Last Happy Day — Lynne Sachs Director’s Statement

“In 2009, I completed The Last Happy Day, a film that uses both real and imagined stories about Sandor Lenard, a distant cousin of mine and a Hungarian medical doctor. (See text above for description). Several years ago I traveled to Sao Paolo, Brazil to film Sandor’s eighty-five year old wife, Andrietta. She described in vivid, almost dreamy, detail her husband’s macabre work. I listened to her recount his daily contact with the detritus of war, wondering to myself why we so rarely think about who is responsible for “cleaning up” the dead. Later in the film, Andrietta’s graphic, realistic recollections stir visual ruminations on this futile act of posthumous, cosmetic surgery.

Lynne guest edits Millennium Film Journal’s Issue on Experiments in Documentary

[ September 19, 2009; 10:00 pm; ] “Experiments in Documentary”
Millennium Film Journal 51 (Spring/Summer 2009)
Guest Edited by Lucas Hilderbrand and Lynne Sachs

TEACHING: Media Mavericks Course on Experiments in Documentary Syllabus

This semester in Media Mavericks we will explore the experimental media work that has emerged in the realm of the documentary. In our discussion of this movement in film and video, we will consider how the practice of working with reality can be challenged, even transported, by the aesthetic freedom that comes with alternative modes of visual expression.

I am Not a War Photographer by Lynne Sachs

I AM NOT A WAR PHOTOGRAPHER is what I’ve decided to call a group of five films I’ve made over the last thirteen years. After breathlessly watching Christian Freil’s “War Photographer” (2001), the utterly transformative documentary on the life of James Nachtway, print journalism’s quintessential career war photographer, I knew that Nachtway’s remarkable credo –

“Every minute I was there, I wanted to flee. I did not want to see this. Would I cut and run, or would I deal with the responsibility of being there with a camera?”

Wind in Our Hair Diary

May 16, 2008                                   Brooklyn, New York
Tonight I finished reading Julio Cortazar’s short story “Final del Juego”.  Since I will be spending the summer in Buenos Aires in a few months, I am trying to get a feeling for the city and for the people.  As a mother of two 13 and 11 year-old girls (Maya [...]

Senses of Buenos Aires: a few of my favorite things

Senses of Buenos Aires
a few things about the city that I love
by Lynne Sachs
Confiteria Ideal
In my opinion, this is the most wonderful place to see tango. Real people doing the dance of Argentina with a kind of love and commitment that that will make you want to get on the floor yourself. Mystical, misty old [...]

Grapevine to the Sky: Meditation on Life in Brooklyn

A Grapevine to the Sky:
A Meditation on Life in Brooklyn
by Lynne Sachs
Jack must have started his infamous climb to the sky from a backyard in Brooklyn.  While not the eponymous beanstalk with which most of us are familiar, the seventy-five foot high Concord grape vine in my backyard reaches so daringly up to the clouds [...]

Making and Being “Drawn and Quartered”

MAKING AND BEING “DRAWN & QUARTERED”
BY LYNNE SACHS
My great Uncle Charlie was a prominent Memphis businessman who took a giddy pleasure in shooting some of the most elegant, compassionate photographs I’ve ever seen.  I remember his close-up portrait taken in the late 1950’s of a wizened black man looking into the lens.  I would sneak [...]

First Steps in a Terra Incognita

FIRST STEPS IN A TERRA INCOGNITA BY LYNNE SACHS
Feb. 17, 2001  I tell my next door neighbor that I’m going abroad for a couple of weeks and she wishes me a good vacation.  I tell my old boyfriend Sam, I’m going to Sarajevo on a student exchange program, and he asks me how it will [...]