Contractions
12 min, 2024
In the wake of the overturning of Roe v Wade, “Contractions” takes us to Memphis, Tennessee where we contemplate the discontinuation of abortion services at a women’s health clinic. We listen to an obstetrician and a reproductive rights activist who movingly lay out these vital issues. We watch 14 women and their male allies who witness and perform with their backs to the camera. In a state where a woman can no longer make decisions about her own body, they can only “speak” with the full force of their collective presence.
On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ended a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion in the United States. Twenty-one states now ban abortion outright or earlier in pregnancy than the standard set by Roe v. Wade, which governed reproductive rights for half a century. The woman’s health care facility in this film no longer offers abortions.
Intimate confessions, paired with experimental choreography outside a woman’s clinic in Memphis, offer a glimpse into post Roe v. Wade America.
“A couple of years after the annulment of the ruling known as Roe v. Wade, which, since 1973,
guaranteed the right to abortion in the United States, weeds are growing on the walls of an empty
clinic in Memphis, Tennessee. In this abandoned setting, a group of women, some holding hands
with their companions, seem to recreate a kind of off-screen abortion: the entrance and exit of
the clinic. We do not see their faces, but the sound guides us: in the voices of two women we
hear the testimonies of those who once exercised a right, now lost. “
– Karina Solórzano, Documenta Madrid
“The cast’s gestures enact trauma, nerves, and capriciousness in doing something once legally acceptable that is now the opposite. They carry a history where their reproduction rights are currently in paralysis.” – Dispatches from True/False, The Brooklyn Rail, Edward Frumkin
See full film on The New York Times Op Docs:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/18/opinion/abortion-ban-clinic-tennessee.html
We Continue to Speak Sound Collage
4 min 33 sec
Sachs records the participants in her film Contractions as they vocalize their reactions to the reduction of women’s bodily autonomy in the US.
Artist Statement
Maybe everyone has this feeling in some way. When something terrible happens in the world, we ask
ourselves “What can I do?” More often than not, I feel hopeless and powerless and go on with my life.
But sometimes, the despair so haunts me that I realize that I must respond in some way. I need my
artistic practice to articulate how I am feeling, not so much as an act of persuasion but rather a
witnessing. In the summer of 2023, I went back to my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee when abortion
clinics across the country were closing their doors after the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, the 1973
landmark Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion nationwide. I worked with 14 activists – mostly women but also a few male allies – to perform with their backs to the camera in a unified expression of anger and sadness. We had also had the same number of volunteer marshals there with us — inside cars and in nearby buildings — to look out for us during the entire film production. These days, gathering together with kindred spirits to make a movie about abortion rights puts everyone involved in a vulnerable position. It was a relief to have a form of security there to support us. I interviewed two women for the film’s soundtrack: Dr. Kimberly Looney, an obstetrician gynecologist who had years of experience performing abortions prior to the changes in the local laws and a leader in the African-American family planning movement; and, an anonymous driver who is part of an underground reproductive justice community that takes pregnant women who want abortions across state lines.
Together, they bear witness to a troubled time in which women are losing their ability to control what
happens to their own bodies. In addition, I recorded with our performers. Each participant sang,
hummed, or simply verbally articulated their anguish over the situation they watch each and every day in
the state of Tennessee and elsewhere around the country. Mixed in unison, their voices form an aural
chorus, that can be heard in the film. Making Contractions has already given me the chance to spend time with others in the reproductive justice movement. Through the film, I have engaged with spokespeople in the medical field, underground activists with a commitment to acts of nonviolent civil-disobedience, and quiet powerfully committed volunteers. The experience of making this film has changed me. I am only beginning to discover how the film and our collective efforts will be experienced by audiences. I will smile if these moments of witnessing – whether in the theater or the living room — bring about introspection and recalibration.
Credits
Director
Lynne Sachs
Voices
Dr. Kimberly Looney
Jane
Performers
SaBrenna Boggan
Chase Colling
Shana J. Crispin
Kimberly Hooper-Taylor
Coe Lapossy
A. Lloyd
Audrey May
Vanessa Mejia
Natalie Richmond
Krista Scott
Neal Trotter
J. Wright
Nubia Yasin
Co-producers
Emily Berisso
Laura Goodman
Lynne Sachs
Cinematographer
Sean Hanley
Editor
Anthony Svatek
with assistance from Tiff Rekem
Studio recording
Doug Easley
Sound mix
Kevin T. Allen
Festivals and Selected Screenings:
True/False Film Fest, United States (2024)
Cosmic Rays Film Festival, United States (2024)
Ann Arbor Film Festival, United States (2024)
Onion City Experimental Film Festival, United States (2024)
Prismatic Ground Film Festival, United States (2024)
Moviate Underground Film Festival, United States (2024)
Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University, United States (2024)
DocumentaMadrid International Film Festival, Spain (2024)
VIENNA SHORTS International Shorts Film Festival, Austria (2024)
PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art | “Sentient Disobedients” Program, Canada (2024)
DC/DOX Film Festival, United States (2024)
Olhar de Cinema Festival Internacional de Curitiba, Brazil (2024)
Other Cinema, San Francisco (2024)
AGX Boston Film Collective, Films from the Abortion Clinic Film Collective, Boston (2024)
Women Make Waves Film Festival, Taipei, Taiwan (2024)
Mimesis Documentary Festival, Boulder, Colorado (2024)
Camden International Film Festival, (2024)
Chicago Underground Film Festival, (2024)
Dialogues Documentary Festival, Milwaukee, WS (2024)
