a portrait of a doctor who saw the worst of society and ran
The Last Happy Day is an experimental documentary portrait of Sandor (Alexander) Lenard, a Hungarian medical doctor and a distant cousin of filmmaker Lynne Sachs. In 1938 Lenard, a writer with a Jewish background, fled the Nazis to a safe haven in Rome. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Army Graves Registration Service hired Lenard to reconstruct the bones — small and large — of dead American soldiers. Eventually he found himself in remotest Brazil where he embarked on the translation of “Winnie the Pooh” into Latin, an eccentric task that catapulted him to brief world-wide fame. Sachs’ essay film uses personal letters, abstracted war imagery, home movies, interviews, and a children’s performance to create an intimate meditation on the destructive power of war.
“A fascinating, unconventional approach to a Holocaust-related story … a frequently charming work that makes no effort to disguise an underlying melancholy.” George Robinson, The Jewish Week
“Exquisite…Sachs reclaims (Lenard’s) dignity and purpose using letters, newsreel footage, and recreations of his environment as if to channel him back from the past.” Todd Lillethun – Program Director, Chicago Filmmakers
For password to Vimeo link, please write to info@lynnesachs.com.
Premiere: New York Film Festival, 2009
Broadcast: Hungarian Public Television, Spring 2010.
Sandor Lenard voice: Israel John Gerendasi
Sandor Lenard performance: Donald Moss with Ivan Moss
Winnie the Pooh Performers: Lucas Fagen, Isabel Reade, Maya and Noa Street-Sachs
Camera: Ethan Mass, Lynne Sachs
Latin Consultation: Michele Lowrie
Interviews by Lynne Sachs
Hansgerd Lenard, Dusseldorf, Germany
Andrietta Lenard, Sao Paolo, Brazil
Selected Screenings and Honors: Indiewire.Com: Nominated One of the Best “Undistributed Films” of 2009 (Phillip Lopate); Director’s Choice Award, Black Maria Film Festival 2010; San Francisco Cinematheque; Pacific Film Archive; Punto de Vista Documentary Film Festival, Spain; University of Chicago; Chicago Filmmakers; Closing Night Film Singapore Film Festival; International House University of Pennsylvania; Museum of the Moving Image, NYC, 2021; Criterion Channel Streaming.
Criterion Channel streaming premiere with 7 other films, Oct. 2021.
Filmmaker Lynne Sachs wanted to understand the word SELENOGRAPHY so she traipsed around New York City from Fresh Kills State Park in Staten Island (the darkest place in the city) to the Lower East Side looking for the moon. Made for the Abecedarium:NYC Project (www.abecedariumnyc.org).
Co-directed by Lynne Sachs and Susan Agliata with the support of the New York Public Library
Abecedarium:NYC is an interactive online exhibition that reflects on the history, geography, and culture – both above and below ground – of New York City through 26 unusual words. Using original video, animation, photography and sound, Abecedarium:NYCconstructs visual relationships between these select words and specific locations in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island.
Each word – whether it’s A for audile or Z for zenana – leads to a different short video and a location in the city that you may never have experienced before. In selenography (the study of the moon), amateur astronomers celebrate the wonders of the night sky at Staten Island’s Great Kills State Park. In open city (a metropolis without defense), the ruins of military installations throughout the five boroughs decay with time. Chatty teenagers in a Flushing, Queens cafe drink bubble tea in xenogenesis (the phenomenon of children markedly different from their parents). In diglot (a bilingual person), a Chinese accountant, Albanian baker, Palestinian falafel maker, Argentine film archivist and Cuban cigar maker speak candidly about their daily routines. In mofette (an opening in the earth from which carbon monoxide escapes) mysterious gases flow from gaps in the streets of Manhattan.
The experience of visiting Abecedarium:NYC is more than watching, listening and learning. Visitors to the project are invited to respond to existing content as well as to share their own experience of New York City by contributing original videos, soundscapes, photos or texts to the project Abecedarium:NYC Blog. As more users contribute, the project grows in size, scope and experience, and transforms into a destination for sharing and learning about every facet of the city.
See some of the Abecedarium:NYC word videos I’ve made at:
“A complex rumination on the power of protest…..the trauma of the past, the continued mistakes of the present and the necessity to reflect actively on our government’s wartime antics.” The LA Weekly
“A film to rave about, as well as reckon with.” The Independent Film and Video Monthly
“Sachs’ elegant, elliptical documentary visits with surviving members of what became known as the Catonsville Nine, humble architects of this purposeful yet scathingly metaphoric act of civil disobedience.” The Village Voice
“Investigation of a Flame captures the heartfelt belief behind the Nine’s symbolic action of civil disobedience that sparked other (actions) like it across the nation. (The film) provides a potent reminder that some Americans are willing to pay a heavy price to promote peace.” Baltimore City Paper
“This is a documentary about the protest events that made Catonsville, Maryland, an unpretentious suburb on the cusp of Baltimore, a flash point for citizens’ resistance at the height of the war. Sachs found assorted characters still firm to fiery on the topic. She came to admire the consistency of the mutual antagonists in an argument that still rages (today).” The New York Times
“This poetic essay offers the perfect antidote to PBS: there is no omniscient narrator talking down to the viewer, reciting facts and explaining what to think, yet the story is perfectly clear. Brothers Phil and Dan Berrigan, who led the protest, appear both in the present and in archival footage, a mix that makes their commitment palpable.” Chicago Reader
“To those who think that everything in a society and its culture must move in lock step at times of crisis, (this film) might seem to be ‘off-message.’ But it’s in essence patriotic… saluting U.S. democracy as it pays homage to the U.S. tradition of dissent.” The Baltimore Sun
“Georgic for a Forgotten Planet” 11 min., video, 2009
“I began reading Virgil’s Georgics, a 1st Century epic agricultural poem, and knew immediately that I needed to create a visual equivalent about my own relationship to the place where I live, New York City. Culled from material I collected at Coney Island, the Lower East Side, Socrates Sculpture Garden in Queens, a Brooklyn community garden and a place on Staten Island that is so dark you can see the three moons of Jupiter. An homage to a place many people affectionately and mysteriously call the big apple” Lynne Sachs
Screenings: Palais de Glace, Museo National de Artes Buenos Aires; Museo Nacional de Artes, Uruguay; Howl Festival of Art, New York; Monkeytown, Brooklyn; Black Maria Film Fest Award, Director’s Choice; Athens Film Festival
Sunday, April 12, 2009 Georgic for a Forgotten Planet “Lynne Sachs showed one of her latest films, “Georgic for a Forgotten Planet”, last night at ATA, a cultural icon here in San Francisco. The film, like Vergil’s Georgic, is a lovely and meditatively poetic paean to agriculture, although, unlike Vergil, the film’s focus is on the separation of our citified culture from the husbandry of the earth as well as the separation of our own persons from what surrounds us. I was struck in particular by a number of plaintive shots of the Moon over the city, hardly visible against the streetlights, ignored by those below, a forgotten deity.
Many of her films center on ecology and our damage of the same and we saw a number of those as well. Also included on the program were the films of her partner Mark Street, including one of his more abstract works titled Winter Wheat, a beautiful bubbling hand-manipulated piece of 16mm art, which took on an environmental urgency in the context of the other films. ” Erling Wold See Composer Erling Wold’s thoughts at www.erlingwold.com
“From archival snips of an educational film on the weather to cine poems in full blossom, Brooklyn film “avant-gardeners” Mark Street and Lynne Sachs create their 3rd XY CHROMOSOME PROJECT at Other Cinema at ATA in San Francisco. This program of 10 short films on both single and double screen gleans audio-visual crops from the dust of the filmmakers’ fertile and fallow imaginations. In this avalanche of visual ruminations on nature’s topsy-turvy shakeup of our lives, Street and Sachs ponder a city child’s tentative excavation of the urban forest, winter wheat, and the great American deluge of the 21st Century (so far).” (72 min.)
“Weather Mix/Collision of Parts” (12 min.)
An overture: Weather Mix considers nature’s uneven keel while Collision of Parts takes us on a twisted roller coaster ride through small forgotten moments in New York City. Sound by computer weather forecasts, Pierre Shaffer and others. M. Street, 2008.
DOUBLE SCREEN “Buffalo Disaster Relief” (9 min.)
Archival footage filmed by the US National Guard of Buffalo, New York’s worst snowstorm on record. Obtained from the US National Archives. People attempt to reclaim their daily vignettes in the course of a larger narrative. M. Street and others, 1972.
& “Window Work” (9 min., sound)
A woman drinks tea, washes a window, reads the paper– simple tasks that suggest a kind of quiet mystery. Hear the rhythmic, pulsing symphony of crickets on a summer night, jangling toys, the roar of a jet, children trembling at the sound of thunder. Small home-movie “boxes” within the larger screen become clues to the woman’s childhood, mnemonic devices that expand the sense of immediacy in her “drama.” L. Sachs, 2001
“Winter Wheat” (8 min., sound)
Made by bleaching, scratching and painting directly on the emulsion of an educational film about the farming cycle. The manipulations of the film’s surface created hypnotic visuals while also suggesting an apocalyptic narrative. M. Street, 1989.
“Georgic for a Forgotten Planet” (14 min., sound)
I began reading Virgil’s Georgics, a 1st Century epic agricultural poem, and knew immediately that I needed to create a visual equivalent about my own relationship to the place where I live, New York City. Culled from material I collected at Coney Island, the Lower East Side, Socrates Sculpture Garden in Queens, a Brooklyn community garden and a place on Staten Island that is so dark at night you can see the three moons of Jupiter. An homage to a place many people affectionately and mysteriously call the big apple. L. Sachs, 2009
DOUBLE SCREEN “Sliding Off the Edge of the World” (7 min., silent)
A stab at depicting daily life near the end of time: fleeting images burst onto the screen only to recede from view just as quickly, suggesting transition and decay. Tendrils of images cluster together and then dissipate. A snowy walk, kids in the backyard, it all seems like it could fall apart so quickly. M. Street, 2001
& “Noa, Noa” (9 min., sound)
Over the course of three years, Lynne collaborated with her daughter Noa (from 5 to 8 years old), criss-crossing the wooded landscapes of a Brooklyn park with camera and costumes in hand. L. Sachs, 2006
“Behold the Gowanus Canal” (6 min., sound)
On Earth Day 2008 in Brooklyn, New York, Lynne, Mark and their daughters Maya and Noa float down the Gowanus Canal with environmental visionary Ludger Balan, head of the Urban Divers Estuary Conservancy. Located in the heart of Brooklyn, the canal contains the residual pollution left from decades of disregard for the health and well being of this thriving urban neighborhood and its residents. Finally, the community is waking up to the possible revitalization of this Venice-like waterway. L. Sachs, 2008
DOUBLE SCREEN “Infected City” (14 min. sound)
A coda: the stars and the city meet for one last dance between the known and sublime. M. Street, 2008.
& “New Orleans, Louisiana” (14 min., silent)
One year after Hurricane Katrina, the collapse of the levy, and the tragic flooding of New Orleans, Mark and Lynne traveled to this city to help raise money for Zeitgeist Theatre Experiments, a struggling microcinema continuing to show alternative films to the passionate but dwindling local community. This is what they saw as they explored the now famous Ninth Ward and the banks of Lake Ponchatrain. L. Sachs and M. Street, 2006
NOTE: This film’s title is now WIND IN OUR HAIR/ CON VIENTO EN EL PELO
TRACKING LYNNE SACHS TOWARDS THE END OF THE GAME
(English translation of article published on September 6, 2008 in Diario La Republica’ de Corrientes, Argentina)
By Melisa Mozzati
Cold August winter in Buenos Aires. Lynne Sachs and a reduced crew are ready to begin the last shooting day of her first fictional opus. She chooses a small grove next to the Mitre’s train tracks in Palermo’s Park.
The last scenes are filmed in two different formats. Lynne captures images in Super 8 mm meanwhile Tomás Dota, a young Argentinean filmmaker and part of the local group that collaborates in Sachs project does the same in HDV. At one side, the classic and purity of the film dominated by the hand of an artist that feels in her environment with it, at the other side, digital technology in front of the perspective of the new generation. This is experimental cinema. A mixture of format and textures. Different ways altogether in the crucial moment of telling the same story.
Lynne Sachs adventures in a unusual path. As a natural born documentary’s filmmaker, she decides to produce her fist fiction movie in our country. After being invited by the Buenos Aires International Independent Festival (Buenos Aires Festival de Cine Independiente – BAFICI) in 2007, she promised herself to come back this year for summer holidays with her family to try to unveil a hidden project that our land kept for her.
Last May, while she was reading Julio Cortázar short story “Final de Juego” she realized that this would be her fist attempt in fiction. Later in Argentina, her next step was to find the actors and a dear friend of her, Paula Felix Didier, the world wide well known Director of the National Museum of Cinema “Pablo D. Hicken” who recently discovered the Fritz Lang original final cut of “Metropolis”, had the solution. She introduced Lynne to the children who would complete the cast: the sisters Lena and Chiara Peroni and Lautaro Cura. Maya and Noa Street, Lynne´s daughters, were part of the project from the very beginning. Now with enougt teenagers, Sachs could finally say: ACTION! Bettina Nanclares, mother of Lena and Chiara, as well as Felix Didier also took part in the film in the roles of the mother of the girls and Aunt Ruth, respectively.
But Lynne Sachs always escapes from conventionalisms. She added a diversity of looks and textures into this story full of deep emotions that go off like a train running at maximum velocity. For this reason, she used different formats. To her Bolex 16 mm, she added Pablo Marin’s and Leandro Listorti’s Super 8 and Tomás Dota’s digital video all of whome divided the shooting work into several locations. Starting at a house in Martinez that reminds us a 70s manor where the action starts rolling. This was Leandro Listorti´s first task. Then came scenes in Plaza Francia, National Library (Biblioteca Nacional) and Recoleta Cemetery (Cementerio de Recoleta).
Maybe the most complicated obstacle was to film in Mitre’s train station because the train passing, Ariel’s departure and the exact moment when the girls were doing the “postures” had to be precisely coordinated. However, everything was fulfilled with success and after a exhausting day everybody came back home with a smile of satisfaction in their face.
The day before the last was classic, one of those that must be in every experimental film shoot. When Lynne and Pablo Marin were just about to start filming in Retiro´s train station the police came out and they announced that they were not allowed to capture any image there. Very disappointed, they left the place and after only a few minutes walking they discovered a magical place – a garden full of sculpted animals by the Argentinean artist, Carlos Regazzoni. This nightmarish place was the perfect spot to register the proposed scenes.
Finally, we arrive at the cold August winter Sunday of the beginning of these chronicals and the actual end of the production. At this point, the narrator’s nightmare is on set. With the collaboration of psychologist and photographer, Inés Oyerbide, a necessary level of comprehension and appreciation of the several layers of meanings that lay beneath the oeniric moment of the story’s telling was reached.
As good filmmakers, Lynne Sachs doesn’t over explain the story’s closure. She lets us decide what is hidden behind every photogram. She does not overwhelm us with information avoiding our brain to get sleepy in a slow, placid carrousel of images. On the contrary. She invites us to this interesting trip in which anyone can infer what really is in this multi-textured chain that surrounds this magnificent Cortázar short story with so many comprehension levels.
Those who accept the invitation to this playful instant of cinema are welcome. Let’s reach to the end of the game as we like.
BREVIARY
Born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Lynne Sachs constantly tries to expose verbal language limitation seeing it as a complex visual and emotional imagery.
Always working in experimental area of cinema, she has dived in a great variety of themes such as genre limitations, radical identities, psico-emotional states, American idiosyncrasy and war conflicts.
Documentary genre is her natural environment but she decided to get into the world of fiction by the hand of one of the most fantastic fictional literature writers. Julio Cortázar´s stories are full of secret games and his work not only awakes a profound interest in readers but also is a connexion with the inner child that lives in ourselves.
Lynne Sachs was not the exception and she also wanted to have fun so she chose Cortázar´s “Final del Juego” (End of the Game) as the plot for her first fiction film, and Buenos Aires, Argentina as the perfect playground.
Filmography
With Sermons and Sacred Pictures (1989).
The House of Science: a museum of false facts (1991)
Which Way is East (1994)
A Biography of Lilith (1997)
Investigation on a Flame (2001)
The House of Drafts (2002)
States of UnBelonging (2004)
Final del Juego (in production)
By Melisa Mozzati – melisamozzati@hotmail.com – Corrientes, Argentina
SIGUIENDO A LYNNE SACHS HASTA EL FINAL DEL JUEGO
Melissa Mozatti
Diario La Republica’ de Corrientes, Argentina
6 Septiembre, 2008
Frío domingo de Agosto en Buenos Aires. Lynne Sachs y un reducido grupo de colaboradores se dispone a comenzar la última jornada de rodaje de su primera obra de ficción y elige una pequeña arboleda pegada a las vías del tren Mitre en los parques de Palermo.
Las últimas escenas se filman en dos formatos diferentes. Lynne capta las imágenes en Super 8 mientras que Tomás Dota, un realizador argentino y parte del grupo de jóvenes cineastas locales que colaboraron en este proyecto, registra en Alta Definición Digital. Lo clásico del fílmico de la mano de una artista que se siente cómoda en ese formato, por un lado, y la tecnología digital delante de la mirada de la nueva generación, por el otro. El cine experimental se basa en esto. En la mixtura de formatos y texturas, en las distintas formas de ver conjugadas al momento de contar una misma historia.
Lynne Sachs se aventura en un camino distinto. Documentalista por naturaleza, decide realizar su primera producción de ficción en nuestro país. Luego de haber sido convocada por el Buenos Aires Festival de Cine Independiente en su edición del 2007, se prometió volver en este año en unas prolongadas vacaciones junto a su familia para tratar de develar que proyectos le esperaban dormidos en nuestras latitudes.
Lo supo a mediados del mes de mayo mientras organizaba su estadía de varios meses en Argentina. Terminó de leer el cuento de Julio Cortázar, “Final de Juego” y decidió que ese sería su primer film de ficción.
Ya en Argentina, el problema era conseguir actores que llevaran adelante la historia y para tal empresa contó con la ayuda de una querida amiga, nada menos que la hoy muy reconocida por su descubrimiento del metraje original de la famosa “Metrópolis” de Fritz Lang que se suponía perdida para siempre, Paula Felix Didier, directora del Museo Nacional de Cine “Pablo D. Hicken”, que presentó a quienes completarían el reparto del film, las hermanas Lena y Chiara Peroni y Lautaro Cura. Noa y Maya Street, hijas de Lynne, eran parte del proyecto desde un inicio y, uniéndose al resto de los adolescentes, comenzó el rodaje.
La madre de las actrices argentinas, Bettina Nanclares, y hasta la propia Felix Didier también colaboraron en los papeles de la madre de las niñas y de la tia Ruth, respectivamente.
Pero Lynne Sachs escapa siempre a los convencionalismos y a esta historia de emociones profundas que se disparan a la velocidad de un tren agregó diversas miradas y texturas para lo cual eligió mezclar diferentes formatos. Ella, siempre captando las imágenes con su Bolex 16 mm, sumó la Super 8 de Pablo Marin y Leandro Listorti y el video digital de Tomás Dota quienes a su vez se dividieron la tarea de tirar toma en diversas locaciones. Empezando por una casa en Martinez que remite la idea de caserón de los 70s donde inicia la acción en el relato, Leandro Listorti fue el encargado de rodar las primeras escenas. Siguieron las tomas en Plaza Francia, la Biblioteca Nacional y el Cementerio de Recoleta.
Quizás lo más complicado haya sido filmar en la estación de tren Mitre ya que había que coordinar el paso del tren, la salida de Ariel (Lautaro) y el momento en que las chicas hacían las estatuas. Sin embargo, todo salió como debía y luego de un exhaustivo día volvieron todos contentos a casa.
La penúltima jornada fue de antología y de aquellas que deben estar presentes en los rodajes de cine experimental. Cuando Lynne y Pablo Marin se disponían a filmar en la estación de tren de Retiro varios policías se acercaron a impedirlo y decepcionados tuvieron que abandonar el predio aunque minutos después lo agradecieron ya que se toparon con el grotesco jardín de esculturas que se encuentra detrás de Retiro, lleno de animales esculpidos construidos por el artista plástico Carlos Regazzoni. Este lugar pesadillesco fue ideal para registrar las escenas propuestas.
Para finalizar, llegamos al frio domingo de agosto del inicio de esta crónica y del final de la realización. El último día de producción es la continuación de la pesadilla del narrador. Con la colaboración de Inés Oyarbide, psicoanalista de profesión y fotógrafa por vocación, se logró el nivel necesario de comprensión y apreciación de las distintas capas de significado que subyacen en el momento onírico del film.
Como los buenos cineastas Lynne Sachs no nos sobreexplica el relato ni su cierre. Nos deja decidir qué hay detrás de cada fotograma. No nos atosiga de información para que nuestro cerebro se adormezca tranquilamente en el transitar de las imágenes. Todo lo contrario. Nos invita a pasear y a que cada uno conjeturemos a voluntad que se esconde en el encadenado de las diversas texturas que envuelven un magnifico relato de Cortázar con tantos niveles de comprensión como uno desee hallar.
Quienes acepten la invitación a este momento lúdico del cine sean bienvenidos y que cada uno llegue al final del juego de la forma en que guste.
BREVIARIO
Nacida y criada en Memphis, Tennesse, Lynne Sachs intenta constantemente exponer las limitaciones del lenguaje verbal complementándolo con una compleja imaginería visual y emocional.
Siempre trabajando en el área experimental de la cinematografía ha tratado una gran diversidad de temáticas que van desde las limitaciones de géneros, las identidades radicalizadas, los estados psico-emocionales, la idiosincrasia norteamericana y los conflictos bélicos.
El género documental es el medio en donde mejor se siente pero ha decidido ingresar al mundo fantástico y de la mano (o de la pluma si se quiere) de uno de los mejores escritores de literatura de ficción, Julio Cortázar, quien incluye en sus relatos un cariz lúdico que despierta en los lectores no solo el interés obvio en una obra inteligente sino un punto de contacto con el niño interior que no descansa de los juegos.
Lynne Sachs no fue la excepción y también quiso salir a jugar, por eso eligió “Final del Juego” de Cortázar como argumento para su primer film de ficción y Buenos Aires, Argentina, como locación para el mismo.
Filmografia
With Sermons and Sacred Pictures (1989).
The House of Science: a museum of false facts (1991)
“A complex rumination on the power of protest…..the trauma of the past, the continued mistakes of the present and the necessity to reflect actively on our government’s wartime antics.” The LA Weekly
