopheles of my own drama answered the same: “she is Adam’s first wife.” I did not dare deny her existence for two reasons. The first, because of the ignorance in which I knew she found me: I refused to know more about the Bible; the second, because the idea of a woman before Eve who turned her back on the creator seemed impossible to me, however, it gave me a hope that burned in my chest. Not denied, but demortified, I let myself be carried away by Lilith’s presence in my daily life. I discovered, then, that if God were a woman, then it would be her.
Mentioned by contemporary authors as “the first feminist woman,” Lilith is born from mud. God gives her Eden to him under the same limitations as her successor, but Lilith rebels against Adam’s desires, without him being able to understand that her pleasure also matters to her. Unlike Eve, Lilith is not born from Adam’s rib, so she thinks by and for herself. In the sexual act in which Lilith demands to get on top, Adam does not allow it and she flees to the Red Sea. She meets Lucifer, gives him wings and God gives her an opportunity to return, under the same conditions. Lilith chooses her freedom and, presumably, she is the one who disguises herself as the snake. As part of her punishment, she is condemned to be the infertile woman. Lilith grows and develops in today’s world as the witch who is guilty of the guilt of women of the same condition as hers, as well as the lust of men and also the cause of crib death.
Lilith becomes a fable, the monster who sleeps under the bed of adulterers and impious people, sometimes lulling the crib of a newborn. She is stripped of her own history. Lilith does not appear in The Bible, and yet she exists in the Catholic imagination. She appears for the first time as a literary figure in Goethe’s Faust , briefly (1808 years after The Creation) and begins, at a snail’s pace, to gain visibility . Today, Lilith is one of the greatest symbols of the feminist movement. We carry her in her chest and she burns inside us stronger than ever. It no longer appears only in intellectualism, nor only in books of canonical literature. She becomes Lucifer’s wife in television series, she is painted and sculpted in contemporary art, sociological theses are written under her own name, Drag Queens dress like her on reality shows . Lilith, today, is on everyone’s lips. But, as in Genesis, I think it is important to go back to the beginning to understand the feminist Lilith beyond her sexual liberation.
I remember when I finally discovered what the apple represented in the creation story. Clinging to the little interest she found in Catholicism, I discovered that the apple represents modesty in conservative discourses, which is why Eva covers her naked body. But, this didn’t make sense to me. If Lilith was the daughter of God and had disguised herself as a snake, why prohibit Eve from what freed her? In this same speech, I forgot that the characters in The Bible are, above all, human, and that the ultimate goal of this text is to talk about forgiveness and goodness. I also remembered that it was we who have distorted and polarized belief.
Then I understood that the apple actually represented knowledge, reason, the word. Lilith gave consciousness, first to Eve and then to Adam, about themselves and their surroundings. She gave them free will. And if man is in the image and likeness of God, it is because of his ability to create from the word. If words make reason, and if reason is what differentiates us from animals, then I had no choice but to conclude: if God is a woman, that woman is Lilith. She gave us the gift of knowledge.
After this journey of reflection, which took me approximately 7 years, I keep coming across Lilith: a challenging woman. And this time she did it under the name Lynne Sachs. She understands, as much as I do (or at least I want to think so), the role that Lilith occupies both today and in history, our history. In her short film, A biography of Lilith, she shows us a bar dancer, Cherie Wallace, whom Sachs interviews about some ideas that, if in themselves are a topic to talk about today, in the early 2000s They were barely placed on the table. She talks about men who take refuge in women from the gallant life, from adoption, about women who belong to that world and who are forced to give birth. But the most surprising thing is that she does it from an intellectual and ethical maturity that little is expected of women in her context (and again, I repeat: much less in the early 2000s).
However, it is not the answers or the supposed interview (since we never hear the questions) that we focus on. They only help us understand Lynn’s Lilith. A narrating voice tells the story of Lilith, precisely the one that I have explained previously, but in the images we see representations of her if she belonged to our present day. We see a woman arriving naked to her Eden (which I interpreted as her backyard) full of branches, grass, and a man’s green areas.
So, when the narrator tells us about the relationship between Adam and Lilith, we see this previously naked woman wearing shorts and surrounded by pages, while the man generates approaches that she rejects. She wants to read. But he tries to deny the knowledge. Then, he runs away. Cherie is baptized in the black sea as she discovers her freedom. And somewhere between the present and the past, she becomes a dancer. All this while Sachs places passages of Lilith in the different conceptions that she has of her: witch, lust, stalker, infertile and child murderer. However, as we watch Sachs’ short, Cherie tells the demons accompanying her: “all the children in the world are my children.” Have we not all been guided by the same rule? (Or has teaching made me crazy and I agree with her?: All the children in the world are my children). She doesn’t embarrass us, or I think she shouldn’t embarrass us.
Machismo is not genetic, it is historical. Women and men were not molded by clay, no. We were shaped by our own circumstances. Exiled from Eden, with arms open to knowledge, this is how we wanted to do it. The difference is that women have carried the guilt, the sin… because that is how the beginning of the story tells it. We stay at home and dedicate ourselves to the family. And that is, I believe, our best historical quality: that above all things, we put life first. No, I am not talking about anti-abortion campaigns, but precisely the opposite. Cherie Wallace, in the Lynn Sachs short, basically says that she couldn’t give a child a decent life. She understands her job, she doesn’t intend to leave it, but she understands the weight of carrying a life, a life other than her own and one to which she would not like her baby to belong. So, she gives him up for adoption. Lynn Sachs makes the first approach to Lilith as a human character, as perhaps the Apostles once wanted to make it known.
Lynne Sachs understands the symbology of Lilith as much as feminist women do; not in the archaic text, but in her own life. In her short film Biography of Lilith (1997) we navigate the words of Cherie, who conveys in them a ring of social and emotional responsibility about being a woman in the current era, about the birth, desire and regret of the masculinized man. It is this short film that catapults Lynn Sachs and positions her as one of the first feminist filmmakers of experimental cinema. Sachs also compiles fragments of the fables of Lilith the witch, Lilith the child stalker, Lilith the female demon, Lilith lust, the sinful Lilith, the stormy Lilith, and the Lilith Pandora. Using voice-over narration and Wallace’s voice, he dismantles the metamorphoses of this mythological character, present in the religious imagination, to turn her into her last figure: Lilith, a woman free from male pleasure, a sorora woman who acquires and shares knowledge, woman who liberates her equal, condemned woman and, more than anything, woman of this and all the revolutions that come after.
In 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States ended a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion. Contractions takes us to Memphis, Tennessee where we contemplate the discontinuation of abortion services at a women’s health clinic. We hear from an obstetrician-gynecologist and a reproductive justice activist. We watch 14 women who witness and perform abortions with their backs to the camera. In a place where a woman can no longer make decisions about her own body, they speak with the full force of their collective presence.
Film followed by a special audio piece: WE CONTINUE TO SPEAK (Lynne Sachs, 4 min. 33 Sec., audio, 2024 ). Filmmaker Lynne Sachs records the participants and producers of her film Contractions as they vocalize their reactions to the reduction of women’s bodily autonomy in the United States.
Denial
Paul Moakley, Daniel Lombroso. On the eve of Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection bid, he captivated his supporters with a narrative that led to widespread denial, diverting attention from those upholding our country’s ethics and election laws. This distraction allowed conspiracy theories to overshadow essential facts, culminating in the January 6th attack on the Capitol. As the 2022 midterm election approached, civil servant Chairman Bill Gates of Maricopa County was instrumental in determining the vote and delivering results for the largest voting district in a swing state that could sway a national election.
Hold the Line
Daniel Lombroso. When the largest Protestant organization in the U.S. decides to purge women in leadership positions, one prominent female pastor fights back.
I Am The Immaculate Conception
Frank Eli Martin
In 1985, the Irish village of Ballinspittle witnessed a mass visionary experience at the local grotto, where worshippers claimed to see the statue of Mary move. Nearly forty years later, only a few local devotees remain, including the statue’s caretaker Patrick Joseph Simms. I Am The Immaculate Conception documents the mystical landscape of rural Irish Catholicism and delves into a darker undercurrent beneath its surface.
Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr
Kimberly Reed. After Zooey Zephyr’s expulsion from the Montana House of Representatives for defending transgender medical care, she made a nearby bench her “office.” Director Kimberly Reed’s intimate camera transforms this shocking political moment into a portrait of trans and queer joy.
To mark the publication of the first English-language edition of Chris Marker’s 1982 photo-essay Le Dépays by Film Desk Books, Metrograph offers a program of films that touch on some of the director’s recurring obsessions, as evidenced in this remarkable volume. A program of short films explore some of his favorite animal avatars (Cat Listening to Music, An Owl is an Owl is an Owl), and his profound connection to Japan (The Koumiko Mystery, Sans Soleil, Tokyo Days), followed by a panel discussion with Paul Chan and Lynne Sachs, moderated by Sadie Starnes, while A.K., Marker’s portrait of Akira Kurosawa on the set of Ran (1985), screens in a very special double bill.
“Inventing Japan is just another way of getting to know it. Once you’ve gotten beyond the clichés, once you’ve outwitted the cliché of cutting through the clichés, then the chances are mathematically the same for all, and consider the time you’ve saved! Trust appearances, consciously confuse the décor with the drama, never worry about understanding, just be there—dasein—and everything will come your way. Well, something, at least.”—Marker, in Le Dépays
DIRECTOR: CHRIS MARKER 1988 / 73MIN / DIGITAL
Program: Cat Listening to Music (1990, 3′) An Owl Is an Owl (1990, 3′) Tokyo Days (1988, 21′) The Koumiko Mystery (1965, 46′)
Marker’s profound connection to Japan is explored in The Koumiko Mystery, which he filmed at the time of the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, an event that permanently altered the face of the city. The first of Marker’s many portraits of the Japanese capital follows a young Japanese woman, Koumiko Muraoka, on a guided tour of her hometown. A thrilling city symphony/essay film, capturing the throbbing pulse of a metropolis in the midst of self-reinvention. Screens with two shorts that explore some of Marker’s favorite animal avatars—Cat Listening to Music and An Owl is an Owl is an Owl—followed by a panel discussion with artist and writer Paul Chan and filmmaker and poet Lynne Sachs, moderated by Sadie Starnes.
Cat Listening to Music, An Owl is an Owl is an Owl, Tokyo Days courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York
2024 marks 40 years since experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs took her first video class at DCTV. In “From the Outside In”, we traverse Sachs’ documentary films, defiant of traditional genre or style. From peering out, collecting others’ experiences and world events, to looking inward, reflecting on familial histories and entanglements, Sachs weaves the political with the personal. Through this seven-program series of screenings and discussions, with Sachs and collaborators in front of and behind the camera, this retrospective celebrates Sachs’ distinctive artistry and groundbreaking career.
Performing the Real Fri June 7 at 7 PM Q&A with Sachs & Lizzie Olesker (co-director of The Washing Society) moderated by filmmaker Sam Green
Eschewing the inherent distance in ethnography and observation, the responsive movement and poetry in this program’s films shine a light on Sachs’ creative impulse to drive collaborative participation and honor the role of catalyst. Special guest: Paolo Javier (Swerve, poet collaborator).
Fossil, 1986 12 min • The Washing Society 2018 44 min • Swerve, 2022 8 min
In this intimate artist talk and workshop, Sachs will share her insights in bridging poetry with cinema. Participants will explore the intersection between moving images and written or spoken words. As part of the class experience, participants will explore their creative practice through writing.
Q&A with Lynne Sachs moderated by Tom Day, Executive Director of Film-Makers Cooperative
A love letter to New York City – when love can also be critical, baffling, sometimes painful. The films in this program all take place in our metropolis called home.
Ladies Wear, 1983 3 min• Tornado, 2002 4 min • Your Day is My Night, 2013 63 min
Violence begets violence, as protest and resistance begets change. In this program, Sachs’ films dissect war, civil disobedience, and the sociopolitical tides from WWII to Vietnam and today.
The Small Ones, 2007 3 min • The Task of the Translator, 2010 10 min • E•pis•to•la•ry: Letter to Jean Vigo, 2021 5 min • Investigation of a Flame, 2001 45 min
Heavy with chains that bind, this program of films magnifies Sachs’ feminist gaze through her personal diaries, family portraits, and women’s testimonies.
Drawn & Quartered, 1987 4 min • The House of Science, 1991 30 min. • And Then We Marched, 3 min. 2017 • A Year in Notes and Numbers, 1987 4 min. • Carolee, Barbara and Gunvor, 2018 9 min. • Maya at 24, 2021 4 min. • Contractions, 2024 12 min • We Continue to Speak, 2024 4 min
Q&A with Lynne Sachs and Accra Shepp (member of TOMT cast) moderated by Tabitha Jackson
In A Month of Single Frames (2019, 14 min), Lynne explores filmmaker Barbara Hammer’s experience of solitude. Her text on screen brings them together in multiple spaces and times. In Tip of My Tongue (2017. 84 min.), she gathers together 12 fellow New Yorkers — born across several continents in the 1960s — to spend a weekend with her making a movie. Together they examine the ways in which uncontrollable events outside our own domestic universe impact who we are.
Conversation with Lynne Sachs, Dana Sachs, and Ira Sachs
Film About a Father Who (2020, 74 min) is Lynne’s attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings. With a nod to the Cubist renderings of a face, her 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, she allows herself and her audience inside to see beyond the surface of the skin, the projected reality. In The Jitters (2023, 3 min), Lynne performs with her partner filmmaker Mark Street, celebrating who they are independently and together.
“I’ve been in awe of Lynne’s fearlessness and desire to create, make meaning, rip apart, and piece together. I see her as the epitome of an indelible artist who is driven by curiosity and empathy – not fame, industry demands, or commercial algorithms. And I appreciate her sincere gratitude to her collaborators, and to DCTV, honorably looking back but always steps ahead. Good documentary filmmaking cannot happen in a vacuum.” – Dara Messinger, Director of Programming, DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema
“I walked into Downtown Community Television (now DCTV) in 1984 thinking I needed to take some classes on how to make a documentary film. I was 22 years old and open to any possibility, any guidance, and totally impressionable. From that moment on, I learned to challenge every conventional expectation about working with reality. It’s an honor to bring these seven programs back to the Firehouse Theater. As I continue to explore the connections between the body, the camera and the materiality of film itself, I reflect on those early experiences that taught me to reflect upon my own relationship to the people, places and events I continue to witness as a filmmaker.” – Lynne Sachs
Individual tickets for screenings are $16, and $8 for DCTV Members. The artist talk is $20, and $10 for DCTV Members. A Series Pass grants access to all screenings for $80, and $40 for DCTV Members – artist talk is sold separately. A special print monograph will be included with the purchase of a Series Pass, and on sale at Firehouse.
Founded in 1972, DCTV (Downtown Community TV) has grown into one of the leading documentary production and film education centers in the country. In September 2022, DCTV opened the Firehouse Cinema, a documentary theater where filmmakers and film lovers can come together in appreciation of nonfiction film.
Thank you to DCTV, Film-Makers Cooperative, Cinema Guild, and Sylvia Savadjian.
