The Eagle 
By Grace George 
February 5, 2021
https://www.theeagleonline.com/blog/silver-screen/2021/02/film-about-a-father-who-candidly-explores-kinship-and-neglect

“Film About a Father Who” opens on Ira Sachs, the filmmaker’s father, flinching as a comb works through his long and wiry hair. In this frame, Ira is an unknown elderly man who looks tired, harmless and boring. As the documentary untangles the web of adventure, women and children that make up his life, he proves to be quite the opposite. 

Filmed and directed by Lynne Sachs, “Film About a Father Who” is an examination of Ira’s role in the lives of those who are close to him. Ira is initially depicted as a gregarious and quirky businessman who takes his work calls while riding ski lifts. As the film progresses, his cavalier attitude toward life appears to put a heavy burden on his children, his mother and his romantic partners.

The caricature that Ira fulfills — an absent and negligent father — is a bit tired, but his story is nonetheless worthy of hearing, especially as Sachs’ approach to making this documentary creates a genuinely emotional audience experience. 

Sachs meticulously pieces together moments of her father’s life and interviews with those who know him intimately to make up this documentary. The shots featured were taken over a 35-year period, which only makes it feel more organic. 

“Film About a Father Who” is often dreamlike and nostalgic. Sachs is imaginative with her talking heads, scene transitions and introductions. Sometimes the timelines of events are unclear, but this haziness only emphasizes the overarching theme of general confusion about how she and her siblings should feel toward their father. He has nine children with multiple different women, and they each struggle to understand how to manage their relationship with him and each other. 

The most intriguing aspect of this film is its level of candor and its genuine purpose. Sachs makes no futile attempts to give her viewer definitive answers. Like its title suggests, this documentary invites outsiders to consider who or what the father at the center of this film is. On the surface, he is an intriguing free spirit. As he complicates and impresses upon his children’s lives, he becomes toxic. 

Sachs does not hold back on the negative portrayals of her father, and she makes no excuses for him. In a voiceover near the end of the film, Sachs says, “This is not a portrait. This is not a self-portrait. This is my reckoning with the conundrum of our asymmetry.” This film is not an invitation to view the spectacle that is Sachs’ eccentric father. It is instead a valiant attempt to come to terms with the chasm between them, even as they are inextricably linked. 

“Film About a Father Who” can be watched online through various virtual cinemas. 

Reviewing a gem from the Victoria Film Festival, a couple’s loud, long night, and a screwy worldview
By Volkmar Richter
February 5th 2021
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/02/05/reviews/reviewing-gem-victoria-film-festival-couples-loud-and-long-night-and

The Golden Globes? I’m OK with most of the nominations that came down this week, but can’t understand why Spike Lee was completely shut out. Da 5 Bloods is one of the best films of last year. Also, why Meryl Streep wasn’t nominated but James Corden was. And did Netflix really deserve 22 nods, and another 20 on the TV side?

Meanwhile, I notice two film festivals are now on and are available via streaming everywhere in B.C. At very good prices, too. Both have a number of films that were at VIFF last fall, plus a few new to us. The Powell River fest is showing 12 films, including Zappa, Falling, Ammonite, and Money Beach. Victoria’s has 50, including three Oscar hopefuls, a locally made highlight, All-in Madonna, and two films I review among others below.

FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO: That’s not a typing error; it’s the full title of this film by Lynne Sachs about her wandering father. Ira Sachs is still alive, but much aged, the last I read. He was a rich hotel developer in Utah with a stable family and a secret life. He dated young women, got some pregnant and fathered nine children with them. Lynne says she didn’t even know about one sister for the first 20 years of her life. With the film, she tries to understand him. She doesn’t do as much of that as we’d like, but does bring him to us vividly.

Lynne filmed him for three decades in a variety of formats including, Super 8, VHS, Beta, and so we get to see him in all sorts of family situations. He was “the cool dad of Park City.” But he hid much of his life from them. He doesn’t lie, she says in the film. He just doesn’t tell you what’s going on. Lynne doesn’t judge, she loves him too much, but she does convey surprise at what she found out. One now-grown child talks about living poor and going to bed hungry. In another sequence, she tells of a trip to Bali and annoyance at his connecting with a young woman there. How much she knew, or should have known, is an open question. Yes, the film illustrates how hard it can be to know all within a family, but it’s also hard to believe a man’s other life like this (yes, they do happen), can be so well-hidden. Sad, but lots to think about here. Streaming for $12 per household here. 3½ out of 5

CINE-FILE SELECTS: 
FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO
By Kathleen Sachs
Friday, February 5th- Thursday, February 11th, 2020
https://www.cinefile.info/cine-list/2020/02/05/021121?rq=lynne%20sachs

In partnership with film distributor Cinema Guild, Cine-File is presenting a virtual screening of independent/experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs’ 2020 documentary feature FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO. The film is available to rent at the link below for $12, with half the proceeds going to Cine-File (funds will be used for general expenses, future programming, and to provide honoraria to our contributors). The film is also available via our friends at Facets Cinémathèque.
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Lynne Sachs’ FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here and through Cine-File here.

In his Odes, Horace wrote, “For the sins of your fathers you, though guiltless, must suffer.” It’s hardly an esoteric dictum, but nevertheless, it’s duly reflected in experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs’ wholehearted documentary portrait of her father, Ira Sachs Sr. Something of a longstanding work-in-progress, the film draws from decades of footage shot by Sachs, her father, and her filmmaker brother, Ira Sachs Jr. (whose own 2005 film FORTY SHADES OF BLUE was inspired by the same so-called “Hugh Hefner of Park City”), plus others, documenting not just the sybaritic “hippie-businessman” patriarch, but also his numerous descendants. Sachs’ knotty chronicle reveals that her father has a total of nine children with several different women, two of whom the other siblings found out about only a few years back. (The film opens with Sachs brushing her elderly father’s hair, working out a particularly unpleasant snarl. “Sorry, dad,” she says. “There’s just one part that’s very tangly.” The irony is faint and benevolent, but present even so.) Sachs considers the enveloping imbroglio from her own perspective but also takes into account the viewpoints of her eight siblings, her father’s ex-wives (including her own mother) and girlfriends, plus Ira’s mother, a gracefully cantankerous old woman in a certain amount of denial over her son’s wanton predilections and the role she played in his dysfunction. FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO—the title an homage to Yvonne Rainer’s FILM ABOUT A WOMAN WHO…—is comprised of footage recorded between 1965 and 2019 and shot on 8mm, 16mm, VHS, Hi8, Mini DV, and digital; the fusion of all this material (by editor Rebecca Shapass) ranks among the most astounding use of personal archives that I’ve ever seen. It all exists in a state between documentary and home-movie footage, a paradigm that aptly reflects the conflict between reality and perspective, and the uncomfortable middle-ground that bisects the two. Sachs’ work often features her family, but this feels like an apotheosis of her autobiographical predisposition, likewise a question—why do the sins of the father linger?—and an answer. Among the most affecting scenes are roundtable discussions between the siblings where they consider revelations about their father and the implications of his actions. These scenes are heartrending not for their sadness, but rather for their naked honesty; it’s not just a film about a father who, but also a film about a love that defines a family. Sachs’ filmography is centered on infinite poetic quandaries (in voice-over, she explores some of them here, such as when she muses on her father’s profession as a developer in Utah: “What happens when you own a horizon?”) and this feels like a logical conclusion to a lifetime of such profound impasses, though I’ve no doubt she’ll continue to probe life and its enigmas in a similarly masterful fashion. For all the suffering on display, Sachs has created an indelible work that, like those within it, perseveres by way of honesty and love. (2020, 74 min) [Kathleen Sachs]

Film About a Father Who: Lynne Sachs Film Review
January 30, 2021
by Alison Smith 
https://redefinemag.net/2021/film-about-a-father-who-lynne-sachs-film-review/

In her 2021 documentary, Film About a Father Who, filmmaker Lynne Sachs recalls how her dad, Ira Sachs, owned two identical red Cadillacs that he swapped out for each other, never letting his family in on his con. While benign, this secret was the first of many more, which were often much more sinister.

Film About a Father Who, which is composed of archival footage spanning 1984 to 2019, is Lynne’s attempt to reconcile the loving father of her childhood with the deceptive figure enmeshed in a network of secret families. With his white walrus moustache and printed shirts, Ira was both a pillar of the community and a libertine, and his contradictions are the engine of this project.

Aesthetically, the film operates by its own dreamlike logic, cutting between time periods, places, and subjects without warning. It often feels as though we are in Lynne’s memories themselves, reliving her traumas with her. By the closing credits, the film is less an explanation of Ira’s character, and more a layered testament to the essential unknowability of even those we love most.

Overall, Film About a Father Who has a lived-in, DIY feel, splicing together materials ranging from grainy home video to dimly lit interviews. The relative banality of the footage makes the film’s visual motifs even starker. Several scenes are punctuated with footage of a volcano exploding, accompanied by the voices of Ira’s giddy children. How “true” is this scene, and what does it mean? These are questions that Lynne does not try to answer for the viewer. Another peculiar sequence is of a flickering field of daisies, which quickly turns into a whirling spiral of yellow and green, as the sensible collapses into the psychedelic. This moment perhaps points to the futility of trying to ascribe a linear, cogent storyline to a film as impressionistic and experimental as Film About a Father Who.

Yet not all is whimsy and light. Indeed, Lynne is not shy in portraying Ira’s womanizing. In a scene shocking in its offhandedness, Ira shows off a list of women he’s flirted with at parties to his son, turning page after page of names scrawled on yellow legal paper. Remarking to Ira Jr. how he took one of them to Miami, he laughs, “I’ve got a lot more to go! Miles to go before I sleep.” Painfully for the viewer, Ira Jr. seems in on the joke, either unfazed by his dad’s behavior or just numb to it. Lynne admits, with some chagrin, that Ira cycled through so many mistresses that she didn’t even bother to learn their names. Lynne’s sister Dana divides them into “major girlfriends” and “subsidiary girlfriends,” like a taxonomist describing a new species.

Interestingly, Film About a Father Who doesn’t propose a root cause of Ira’s behavior, eschewing psychoanalysis for intimate, eyebrow-raising footage. Instead, viewers are left to reckon with the damage he inflicted on his children, who bear his surname like a scar. In one heart-wrenching scene, Lynne sits in a circle with some of her half-siblings listening to spurned daughter Beth tell her story. The film cuts between Beth’s poignant testimony and Lynne’s grilling her father on his treatment of the damaged Beth. Ira claims he didn’t know his quasi-girlfriend was pregnant; Beth knows he did. Ira claims he wasn’t a part of Beth’s life; Beth knows that he posed as her godfather until she was 13.

During this sequence, the usually charismatic and talkative Ira barely says anything but “I don’t remember”; the tearful Beth remembers all too well. The two scenes capture some of Ira’s contradictions: he’s shameless but coy; he seems to lack a capacity for guilt, yet is intent on forgetting his past. While Ira has the privilege of forgetting, the film makes it clear that his children lack that luxury. Burdened with the self-hatred that often accompanies abandonment, they never receive the catharsis of a heartfelt apology.

Although the rehashing of infidelities is well-trodden territory for memoirists, Lynne gives us a striking portrayal of how pain and secrets ultimately knitted together the unconventional community made up of her father’s children. In several scenes, Ira’s kids from multiple women gather and even celebrate together. The film shows surprisingly little jealousy or rivalry between the offspring, perhaps because, as Lynne’s half-sister Julia speculates, they were all equally neglected. They all hungered for his affection, waiting for the day he would choose to be a real father.

Yet Julia’s notion of their group accord is belied by a scene where she and Lynne lie on a bed and tell stories about their father. Lynne explains how at a dinner with her half-brother Evan, she caught a glimpse of Ira’s insurance card in Evan’s pocket. The card listed Ira’s dependents with two names cut out—Julia and Beth’s. While the idea of a group united in pain may be comforting, the insurance card serves as a potent symbol of Ira’s favoritism.

Despite attempts by Film About a Father Who to illuminate Ira’s character, he ultimately remains an enigma. In scenes where he cheerfully evades any admissions of guilt, the viewer wonders whether there is a bedrock of conscience beneath his washed-out hippie charm, or if “I don’t remember” is as deep as we’re going to get. Dana may summarize the mystery of Ira as well as anyone when she says, “He can be selfish, but he also really loves people.” In the same vein, Lynne tells us that he was the sort of person who organized food drives while shamelessly bribing much younger women with fancy dinners. While Ira’s opaque nature can be frustrating, his children nevertheless offer a model for functional family dynamics even in the aftermath of betrayal.

Lynne’s film, clearly a product of immense time and devotion, also suggests the possibility of understanding without forgiveness. At its core, Film About a Father Who is about a daughter’s complicated love for a father who never made loving him easy.

Film About a Father Who
DeFacto Film Reviews
January 27, 2021
By Robert Joseph Butler
http://defactofilmreviews.com/film-about-a-fatherwho

Families hold many complexities and dysfunctions. Stories are often passed on from person to person, and many times it leads to siblings, mothers, fathers, and other members to feel bitter, but it can also be reconciled and even distorted. Family secrets are often passed down from person to person, and many times the truth can create adversities and hardships. Lynne Sachs compelling documentary, “Film About a Father Who,” is evidently about her father, Ira Sachs Sr. (not to be confused with the talented Independent filmmaker), who’s still alive. An engaging and personal documentary, it is told through artful 8mm and home video footage along with observational footage and Lynne narrating her own documentary, which in part makes it a redemptive framework. Can Lynne Sachs come to terms with the man her father really is?

Sach’s father Ira is a very charming and easygoing man, a semi-successful entrepreneur that presents himself more as a “hippie businessman.” Ira has long hair, a handlebar mustache, and almost looks like a character out of a Wes Anderson film. We see archival footage of him promoting cellphones in the early 90s at ski resorts. He’s also a real estate developer who explains how cell phones have made his life much more accessible for his business deals. During his off time he often wears Hawaiian shirts, loves to go skiing in Utah, and also enjoys traveling.  The images of this relaxed and likeable man are deceptive as Lynne Sachs points out how much damage he has generated for the women and children due to his endless affairs that led to him impregnating five different women who all had their children out of wedlock.

In the beginning of the documentary, the film is very warm and inviting, which almost plays out like a counterpart to something like “Dick Johnson is Dead”–which was last year’s documentary also about father’s and daughters reconnecting and making a documentary together. Throughout Ira’s life he had many affairs with many different women, withheld information about who he really was, and deceived many other women who led to a lot of agony and heartbreak that destroyed many livelihoods.

In many ways, Sach’s film reminded me of Andrew Jarecki 2003 documentary masterpiece “Capturing the Friedman’s” because just as Jarecki did in that masterwork, Sachs structures the documentary like a procedural or investigation in a way. She focuses on his character, his motivations, manipulations, and the adversities his actions created. This leads Sachs back to using scratchy home movies that were shot during her childhood and teenage years, and we get recent footage of Lynne’s half-brothers and sisters from different mothers who are introduced later in the film. It also features Sachs drilling her father over his selfish and self-destructive behaviors as she contemplates and narrates the narrative looking for traits or signs in earlier footage of what led to his behavior. Sachs is asking the audience if redemption and forgiveness can go when it comes to family, how much mercy can we give after years of so much dishonesty.

In the beginning of the documentary, the film is very warm and inviting, which almost plays out like a counterpart to something like “Dick Johnson is Dead”–which was last year’s documentary also about father’s and daughters reconnecting and making a documentary together. Throughout Ira’s life he had many affairs with many different women, withheld information about who he really was, and deceived many other women who led to a lot of agony and heartbreak that destroyed many livelihoods.

In many ways, Sach’s film reminded me of Andrew Jarecki 2003 documentary masterpiece “Capturing the Friedman’s” because just as Jarecki did in that masterwork, Sachs structures the documentary like a procedural or investigation in a way. She focuses on his character, his motivations, manipulations, and the adversities his actions created. This leads Sachs back to using scratchy home movies that were shot during her childhood and teenage years, and we get recent footage of Lynne’s half-brothers and sisters from different mothers who are introduced later in the film. It also features Sachs drilling her father over his selfish and self-destructive behaviors as she contemplates and narrates the narrative looking for traits or signs in earlier footage of what led to his behavior. Sachs is asking the audience if redemption and forgiveness can go when it comes to family, how much mercy can we give after years of so much dishonesty.

While Sachs could have dived even deeper in the interviews, especially with an interview involving her siblings, it’s the home video imagery that resonates the most, which has scratches, washed out colors, and wintry landscapes. If anything the footage feels abstract and metaphorical, as memories and even images can deceive our perceptions of how things really are beneath the surface. The opening of the film has the warm and cozy inviting moments, where we see a kind man and backgrounds that symbolizes tranquility, only for the footage to also look dated and worn out that matches the revelations of the family’s past that echoes a collection of semi-deceptive and exhausted memories. To her advantage, Sach utilizes her home footage to her complete advantage that makes it feel like washed out memories that are slipping away. She also uses 16mm in interviews with close family members, including one with her Grandmother. Formally experimental for a documentary, the wide range of aesthetics are quite reflexive in Sachs own commentary about the inconsistency of memory, and how the movie image is every bit as deceptive. If anything, this documentary shares a lot of the same ideas of Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” which also uses commentary on the discrepancies of the image.

Sachs’ vision should be commended and embraced for what she’s doing not only on a technical level, but also on a personal level. Ultimately, Ira’s reckless attitude towards relationships with women has generated a lot of internal trauma and hardships for Sachs and her fellow siblings, as well as to the women he was involved with. The film is a reminder on the importance of documentary filmmaking, how it’s important to record and how the visual medium can capture and reflect the state of what is going on. We never know what we record could later surface into something cohesive and coherent, and even bring closure for the unexpected hidden revelations that can arise. If anything, all families should record because whatever we shoot at the moment can become the relics to finding redemption and salvation in bringing a family together.