EXQUISITE ESSAYIST
MAY.9: LYNNE SACHS’ EVERY CONTACT LEAVES A TRACE
Saturday at ATA Gallery, 992 Valencia (@ 21st).
SHOWTIME 8:00pm. ALWAYS FREE BOOKS, VINYL, VHS, AND WINE.
Since 1990, filmmaker Lynne Sachs (in person tonight!) has collected 600 business cards—from a hairdresser, a therapist, a textile artist… Together they form an archive of encounters. The title of this imaginative essay film, Every Contact Leaves a Trace, is a basic principle of forensic science…and any trace can link a person to a place, another person, or an object. If that’s true, Sachs wonders, might every personal encounter not also leave a trace on your being? To find out, she tracks down some of the people behind the business cards. The thread connecting these hundreds of cards is Sachs herself, so the filmmaker naturally becomes the center of the film. Yet the focus is not on her; she merely provides the perspective—the point of departure. With her warm, contemplative voice-over and playful visual invention, Sachs weaves countless faces and voices into a patchwork of connections. These encounters—whether forgotten or remembered, faint or vivid—have become part of her being. $13