https://mdff2026.eventive.org/films/every-contact-leaves-a-trace-69a79ea7902c87570db924d6
EVERY CONTACT LEAVES A TRACE
In this digital era, real life connections are rarer, yet any personal encounter can leave a lingering trace. Over a lifetime, filmmaker Lynne Sachs has collected business cards, mementos of meetings with strangers. She selects seven cards from hundreds and throws herself into finding out why these brief yet vivid moments left an imprint on her consciousness.
“If T.S. Eliot measures a life in coffee spoons, Lynne Sachs measures it in business cards. This physical ephemera becomes the source of playful explorations of the lives that the filmmaker has come across during her life in this experimental, yet inviting film. (Be sure to catch the 25th anniversary screening of Sachs’s “Investigation of a Flame,” during MdFF too!)” – MdFF programming team
Q&A’s will be moderated by National Gallery of Art film curator Joanna Raczynska.
Showings:
Fri, Apr 10th, 12:30 PM @ Parkway 3
Sat, Apr 11th, 7:15 PM @ Parkway 2
INVESTIGATION OF A FLAME
https://mdff2026.eventive.org/films/investigation-of-a-flame-69a7a435c16c0cfde0e39166
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.
“This landmark film from celebrated filmmaker Lynne Sachs screened at our very first Maryland Film Festival in 1999 at the Senator Theater. 25 years later, the film was restored and the timing couldn’t be better for us to learn from th the Catonsville 9 in this essential example in the history of Maryland activism. (Don’t miss Lynne’s most recent feature EVERY CONTACT LEAVES A TRACE, also playing in MdFF 2026!)” – MdFF programming team
Q&A’s will be moderated by associate producer and National Gallery of Art film curator Joanna Raczynska.
Showings: