Inspired by the stories of Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, yet blended with the realities of contemporary Argentina, “Wind in Our Hair” is an experimental narrative directed by New York filmmaker Lynne Sachs about four girls discovering themselves through a fascination with the trains that pass by their house. A story of early-teen anticipation and disappointment, “Wind in Our Hair” is circumscribed by a period of profound Argentine political and social unrest.
Lynne Sachs is best known for her spirited and lyrical essay films—films defined by an unwavering woman’s inflection and a commitment to pry the cracks in official history. However, throughout Sachs’s career, we’ve been treated to a succession of short experimental works that tease out the details of the everyday with the same clarity of vision and instinct for the hand-nurtured image as her much-lauded lengthier works.
“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
“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.”
This DVD collection presents two of Lynne Sachs’ earlier films with several more recent media works — all of which explore themes of women, culture, science & myth. The creative as well as intellectual inner workings of these projects are revealed for the first time in the context of an elaborately conceived, yet accessible disc.
The core of this haunting meditation on war, land, the Bible, and filmmaking is a portrait of Revital Ohayon, an Israeli filmmaker and mother killed near the West Bank. Director Lynne Sachs creates a film on the violence of the Middle East by exchanging letters with an Israeli friend. Together, they reveal Revital’s story through her films, news reports, and interviews, culminating in heartbreaking footage of children discussing the violence they’ve witnessed. Without taking sides or casting blame, the film becomes a cine-essay on fear and filmmaking, tragedy and transformation, violence and the land of Israel/Palestine.
Investigation of a Flame: A Portrait of the Catonsville Nine by Lynne Sachs
45 min. color and B&W, 2001
plus 5 min. Sundance Channel documentary on Daniel Berrigan and the making of the film
On May 17, 1968 nine Vietnam War protesters led by Daniel and Philip Berrigan, walked into a Catonsville, Maryland draft board office, grabbed hundreds [...]
“Which Way Is East: Notebooks from Vietnam”
by Lynne Sachs in Collaboration with Dana Sachs
33 min., color, sound, 1994
“A frog that sits at the bottom of a well thinks that the
whole sky is only as big as the lid of a pot.”
When two American sisters travel north from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, conversations with [...]
