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Wind in Our Hair
40 min., 2010,  by Lynne Sachs

DISTRIBUTOR:  Filmmakers Cooperative   www.film-makerscoop.com/catalog/s.html
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. Shot with 16mm, Super 8mm, Regular 8mm film and video, the film follows the girls to the train tracks, into kitchens, on sidewalks, in costume stores, and into backyards in the heart of Buenos Aires as well as the outskirts of town. Sachs and her Argentine collaborators move about Buenos Aires  with their cameras, witnessing the four playful girls as they wander a city embroiled in a debate about the role of agribusiness, food resources and taxes. Using an intricately constructed Spanish-English “bilingual” soundtrack,  Sachs and her co-editor, Puerto Rican filmmaker Sofia Gallisa, articulate this atmosphere of urban turmoil spinning about the young girls’ lives.   “Wind in Our Hair” also includes the daring, ethereal music of Argentine singer Juana Molina.

“Inspired by the writings of Julio Cortázar, whose work not only influenced a generation of Latin American writers but film directors such as Antonioni and Godard, Lynne Sachs’ Wind in Our Hair/Con viento en el pelo is an experimental narrative that explores the interior and exterior worlds of four early-teens, and how through play they come to discover themselves and their world. “Freedom takes us by the hand–it seizes the whole of our bodies,” a young narrator describes as they head towards the tracks. This is their kingdom, a place where–dawning fanciful masks, feather boas, and colorful scarves — the girls pose as statues and perform for each other and for passengers speeding by. Collaborating with Argentine filmmakers Leandro Listorti, Pablo Marin and Tomas Dotta, Sachs offers us a series of magical realist vignettes (rock/piedra, paper/papel, scissors/tijera), their cameras constantly shifting over their often-frenzied bodies. A collage of small gage formats and video, the 42-min lyric is enhanced further by its sonic textures that foreground the whispers and joyful screams of the young girls with the rhythms of a city and a reoccurring chorus of farmers and student protesters. Filmed on location in Buenos Aries during a period of social turmoil and strikes, Sachs and co-editor Sofia Gallisá have constructed a bilingual work that places equal value on the intimacy of the girls’ lives and their growing awareness of those social forces encroaching on their kingdom. “       - Carolyn Tennant, Media Arts Director, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, New York

Press from Chicago Filmmakers:   http://www.chicagofilmmakers.org/navkino.htm

“Argentine author Julio Cortazar is the inspiration for WIND IN OUR HAIR (2009, 42 min.), which loosely interprets stories in the collection “Final de Juego” against the backdrop of social and political unrest in contemporary Argentina. In her first attempt at narrative filmmaking, Sachs still retains her associative, playful structure and documentary eye. Four young women, again played by Sach’s daughters and family friends, grow restless at home and begin to make their way through Buenos Aires in search of excitement and eventually to a fateful meeting at the train tracks near their home. The film moves from childhood’s earthbound, cloistered spaces and into the skittering beyond of adolescence, exploding with anticipation and possibility. Argentine musician Juana Molina lends her ethereal sound to compliment the wild mix of formats and styles.”  - Todd Lillethun, Artistic Director, Chicago Filmmakers

“I completely felt Cortazar’s stories throughout. The fluidity in which a ludic and serious tone mix and the combined sense of lightness and deepness capture the author’s vision.” - Monika Wagenberg, Cinema Tropical

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3. New Films by Lynne Sachs Reviewed in Chicago Reader Sachs’s daughters and their friends read from this text and...

Lynne Sachs: 10 Short Films
1987-2007
Purchase>>>
<http://www.microcinemadvd.com/product/DVD/724/Lynne_Sachs_10_Short_Films_and_Videos_VolMicrocinema>

Film and Videos on DVD

“XY Chromosome Project” 12 min. 2007
“The Small Ones”, 3 min. video 2006
“Noa, Noa”,  8 min. 16mm, 2006
“Atalanta 32 Years Later” 5 min.  video, 2006
“Tornado”, 4 min.  video 2002
“Photograph of Wind” 4 min. 16mm, silent, 2001
“Window Work”  9 min.  video, 2000
“Following the Object to Its Logical Beginning”, 9 min. 16mm. 1987..
“Still Life With Woman and Four Objects”, 4 min. B&W 16mm., 1986
“Drawn and Quartered”, 4 min. color 16mm., 1987

“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. These films and videotapes, whether they be mystified glimpses of childhood, reinventions of films past, or formal excursions into the poetic, surrender the wonder of a world seen by an artist with a soulful eye and a conscientious heart.”
–Steve Seid, Film-Video Curator, Pacific Film Archive

“Equal parts humanist and formalist, poet and historian, telling tales that are both timeless and political, Lynne Sachs creates film worlds in which the textures of daily domestic life are seamlessly connected to the realms of war, political activism, and our response to terrorist attacks. In one film, a grid becomes a secret map for understanding the difference between male and female. In another, an affectionate portrait of her young daughter becomes a study of whirling circular energy. For each of these ten shorts, Sachs creates a unique film language, by weaving together images, sounds, and words that evoke a particular way of viewing the world. All of these works reveal a sensibility that refuses to flatten either life or art, insisting on a multilevel reality in which the personal and the universal become doorways to a broader consciousness.”
–David Finkelstein, writer for filmthreat.com

“Sachs suspends in time a single moment of her daughter.”
– Fred Camper, Chicago Reader

“Very gentle and evocative of foreign feelings.”
–George Kuchar, filmmaker

“Profound, the soundtrack amazing….the image of the girl with the avocado seed so hopeful.”
–Barbara Hammer, filmmkaer

“In Sachs’s theatrical, microcosmic worlds, the everyday is defamiliarized. Objects — toys, hands, a cherry pie, a miniature Empire State Building — resonate and tremble.”  Bosko Blagojevic, Flavorpill.net
Reviews

“Curled Up” Review  >>>
(http://www.curledupdvd.com/documentary/lynnesachs10.html <http://www.curledupdvd.com/documentary/lynnesachs10.html> )
“Salon.com” Review >>>
(http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/feature/2008/02/13/dvd_roundup/ <http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/feature/2008/02/13/dvd_roundup/> )

Educational Media Reviews Online
http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/emro/emroDetail.asp?Number=3352
Selected Screenings:
TriBeca Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival, Black Maria Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Tate Museum of Art London, Whitney Museum of Art

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The Last Happy Day
37 min. 2009 by Lynne Sachs

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

Premiere: New York Film Festival, 2009

Broadcast:  Hungarian Public Television, Spring 2010.

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.

DISTRIBUTOR:  Filmmakers Cooperative   www.film-makerscoop.com/catalog/s.html

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2. Jewish Week Review of “The Last Happy Day” It would be tempting but altogether too glib to make...
3. Lynne Sachs at University of Chicago Film Studies Center In conversation with Classics Professor Michèle Lowrie (who acted as...

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“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/blogger.html

Available directly from Lynne Sachs at info@lynnesachs.com

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Purchase:

A COLLECTION OF FILMS ON DVD EXPLORING WOMEN, CULTURE, SCIENCE & MYTH BY LYNNE SACHS vol.1

DVD 2005, 65 minutes + extras $19.95

Available at www.microcinema.com

Featuring:

Biography of Lilith & The House of Science: a museum of false facts

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.

“Biography of Lilith conveys the real experience – bloody and poetic – of Lilith alive and now in every woman. Bravo! A film felt, imagined, and informed by life.” – Barbara Black Koltuv, Author of The Book of Lilith

“Lynne Sachs’ A Biography of Lilith is a beautifully realized melding of history, mythology, image, and sound that makes us rethink our understanding of a powerful, complex, and significant female figure.”

Prof. Caren Kaplan, Women’s Studies, University of California at Davis

BIOGRAPHY OF LILITH updates the creation myth by telling the story of the first woman and for some, the first feminist. In conjunction with the film, the DVD offers a personal introduction to Jewish Kabbala.

THE HOUSE OF SCIENCE: A MUSEUM OF FALSE FACTS investigates science and art’s representation of women in our society using home movies, collage, found footage and personal remembrances.

DVD FEATURES INCLUDE:

* Over 40 minutes of never-before-seen interviews with four prominent Judaic scholars provide anchors for discussion of the Lilith myth.

* Six of Sachs’ poems which were written during the making of Biography of Lilith

* Thirteen collages with text from The House of Science

* Two Short Films: Window Work and Photograph of Wind

* Filmmaker Biography

* Interactive Menus

* DVD-ROM: Printable Transcript of The House of Science and Poetry from Biography of Lilith

PRINCIPAL CREDITS

Films, poetry, collages, cinematography, direction: Lynne Sachs

DVD design: Rachel Melman

Music: Pamela Z, Charming Hostess

Jewish Scholars: Daniel Boyarin, Tikvah Frymer-Kensky,

Rabbi Meyer Fund, Naomi Mark

SCREENINGS: Museum of Modern Art, the Oberhausen Film Festival, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Delaware Biennial, the Pacific Film Archive, and the Tate Modern. The films have won awards at the Atlanta, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Athens, Black Maria, Charlotte and Humboldt Film Festivals

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States of UnBelonging
63 min. 2006

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.

“3 Stars! Presents a mature, artistic meditation on Middle East violence.”  Video Librarian

“Parallels the layers of history of the Middle East – demonstrating the possibilities as well as limitations of bridging the gap between Palestinians and Israelis engaging the politics of conflict.”   Dr. Jeffrey Shandler, Dep’t of Jewish Studies, Rutgers University

“An invigorating film-essay that ranks with the multi-layered ruminations of Chris Marker.” Cinequest

“Both humanist reverie and implicit cautionary tale.” Village Voice

DISTRIBUTOR: www.newday.com/films/StatesofUnbelonging.html

STATES OF UNBELONGING REVIEW IN BALTIMORE CITY PAPER
http://www.citypaper.com/film/review.asp?rid=11300

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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 of selective service records and burned them with homemade napalm.

“Investigation of a Flame” is an intimate, experimental documentary portrait of the Catonsville Nine, this disparate band of resisters who chose to break the law in a defiant, poetic act of civil disobedience.

How did the photos, trial publicity and news of the two year prison sentences help to galvanize a disillusioned American public? “Investigation of a Flame” explores this politically and religiously motivated performance of the 1960’s in the context of extremely different times — times in which critics of Middle East peace agreements, abortion and technology resort to violence of the most random and sanguine kind in order to access the public imagination.

DVD:  www.investigationofaflame.com
www.catonsvillenine.com

“BEST DOCUMENTARY in  2001”, Phillip Lopate, Village Voice Critic

“One of the ten best films released in 2002” Phillip Lopate, Film Comment

“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

Screenings: National Broadcast on the Sundance Channel; Maryland Film Festival “Opening Night”; Museum of Modern Art, Documentary Fortnight “Opening Night”; Rhode Island Film Festival; Art Institute of Chicago; Mill Valley Film Festival;  San Francisco Cinematheque;  Pacific Film Archive; Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Olympia Film Festival., Providence Women’s Film Festival, Denver Film Festival; Harvard University Film Archive; Cornell University Cinema; Museum of Fine Arts Boston; NY Underground Film Festival; Vassar College; Ithaca College; Massachusetts College of Art; Catholic University; Maine Film Festival; Florida Film Festival; Georgetown University;  Brooklyn Academy of Music, Portland Doc. Festival,  Wisconsin Film Festival,  Georgetown University’s Jesuit Week, American University Center for Social Media

Awards:  Black Maria Film Festival; San Francisco International Film Festival: New Jersey Film Festival; Ann Arbor Film Festival; First Prize Documentary Athens Film Festival

Supported with funding from the Maryland Humanities Council, the Maryland State Council on the Arts, the Puffin Foundation and a Media Arts fellowship from the  Rockefeller Foundation.

First Run/Icarus Films  (Distributor)
32 Court St.,   21st Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11201
mail@frif.com   www.frif.com       T:  800.876.1710  or 718.488.8900

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“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 Vietnamese strangers and friends reveal to them the flip side of a shared history.  Lynne and Dana Sachs’ travel diary of their trip to Vietnam is a collection of tourism, city life, culture clash, and historic inquiry that’s put together with the warmth of a quilt.  “Which Way Is East” starts as a road trip and flowers into a political discourse.  It combines Vietnamese parables, history and memories of the people the sisters met, as well as their own childhood memories of the war on TV.  To Americans for whom “Vietnam” ended in 1975, “Which Way Is East” is a reminder that Vietnam is a country, not a war.  The film has a combination of qualities: compassion, acute observational skills, an understanding of history’s scope, and a critical ability to discern what’s missing from the textbooks and TV news. (excerpted from article in The Independent by Susan Gerhard)

“Captures the Vietnam experience with comprehension and compassion, squeezing a vast and incredible country into an intriguing film.” Portland Tonic Magazine

“The sound track is layered with the cacophony of bustling city streets, the chirps of cicadas and gentle rustles of trees in the countryside, and the visuals, devoid of travelogue clichés, are a collage of pictorial snippets taken from unusual vantage points….  What comes through is such a strong sense of the place you can almost smell it.”  The Chicago Reader

Screenings: Sundance Film Festival; Atlanta Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize; New York Film Expo, Best Documentary; Black Maria Film Fest, Director’s Citation;  Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Cinematheque; “Arsenal” Film Festival, Riga, Latvia; Pacific Film Archive; Mill Valley Film Festival; San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival; Big Muddy Film Festival, Honorable Mention; Chicago Underground Film Fest; Melbourne Film Fest; Sydney Film Fest;  Ann Arbor Film Fest; Denver Film Fest, Whitney Museum of American Art “The American Century” retrospective.

Distributed by

www.Microcinema.com
http://www.microcinema.com/programResult.php?program_id=465

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