Category Archives: SECTIONS

Chinese Press: Your Day is My Night in Print and Broadcast

YOUR DAY IS MY NIGHT was featured in a variety of Chinese publications throughout the fall. Here are some of the links and text:

Watch TV report on SinoVision:
http://video.sinovision.net/?id=9623
Dec. 14, 2012

The multimedia performance “Your Day Is My Night” from independent producer and director, Lynne Sachs, the premiere was launched in Chinatown. The film is talking about all sorts of joys and sorrows of new immigrants in the US and several Chinese immigrants performed their own stories in the movie.

The film is talking about a group of Chinese immigrants working in shift-jobs. In order to save money, they share a rental apartment or room, even share a bed as shift-bed style. This performance is casted by six non-professional Chinese actors and actress, interweaving movie and drama in order to present the realistic history of new immigrants in Chinatown in 45 minutes performance. All the conversations in the film are in Chinese and subtitled with English.

51-year-old Jewish director, Lynne Sachs said, “This movie is inspired by the images of photographer (Jacob Riis)”. One of the main characters, Mr. Yun Xin Huang (黃雲秀) said, “I immigrated to U.S. in 1995 and lived in my friend’s house for three months. I slept in a closet in harsh living conditions. I participate in this film, I want to let more people learn the stories of Chinese immigrants by reappearing the scenes of my harsh life.”

The film production was started in 2011 and the full version will be presented in 2013. The movie was taken in East Broadway of Chinatown to present the ordinary and touching stories of Chinese immigrants. The performance will be showed tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, please take a chance to be there if you are interested.

Chinese Newspaper
http://epaper.usqiaobao.com:81/qiaobao/html/2012-04/24/content_647891.htm

During the day and night untold immigrants bitterness
Chinese star in the true story of Chinatown preview interactive warm
Qiao Bao Reporter Ye Yongkang

By a number of Chinese immigrants to tell their own story, entitled “Your day is my night,” the movie, recently held in Chinatown and the Chatham Library screenings to attract more than 20 Chinese and foreign interest to the watch, after the meeting and ask questions.
[Qiao Bao Reporter, reported Ye Yongkang New York,] many new immigrants to the United States because of economic problems can only pick up old mattresses to sleep, it was to save money, the two shared a bed, their own work, others go to bed, to bed Friends of the work himself back to sleep, they will not even been seen. “Your day is my night,” director Lynne Sachs, said the new Chinese immigrants have a lot of bitterness touching story, she wanted to shoot out these stories, let the community know. Therefore, more than a year ago, she visited the United States and East Union into the hall, get the hall with the help of the consultant Zhao Sheng, introduced a narrative of the 26 Chinese.
Sachs said that they meet and discuss with these Chinese, pick a more narrative, shooting the film, a year of filming, and now finally completed. The film is divided into three parts, the first part of the earlier projection over your day is my night “is the second part, will be edited into 70 minutes screening.
Placed in the center of the projection room scene, two mattresses, put a movie, turns to go to bed by the actors performances (see the right, Ye Yongkang photo). Upon completion, the foreigner the audience to ask questions, share a new Chinese migrants are incredible.
The film Fuzhou Huang Yunxiu is a singer and host of the wedding. He said he had paid money to snakeheads later the United States, the snakeheads in Chinatown to find a “closet” He lives down, but there are four weeks a lot of noise make it difficult to fall asleep. The Huang Yunxiu said, many people like his singing, he likes to make people happy, he is a tool of the people’s celebration of the songs on across the ocean, the troubling thing down. His songs is like a huge bridge, everyone returned to his hometown to go sailing in a dream.
Actor Xu Jin then said of his childhood in his hometown, families who have been looted. In Chinatown, there is field after the fire, he picked up a mattress on the roadside, when smell the stench of burnt smell rushed to his nose, the former all the nightmares will come to mind, so that he could not sleep, he can only use some tablecloths and mattress isolation.
The actor Li Xueqing said, when she resided in Hong Kong, six brothers and sisters and mother live together in the same apartment, there are six or seven families huddled together, each one of the snoring noise, they find it interesting, each has its own unique tone, like the music as played. She had never seen his father until the age of 18 a day before going to sleep, the mother called her in a dream to try to dream of my father, she later try to make their own dream never seen the face.
The actor car Changqing said, in the first 10 years of his life, he is a well-fed, happy little boy, but after 1947, everything changed, back and forth. Came to the United States, people here are wealthy, many people like to collect valuable things, he has collected the mattress, but also give it away to get clean
New! Click the words above to edit and view alternate translations.

World Journal April 22,2012
http://ny.worldjournal.com/view/full_nynews/18320982/article-%E5%BA%8A%E7%9A%84%E6%95%85%E4%BA%8B%E7%B4%80%E9%8C%84%E7%89%87-%E9%81%93%E7%9B%A1%E8%B2%A7%E5%9B%B0-?instance=nybull_news2#.T5kiem8bp6U.mailto

You are willing to give the bed to the non-parent not a friend to use? Can you imagine with nothing to do with people who share a bed? You ever feel happy you have one of their own bed? New York Public LibraryMuseum and the Chatham Branch Library show on the 21st day is my night “(Your day is My night) documentary about is the life force had to take turns using the the bedspace rest of the Chinese story with others.
According to film director Lynne Sachs, years ago she heard relatives talk about the 1960s, many immigrants because of economic distress, sharing a roof, put in the room mattresses for home. Decades later this year, the New York metropolis
Chinatown corner, some people still live a and then a similar life. Sachs said that the bed is a personal thing, an important part of private life, it records each person’s life carries the identity of each person, and also about the simple individual behind a long history. When we take turns to rest in bed, their lives intertwined.
Sachs to find the seven Chinese ordinary people cast into the hall through the eastern United States associated, from each person’s particular experiences, present their story by sharing a bed. Yesterday, the five actors also attended the event, live performance on two mattresses to sleep in shifts, “your day is night life. Nightclub and The Wedding Singer the Huang Yunxiu first came to New York when he was still in the closet lived the rest will inevitably want to have anyone lying in bed, doing what, but I kept thinking will always survive, “the rent is too your can not afford what way? “

Your Day is My Night

Trailer for “Your Day is My Night” by Lynne Sachs

This film is currently only available with a password. Please write to info@lynnesachs.com to request access.

Dir. Lynne Sachs
64 min., HD, Color, Stereo & 5.1 Surround, 2013
Chinese, English & Spanish with English Subtitles

This complete film is currently only available with a password. Please write to info@lynnesachs.com to request access. Currently streaming on MUBI at: https://mubi.com/films/your-day-is-my-night

Go to Your Day is My Night website here

Purchase DVD for an institution here Cinema Guild

While living in a “shift-bed” apartment in the heart of New York City’s Chinatown, a household of immigrants share their stories of personal and political upheaval.

Synopsis:

Since the early days of New York’s Lower East Side tenement houses, working class people have shared beds, making such spaces a fundamental part of immigrant life. Initially documented in Jacob Riis’ now controversial late 19th Century photography, a “shift-bed” is an actual bed that is shared by people who are neither in the same family nor in a relationship. Simply put, it’s an economic necessity brought on by the challenges of urban existence. Such a bed can become a remarkable catalyst for storytelling as absolute strangers become de facto confidants.

In this provocative, hybrid documentary, the audience joins a present-day household of immigrants living together in a shift-bed apartment in the heart of Chinatown. Seven characters (ages 58-78) play themselves through autobiographical monologues, verité conversations, and theatrical movement pieces. Retired seamstresses Ellen Ho and Sheut Hing Lee recount growing up in China during the turmoil of the 1950s when their families faced violence and separation under Chairman Mao’s revolutionary, yet authoritarian regime. Yun Xiu Huang, a nightclub owner from Fujian Province, reveals his journey to the United States through the complicated economy of the “snakehead” system, facing an uphill battle as he starts over in a new city.

With each “performance” of their present, the characters illuminate both the joys and tragedies of their past. As the bed transforms into a stage, the film reveals the collective history of Chinese immigrants in the United States, a story not often documented. Further, the intimate cinematography and immersive sound design carry us into the dreams and memories of the performers, bringing the audience into a community often considered closed off to non-Chinese speakers. Through it all, “Your Day is My Night” addresses issues of privacy, intimacy, and urban life in relationship to this familiar item of household furniture.

Press:

“Each person’s tale is brief but impactful, intercut with graceful set pieces and grainy footage that allows time to visualize, absorb and contemplate. Your Day is My Night is a cultural window with many dimensions, building empathy with viewers in this politically charged environment.” – Fatima Sheriff, One Room with a View

“A strikingly handsome, meditative work: a mixture of reportage, dreams, memories and playacting, which immerses you in an entire world that you might unknowingly pass on the corner of Hester Street, unable to guess what’s behind the fifth-floor windows.” –The Nation

“Beautifully blending anecdotes, evocative audio textures, and an ensemble of elderly immigrant performers/participants, Your Day is My Night is sumptuous and exploratory, bringing us a Chinatown we have never seen before in film.” – San Diego Asian Film Festival

“Using beds as a metaphor for privacy, intimacy and power, the film explores intercultural and trans-historical dialogue.” – The Washington Post

“Director Lynne Sachs’ Your Day is My Night shines a light on a little documented sub-culture in New York’s Chinatown, chronicling immigrants who live communally in buildings where there’s a shift-bed system. One person returns from a stint of overnight work to sleep in a bed just vacated by another person off to their day job. The form of this documentary is as compelling as its content. It is a beautiful collage of different media and music intricately edited together with the often emotional testimony of the immigrants.” – BBC

“New York’s Chinatown, a place as much spectral as real, flickers and flares into life in this singular hybrid of documentary, performance piece and cine-monologue. Seven working-class, immigrant residents of a shift-bed apartment play versions of themselves, recalling violent upheavals, long journeys and endless yearnings.” – Sight and Sound

“This is no ordinary documentary. This is film, a canvas, a moving poem. It never stands still. It moves and it moves us.” – Kennebec Journal/ Morning Star (centralmaine.com)

Director’s Statement:

“I’ve spent most of my life as an artist thinking about how to convey my observations of the world around me in the visual and aural language of film. I experiment with my perception of reality by embracing an associative, non-literal approach to images, and it is through this artistic exploration that I grapple with the natural, social, cultural and political phenomena that I witness through the lens of my camera. I began the Your Day is My Night project in late 2009 when I was talking with a relative on his 90^th birthday. A Brooklyn resident for his entire life, Uncle Bob has haunting memories of December 16, 1960 when a jet crashed near his Brooklyn home. Trying to imagine the devastation in this busy neighborhood, I asked him how many people on the ground had died. ‘It was hard to know because there were so many hot bed houses in that area. They all burned and no one knew precisely who lived there.’ What are hot bed houses? I asked him. ‘Those are homes for poor people who work and can’t afford to rent their own apartments. They share beds in shifts.’ I reconstructed the moment of the crash, creating a mental image of the inhabitants of these apartments as they tried to gather their few personal possessions and escape the fire. Which unlucky person would awake from a deep sleep after a long shift at the port to the sound of the crash and the heat of the fire? After that conversation, I discovered that 19th Century photographer Jacob Riis documented numerous examples of these beds, and it is through his lens that I was able to begin my research. In Riis’ How the Other Half Lives, he exposed to the rest of America the poor, immigrant experience he witnessed in downtown New York City. I later read The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe to give me a more current sense of the situation in current day Chinatown.

I think of the bed as an extension of the earth. For most of us, we sleep on the same mattress every night; our beds take on the shape of our bodies, like a fossil where we leave our mark for posterity. During the Revolutionary War, George Washington slept in many borrowed beds and now, hundreds of years later, his brief presence is celebrated from one New England town to the next: ‘George Washington Slept Here’ has a kind of strange signification and prestige. But for transients, people who use hotels, and the homeless a bed is no more than a borrowed place to sleep. An animal that borrows its home from another species is called an inquiline, and in Spanish inquilina is the word for a renter. Conceptual artist and sculptor Félix González-Torres photographed a series of empty, unmade beds to commemorate the life and death of his partner, as if the very sheets that remained could remind him and us of the body and the man he had loved.

Since January of 2011, I have been writing, researching, and shooting material for my ‘bed project’ in the Chinatown neighborhood of New York City. I found a group of non-professional Chinese performer/participants (ages 58 – 78) and have worked almost weekly with them ever since. During our workshops, they each exchanged their own stories around domestic life, immigration and personal-political upheaval. None of these people has ever worked in this cross-cultural way, so it is these taped process-oriented conversations that, in the final film, enhance our audience’s sense of the bed – experienced and imagined from profoundly different viewpoints. Next, a written script emerged from our months of shooting documentary images and interviews. Using the interactive model of Augusto Boal’s “Theatre of the Oppressed”, I guided my collective in a “simultaneous dramaturgy”. My performers, crew and, more recently, our live audience, explored the potential for transformation that can come from a dialogue around personal histories and the imagination.

The material I collected during these interviews is the basis for the monologues in Your Day is My Night. In production, I guided my performers through visual scenarios that reveal a bed as a stage on which people manifest who they are at home and who they are in the world. Our shooting took place in two different actual shift-bed apartments located in NYC’s Chinatown. The Chinese participants (several of whom currently live or have actually slept on shift-beds) spoke of family ruptures during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a mattress excavated from a garbage heap, four men on one bed in Chinatown, amongst a long series of fascinating and haunting bed-related topics.

For inquiries about rentals or purchases please contact the Cinema Guild. For international bookings, please contact Kino Rebelde.

“Your Day is My Night” has been exhibited as a live performance at St. Nicks Alliance in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York Public Library in Chinatown, Proteus Gowanus Interdisciplinary Arts Gallery in Brooklyn and University Settlement in Manhattan.” – LS

Cast: Che Chang-Qing, Yi Chun Cao, Yueh Hwa Chan (Linda), Kam Yin Tsui, Yun Xiu Huang, Ellen Ho, Sheut Hing Lee, Veraalba Santa Torres,

Crew: Lynne Sachs (director); Sean Hanley (camera, co-produing and editing); Rojo Robles (co-writer); Catherine Ng and Jenifer Lee (translations); Ethan Mass (camera); Stephen Vitiello (music); Damian Volpe (sound mix) Amanda Katz and Jeff Sisson (sound); Bryan Chang (additional editing and translations); Madeline Youngberg (production assistance)

Yun Xiu Huang , Veraalba Santa and Sheut Hing Lee

Kam Yin Tsui and Yun Xiu Huang sing Happy Birthday

Link to Youtube video of cast Q & A Asian Pacific Institute at NYU:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-2Pgol6gck

“I think of the bed as an extension of the earth,” says experimental documentary filmmaker Lynne Sachs. In YOUR DAY IS MY NIGHT, a moving hybrid documentary/performance piece, the bed becomes stage as immigrant residents of a shift-bed apartment in the heart of Manhattan’s Chinatown are both performers and participants, storytellers and actors. Sharing their experiences as migrants and city dwellers, they reveal the intimacies and complexities of urban living. Filmmaker Lynne Sachs and performers Yi Chun Cao, Linda Y.H. Chan, Chung Qing Che, Ellen Ho, Yun Xiu Huang, and Sheut Hing Lee joined A/P/A Institute at NYU on Thursday, October 2, 2013 for a screening of the film and a conversation moderated by Karen Shimakawa (Chair of Performance Studies at NYU, Tisch School of the Arts). Lesley (Yiping) Qin served as translator.

Selected Screenings:

World Premiere: Museum of Modern Art, Documentary Fortnight 2013 (Feb. 24 & 25, 2013)
Senior Planet Exploration Center New York City (April 12, 2013)
Ann Arbor Film Festival (March 23, 2013)
Athens Film Festival, Athens, Ohio Opening Night April 18, 2013)
Workers Unite Film Festival, Cinema Village Theater, New York City (May 10, 2013)
Brecht Forum, New York City (May 17, 2013)
Union Docs. Brooklyn, New York City (June 8, 2013)
Images Film and Video Festival, Toronto (April 19, 2013)
Kingsborough College, Brooklyn, New York (May 6, 2013)
Maysles Cinema, Fiction-Non Series, NYC, (Sept. 25 & 26, 2013)
BorDocs Tijuana Forum Documental, Mexico, Sept., 2013
University of California, Santa Cruz, Nov. 18 and 19, 2013
Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California, Nov. 20, 2013.
Vancouver Film Festival, 2013
Micheal Moore’s Traverse City Film Festival, Michigan, Best Experimental Film, 2013
New Orleans Film Festival, 2013
San Diego Asian American Film Festival, Best Feature Documentary2013.
Center for History, Media & Culture/ Asian Studies, New York University, 2013
Roy & Edna Disney/ CalArtst Theatre (REDCAT), Los Angeles, 2014.

Press Kit for “Your Day is My Night”

A press kit, transcript, and set of stills are now available for “Your Day is my Night” set to premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in February 2013.

Download “Your Day Is My Night” Press Kit (2MB)

Download Your Day is My Night – Film Transcript

Stills:

Your Day is My Night: Live Film Performance

“Your Day is My Night: Live Film Performance”
dir. Lynne Sachs

SEE TRAILER FOR OUR LIVE PERFORMANCE HERE:

FULL LIVE PERFORMANCE HERE:

Presented as a Live Performance in 2012 at these venues throughout New York City:

Art@Reinassance at St. Nick’s Alliance, Greenpoint Brooklyn
http://roundrobinbrooklyn.blogspot.com/p/hospitality.html
Chatham Square Branch of the New York Public Library, Chinatown
Proteus Gowanus Interdisciplinary Gallery, Brooklyn
http://proteusgowanus.org/2012/04/your-day-is-my-night-an-interactive-film-performance/
The Performance Project at University Settlement, Lower East Side
http://www.universitysettlement.org/us/news/PerformanceProject/2012-2013_performance_calendar/

Produced by Lynne Sachs and Sean Hanley

Partially funded by the New York State Council for the Arts and the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Presented in collaboration with the Tenement Museum and the Museum of the Chinese in America.

In “Your Day is My Night” a group of Chinese performers creates a dynamic live film performance that tells the collective story of Chinese immigration to New York City from the viewpoint of an older generation. On both stage and screen, the seven performers play themselves, all living together in a shift-bed apartment in the heart of Chinatown. Since the early days of New York’s tenement houses, shift workers have had to share beds, making such spaces a fundamental part of immigrant life. In this production, the concept of the shift-bed allows the audience to see the private become public. The bed transforms into a stage when the performers exchange stories around domestic life, immigration and personal-political upheaval. They speak of family ruptures during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a mattress found on the street, four men on one bed in Chinatown. “Your Day is My Night” is a provocative work of experimental theater and cinema that reflects deeply on this familiar item of household furniture.

A bilingual performance in Chinese and English.

Featuring: Yi Chun Cao, Linda Y.H. Chan, Chung Qing Che, Ellen Ho, Yun Xiu Huang, Sheut Hing Lee, Kam Yin Tsui

“Your Day is My Night” directed by Lynne Sachs; cinematography and editing by Sean Hanley and Ethan Mass; music by Stephen Vitiello; Monologue writing support by Rojo Robles. Translations by Catherine Ng, Jenifer Lee and Bryan Chang.

Each evening includes an engaging talk-back with the performers, moderated by representatives from University Settlement’s Project Home, the Tenement Museum, and photographer Alan Chin.

For more info visit University Settlement

Additional Related “Tenement Talk” Program on October 23 presented at the Tenement Museum on Tuesday, October 23.
Please go to Your Day My Night Tenement Talk for more information.

DNAinfo NYC “New Performance Focuses on Shift Beds”

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20121213/chinatown/chinatown-rotating-shift-bed-residents-at-center-of-new-performance

CHINATOWN — A multimedia performance is seeking to shine a light on the phenomenon of “shift beds,” in which struggling immigrants rent places to sleep in 12-hour installments.

The performance, “Your Day is My Night,” will show at University Settlement on Eldridge Street this Thursday and Friday night, as a prelude to a documentary of the same name that will premiere in February.

The show intersperses excerpts from the upcoming film with live performances from predominantly Chinese Americans, detailing the often private life of workers who share beds to survive, but who also gain a sense of community as they carve out life in America.

“What you will see is a place where adults interact and talk and have this really homely life,” said filmmaker Lynne Sachs, 51, who has so far spent two years working on the documentary and accompanying performance, along with cinematographer Sean Hanley. “There is a lot conversation and exchange of live experience.”

As New Yorkers complain about living in what they consider tiny apartments, “shift beds” have been commonplace in immigrant communities, as well as in China, for years.

Jacob Riis photographed the lifestyle at the turn of the last century, capturing the beds where one person sleeps during the day and someone else moves in at night.

“Often, if you see a very small building with a large pile of trash out the front, chances are lots of people live there,” said Sachs.

Shift-bed apartments currently exist in areas like the corner of East Broadway and Allen Street, Sachs explained, providing accommodation to renters willing to vacate for half of the day for about $150 a month.

Many of the performers taking the stage for the show are between 50 and 70 years old and have themselves spent time in a shift bed.

“I gave them a change — to be performers and tell their own life story,” Sachs said.

Those performing on stage create the narrative using tai chi, dance, song and acting, with any Chinese translated via subtitles.

Sachs, a Carroll Gardens resident, was first inspired to research New York’s shift-bed lifestyle when an elderly uncle recalled its prevalence in the 1980s.

“I began to research and found out it was still happening today,” she said.

Even though eight people occupying an 800-square-foot apartment may seem to offer a poor quality of life, Sachs pointed to the community the shift-bed system creates for workers whose families often stayed in China while money was sent home, or until a life could be set up in America.

“We are trying to show that shift beds aren’t the struggle they seem to be,” she said.

MOTHER WORKS @ Microscope Gallery (including Same Stream Twice by L. Sachs)

This Sunday night I will show Same Stream Twice a new short film I made in collaboration with my daughter Maya Street-Sachs in this program at Microscope Gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn. As some of you know, I was very inspired by conceptual artist Mary Kelly’s Post Partum Document in the early 90’s so I am excited to see the interview with her that is part of this program. I am also curious to see the piece by Linda Montano and her daughter. Linda is the performance artist who wore and lived in monochromatic colors for seven years in the 1970s.
Maya and I will both be at Microscope. I hope you can join us.
Lynne

Sunday November 11, 7pm
MOTHER WORKS
Videos by Catherine Elwes, Marni Kotak, Linda Mary Montano, and Lynne Sachs
plus a rare interview with Mary Kelly
Admission $6

Microscope Gallery
4 Charles Place
Bushwick, Brooklyn

With women issues at the forefront of recent political and social discourse, we present an evening of videos by working women artists including Catherine Elwes, Marni Kotak, Linda Mary Montano and Lynne Sachs concerning motherhood. The program features original video works and a rare interview with artist Mary Kelly, covering four decades from the setting of 70s feminism, where motherhood was often marginalized, to today’s over-the-top celebration of mommy culture.

The common element in these very different approaches to the experience of motherhood and the mother/child relationship is the elevation of the personal daily experience. Each of the works – even when unstated – is also a collaboration with the artist’s son or daughter, or in the case of one, with her own mother.

MICROSCOPE GALLERY
presents film, video, sound, performance, new media and other time-based artists through exhibitions, screenings
and other events.

http://www.microscopegallery.com/

PROGRAM includes:

“There is a Myth”, Catherine Elwes, video, color, sound, 19 minutes, 1984
A single breast fills the screen and is repeatedly pummelled by the infants hand. These brutal caresses soon produce the desired effect and milk oozes from the swollen nipple. The viewer, deprived of any conventionally sexual reading, is left to confront or repress pre-lingual memories of the physical and psychological pleasures of lactation. — C E

“Little Brother”, Marni Kotak w/ Ajax Kotak Bell, HD video, color, sound, 12 minutes, 2012
The latest in series of collaborative video works in which the artist equips her young child with a video to record his daily activities and the world he encounters. The featured segments were recorded during the past month.

“The Birth of Baby X”, Marni Kotak, video, color, sound, 4:30 minutes, 2012
Documentation from the live birth performance “The Birth of Baby X” in which the artist gave birth to her son as a work of art.

“Mom Art”, Linda Mary Montano, color, sound, 23 minutes, 2012
An interview between Mildred Montano and Linda Mary Montano (1970′s) featuring Mildred Montano’s paintings.

“Same Stream Twice”, Lynne Sachs with Maya Street-Sachs, 16mm b&w to DVD, 4 minutes, 2001-2012
My daughter’s name is Maya. I’ve been told that the word maya means illusion in Hindu philosophy. In 2001, I photographed her at six years old, spinning like a top around me. Even then, I realized that her childhood was not something I could grasp but rather – like the wind – something I could feel tenderly brushing across my cheek. Eleven years later, I pull out my Bolex camera once again and she allows me to film her – different but somehow the same. — L S

In addition, a 17 minute segment from a rare interview with artist Mary Kelly discussing her works including her influential work “Post Partum Document”.

Voices of New York on Your Day is My Night

http://voicesofny.org/2012/10/film-looks-at-new-yorkers-who-take-turns-sharing-a-bed/

October 24, 2012

Film Looks at New Yorkers Who Take Turns Sharing a Bed

By Ai Shen Wong and Yee Shin Du | World Journal
Translated by Connie Yik Kong

The Word Journal and the The Lo-Down wrote about the upcoming combination documentary/live performance “Your Day is My Night,” a look at New York’s “shift-bed” residents, mostly Chinese immigrants who take turns sharing the same bed. The Lo-Down piece in English can be read here and the World Journal one, translated from Chinese and edited, is below.

Directed by Lynne Sachs, the film “Your Day is My Night,” presents the harsh lives of Chinese immigrants who had to take turns sharing beds just to sleep. It will be shown, accompanied by a live performance, at University Settlement in the Lower East Side on Nov. 1-3.

Alison Fleminger, who organizes special events for University Settlement, said the film reflects the living conditions of immigrant communities in the Lower East Side and their diverse cultures. The performance artists share similar backgrounds with the subjects of the film or are of Chinese descent.

Director Sachs’ inspiration came from listening to stories from her relatives about the difficult lives of immigrants in the 1960s, where in one house, many people shared the same bed to cope with their limited income. Even many years later, she discovered that this kind of situation still happens to many immigrants, especially among new arrivals in Chinatown. Many people not only squeeze themselves into a small living space, they live a poor life, renting a bed with other people to take turns to sleep.

The film features seven Chinese actors, who are all regular people playing themselves. They were discovered by Sachs through the Lin Sing Association, based in Chinatown. She interviewed them in person and merged each of their stories into the movie. The seven are: Yi Chun Cao, Linda Y.H. Chan, Chung Qing Che, Ellen Ho, Yun Xiu Huang, Sheut Hing Lee, and Kam Yin Tsui.

Each has a distinct immigrant experience. Under the guidance of the director, their stories are presented through the sharing of the same bed. The bed documents each of their lives, carries their unique identities and speaks of each of their long histories. When they take turns to rest on this bed, their lives are intertwined.

A still from “Your Day is My Night.” (Photo courtesy of Lynne Sachs via The Lo-Down).

Yi Chun Cao: One Bed Shared by Three People

Yi Chun Cao moved to the U.S. 23 years ago and worked in a restaurant. To save money, his family of three rented a small room. The whole family slept on one bed. Cao later worked as a custodian at Confucius Plaza.

In the movie, Cao recalled his experience of coming to the U.S. from China. In 1949, when the Guomintang Party was exiled to Taiwan, his parents and siblings all went there. He stayed on his own in Nanjing, China. When his older brother came to the U.S., Cao finally located him after writing to an uncle. According to Cao, the movie reminds him of his life, of being separated from his family since he was little, and being unable to see his parents again before they passed away.

Linda Y.H. Chan: The Floor is my Bed

Linda Y.H. Chan, 78, spoke of her difficult journey moving from China to the U.S. when she was a teenager. According to Chan, because her grandfather had returned to China after being overseas, after 1949, her family was repeatedly denounced by the Chinese government. Their home was ransacked and all their valuables were taken away. The government alleged they had more valuables hidden. Since they did not have any more to give to the government, the officers punched and kicked Chan who was just a teenager. Finally in 1958, to secure their safety and survival, her mother took her and her little brother and escaped to Hong Kong. Her father was already there.

Chan recalled that in 1962, her family came to New York from Hong Kong as refugees. At that time, she only had $5 in her pocket. Life in the U.S. was very difficult. Her parents worked in a garment factory in Chinatown. As a teenager, she started washing people’s clothes in Chinatown. Her family of four lived in one room. She and her little brother often slept on the floor or on the sofa.

Kam Yin Tsui: Picked up a Bed to Bring Home

Kam Yin Tsui worked as a dishwasher at a restaurant. Having no money to buy furniture for his empty apartment, he had to pick up a bed that other people had thrown out in the street. After working for more than 10 years, Tsui, who is retired, indicated that the details of his struggles during those early years are still fresh in his mind when he recalls them even now.

According to Tsui, he was smuggled into the United States in 1972. When he was young, he had to work the fields in rural villages of mainland China and later begged on the streets of Guangzhou, China. The travails he faced when he first came to the United States remind him of the miserable living conditions he endured during his childhood.

The movie and the live performance will be presented at University Settlement, 184 Eldridge St., on November 1-3 at 7:30 p.m. Ticket are $15; $10 for students and seniors.

Your Day is My Night in the Low Down

Your Day is My Night: An Inside Look at New York’s “Shift-Bed” Residents
By Giacinta Frisillo

http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/tag/lynne-sachs

They are living right here on the Lower East Side but most of us are oblivious to the existence, let alone the daily travails, of New York’s “shift-bed” residents. A hybrid documentary/live performance, “Your Day is My Night,” coming to University Settlement next month offers a rare glimpse into their hidden world.

Of the innovative production based on the lives of Chinese immigrants compelled to rent beds in 12-hour increments, Director Lynn Sachs says: “This shared domestic space becomes a… canvas on which lives are recounted and revealed.” Referring to her “new friends,” she explains, “We are making something together that we believe in, that expresses something about living in New York that perhaps has not been revealed before.”

Alison Fleminger, curator of University Settlement’s Performance Project was immediately drawn to the production. “Our aim is to encourage greater participation in the live arts and to help cultivate diverse creative communities on the Lower East Side.” All of the performers are artists who have some kind of background in dance or tai chi or qigong. They are, she notes, “artists who are conscious of the multi-layered communities that co-exist in New York City.”

A still from “Your Day is My Night.” Photo courtesy of Lynne Sachs.

One of the most compelling characters is a man named Yun Xiu Huang. He is a popular Fujianese wedding singer, “with a powerhouse operatic voice” says Sachs. He arrived in New York around 1990 to fulfill the American Dream, or at least leave behind the difficulties in his homeland. He has grown children in China who he hasn’t seen in years and who he may not see for many more. When asked if he’d try to bring his family to the U.S., he answered, “look at us. We’re adults living in shift beds. Our children wouldn’t want to come here.”

Sean Hanley, cinematographer and editor, observes, “the pain they experienced in China and the difficulty they’ve had living in the U.S., is something they never have a chance to talk about because everyone they know has been through it.” The project artfully weaves a visual and oral history of lives you never knew existed. And now it’s opening up new possibilities for creative expression. In conjunction with the production, The Tenement Museum is working on a Chinese immigration exhibition and the Museum of Chinese in America is planning to present a special focus on Yun Xiu Huang.

Performances run Thursday, Nov. 1st through Saturday, Nov. 3rd at 7:30 p.m. at University Settlement. Go here for tickets.

Rabbis of the Round Table

Mark Street, Jason Dubow, Karen Cuchel, Lynne Sachs, Ari Dubow, Isaac Dubow, Maya Street-Sachs, Noa Street-Sachs

Rabbis of the Round Table
a monthly Adult and Child Jewish Study Group
by Lynne Sachs

Posted on Kolot Chayeinu: a Progressive Jewish Community website: http://www.kolotchayeinu.org/home_practices#home

Back in 2004, I proposed to my husband Mark Street that I start a Torah study group for our half-Jewish-half-secular-humanist (the only unofficial faith or –ism he would embrace) 9 and 7 year-old daughters Maya and Noa Street-Sachs. He agreed reluctantly and skeptically, convinced that this passing fancy of mine for constructing a homemade form of religious learning would certainly go the way of Pilates or learning to cook. Having grown up as a Reform Jewish teenager in Memphis, Tennessee in the 1970s, I’d been introduced to the tenets of my family’s religion through a long, dreary series of Sunday school classes that successfully squashed any latent curiosity I might have had about our faith. It wasn’t until I passed the embarrassingly easy requirements for Confirmation at age 16 that I was given the choice to abandon my own spiritual edification or to continue in the lone, post-confirmation class for teens taught by a famously erudite local lawyer who conducted his class like a college literature seminar with a tinge of politics, European history and philosophy thrown in for good measure. Confident that this would be my absolute last chance to find even a thread of appreciation for Judaism, I signed up for Leo Bearman’s course and groggily drove my way to our synagogue every Sunday morning throughout my senior year of high school. To my surprise, the class was everything a learning experience could be – provocative, passionate, and rigorous.

And so with this profound moment in my young life still somehow resonating in my memory, I decided it would be possible to create a monthly study group for my own children here in Brooklyn in conjunction with our visits to Kolot Chayeinu for holidays, children’s events and the occasional Saturday service.

For the first few years of our de facto Havurah, we joined forces with another family with an eleven-year-old daughter. At each meeting, we would tackle a particularly dramatic and no-doubt famous story from the Torah. Quaint as it might sound, we called the group Bible Study and frankly that was what it was. Despite our unanimous opposition to the Old Testament as a significant doctrine of faith, we each believed that it was an intriguing, influential tome that would help our daughters better appreciate everything from the Sistine Chapel, to Creationism to 20^th Century poetry. The Bible’s presence in our culture is pervasive and we wanted our children to understand its power, influence and resonance. Using The Children’s Illustrated Bible, we moved our way from the Garden of Eden, to Sarah’s pregnancy, to Joseph’s Coat, to Jacob’s dream, until after two years we completed the Old Testament chapters of the book. Because none of the children felt pressured to learn anything from one month to the next, they relished the humor and the drama in the stories, engaging in deep cross-generational discussions around such things as ethics, betrayal, commitment and sacrifice. Of course every one-hour Bible Study meeting finished off with a good meal, so the sensorial rewards were always within grasp.

Eventually our first collaborative family decided to move on, and so I was faced with the challenge of finding another family who was willing to commit one day a month to our old-fashioned endeavor. The second family who joined forces with us had an 11-year-old boy. Of course our children’s preteen enthusiasms waxed and waned but nevertheless we followed another two-year journey, this time referring to our monthly gathering in a more specifically Jewish way, Torah Study. Now with a more mature group of three students to teach, I met with Rabbi Lippmann for some guidance before embarking on Phase II. She suggested we acknowledge the sophistication of our own children by using W. G. Plaut’s renowned The Torah: A Modern Commentary as our primary text. Clearly the children were now ready to take the helm as teachers and Biblical provocateurs. As Jews do every fall, we started all over again with Genesis in September of 2008 with monthly readings and analyses of such stories as: Cain and Abel, The Flood, Babel, and Sodom and Gomorah. In our second year, we even began delving into Exodus. By this time, however, our children were no longer satisfied by a purest engagement with the literature. They demanded intense discussions around the meaning and existence of God, poignant debates about Palestinians and Jews in the Middle East and frank reflections on the role of women as depicted in this hallowed text.

In 2010, we embarked on Phase III of our study. It was a unanimous decision to put the bible to the side for a while and to engage with Judaism in a more creative and personal way. Together with our daughters (now 13 and 15) and a family with two boys ages 9 and 12, we created Rabbis of the Roundtable (named for the shape of our dining room tables). Each month we engage with some sort of reading that sparks a conversation. Our list of texts has included: “A Yom Kippor Scandel” by Sholem Aleeichem, “The Jewbird” Bernard Malamud; Maus by Art Speigelman, “The Boy in the Bubble” song by Paul Simon, “Conversion of the Jews” by Phllip Roth, “New York Filmmaker” by Ken Jacobs, “Address Unkown” by Katherine Kressman Taylor, “ Long to See My Mother in the Doorway” by Grace Paley, “The Plagues” by Moacyr Scliear, “King of the Jews” a film by Jay Rosenblatt, “World of our Fathers” by Irving Howe, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne, “Bontsha the Silent” by I.L. Peretz. Last month my daughter Maya was Rabbi so she decided that she wanted to take us out of the house to visit the permanent collection of Judaica at the Jewish Museum. Honestly, she had never even seen this collection before, so she researched some of the themes (both theoretical and religious) that had inspired the curators in order to lead us through the exhibit with issues to contemplate. As we gazed at the vitrines full of mazuzahs and menorahs as well as the more contemporary canvases on the walls, she asked us to ponder the artists’ intentions and the relationship of the objects to our sense of the visual in Jewish culture. Surrounded by these art works and artifacts, four adults and three children stood listening to Maya explore her own relationship to Judaism. I thought about the years we have spent in conversation about our shared culture and faith. It is not the answers we have found together that are so important but rather the questions we continue to confront.

Lynne Sachs
2012

Some Thoughts on my Friend Chris Marker

Chris Marker Makes a Special Guillaume cat cartoon for Maya & Noa Street-Sachs

Some Thoughts on my friend Chris Marker

In San Francisco in the mid-1980s, I saw Chris Marker’s “Sans Soleil”. I witnessed his mode of daring, wandering filmmaking with a camera. Alone, he traveled to Japan, Sweden and West Africa where he pondered revolution, shopping, family, and the gaze in a sweeping but intimate film essay that shook the thinking of more filmmakers than any film I know. Marker’s essay film blended an intense empathy with a global picaresque. Simultaneously playful and engaged, the film presented me with the possibility of merging my interests in cultural theory, politics, history and poetry — all aspects of my life I did not yet know how to bring together – into one artistic expression. In graduate school at that time, I wrote an analysis of the film and then boldly, perhaps naively, sent it to Marker. In a last minute note, I also asked him if he would like an assistant in his editing studio.

Several months later, his letter from Paris arrived with a slew of cat drawings along the margins. In response to my request for a job, Marker cleverly explained that, unlike in the United States, French filmmakers could not afford assistants. And, in response to my semiotic interpretation of his movie, he explained that his friend (and my hero) Roland Barthes would not have interpreted his film the way that I had. Marker suggested that we continue this conversation in person, in San Francisco. Not long afterward, I found myself driving Chris from his hotel in Berkeley, California to Cafe Trieste, one of the most famous cafes in North Beach. There we slowly sipped our coffees in the last relic of 1960s hippy culture, talking about his films, his travels, and my dream to be filmmaker. As the afternoon came to a close, I politely pulled out my camera and asked him if I could take his picture. “No, no, I never allow that.” And then he turned and walked away, leaving me glum, embarrassed and convinced that my new friendship with Marker was now over.

Over the next two decades, Chris and I spoke on the phone periodically and I attended several of his rare public presentations. In 2007, Jon Miller, president of our mutual distributor Icarus Films, contacted me to see if I would be willing to assist Chris in the making of a new English version of his 1972 film “Viva la Baleine”, a passionate, collage-based essay film on the plight of the whales. Of course, I was honored and immediately said yes. For one whole year, Chris and I corresponded weekly as we re-wrote and updated the narration and I searched for a male and a female voice-over actor to read the two parts. He renamed the new 2007 version of his film “Three Cheers for the Whale”. It is distributed with other “bestiary” films he has made including “The Case of the Grinning Cat”.

After we had completed the film, I traveled to Paris with my daughters to talk with Chris about a wide range of things — our collaboration, Stokely Carmichael (a Black activist in the American civil rights movement), Russian documentary, cats and tea. Just before we left his home, he showed me a scrapbook he’d been collecting for several years. Chris had accumulated hundreds of pictures and articles on a young African-American politician who had just embarked on a campaign to become the next president of the United States. Chris was convinced that this virtually unknown candidate could stand up to a historically racist United States of America and win. I was doubtful.” (Lynne Sachs)

More recently, he sent me this letter which I feel I can now share:

Chris Marker's Guillaume in Arles

Hi Lynne. Please don’t mention dates, it’s so depressing… Let’s say we met -some time ago. And a little earlier I had lunch with Robert Flaherty in Germany. Such are the dots along the strange line they call a life. A life that becomes more and more filled with daily tasks as time goes, which explains why I can’t consider any participation to any project, mines being already enough to keep me breathless. Tell that to your friend, with my warmest wishes.

I had recently a large exhibition in Arles, where Peter Blum, my New York galerist, acted as emcee. And guess who was there.. Show it to the girls, whom Guillaume and me fondly salute.

And here is another owl images he sent me recently.

Website of Filmmaker Lynne Sachs

Film Looks at New Yorkers Who Take Turns Sharing a Bed

Yi Chun Cao: One Bed Shared by Three People

Linda Y.H. Chan: The Floor is my Bed

Kam Yin Tsui: Picked up a Bed to Bring Home