NON-FICTION

2011

Roundtable on Digital Filmmaking in October Magazine

We are here to discuss the various ways digital technologies have, and have not, impacted experimental filmmaking. There was a time, in the mid-1990s, if not before, when some people argued that digital technologies were revolutionary and that they would fundamentally change filmmaking. Now that the dust has settled, or at least started to settle, and we can look back over the last fifteen or twenty years, the “digital revolution” might not seem like a revolution at all. We want to talk about both what has stayed the same and what has changed in experimental filmmaking thanks to the advent of digital technologies.

2011

Lynne at Punto de Vista Film Festival, Pamplona, Spain

“Naming an international film festival after a term for subjectivity is, in my mind, a radical stance. Rather than taking the more obvious city or country identified name, which brings attention to the community, the Punto de Vista festival celebrates a first person cinema based on the documentary practice of working with reality, that privileges the expression of ideas over the dissemination of information.”

2010

Last Happy Day — Lynne Sachs Director’s Statement

“In 2009, I completed The Last Happy Day, a film that uses both real and imagined stories about Sandor Lenard, a distant cousin of mine and a Hungarian medical doctor. (See text above for description). Several years ago I traveled to Sao Paolo, Brazil to film Sandor’s eighty-five year old wife, Andrietta. She described in vivid, almost dreamy, detail her husband’s macabre work. I listened to her recount his daily contact with the detritus of war, wondering to myself why we so rarely think about who is responsible for “cleaning up” the dead. Later in the film, Andrietta’s graphic, realistic recollections stir visual ruminations on this futile act of posthumous, cosmetic surgery.

2009

I am Not a War Photographer by Lynne Sachs

I AM NOT A WAR PHOTOGRAPHER is what I’ve decided to call a group of five films I’ve made over the last thirteen years. After breathlessly watching Christian Freil’s “War Photographer” (2001), the utterly transformative documentary on the life of James Nachtway, print journalism’s quintessential career war photographer, I knew that Nachtway’s remarkable credo —

“Every minute I was there, I wanted to flee. I did not want to see this. Would I cut and run, or would I deal with the responsibility of being there with a camera?”

2009

Wind in Our Hair Diary

May 16, 2008                                   Brooklyn, New York Tonight I finished reading Julio Cortazar’s short story “Final del Juego”.  Since I will be spending the summer in Buenos Aires in a few months, I am trying to get a feeling for the city and for the people.  As a mother of two 13 and 11 year-old girls […]

2009

Senses of Buenos Aires: a few of my favorite things

Senses of Buenos Aires a few things about the city that I love by Lynne Sachs Confiteria Ideal In my opinion, this is the most wonderful place to see tango. Real people doing the dance of Argentina with a kind of love and commitment that that will make you want to get on the floor […]

2006

Grapevine to the Sky: Meditation on Life in Brooklyn

A Grapevine to the Sky: A Meditation on Life in Brooklyn by Lynne Sachs Jack must have started his infamous climb to the sky from a backyard in Brooklyn.  While not the eponymous beanstalk with which most of us are familiar, the seventy-five foot high Concord grape vine in my backyard reaches so daringly up […]

2006

Making and Being “Drawn and Quartered”

MAKING AND BEING “DRAWN & QUARTERED” BY LYNNE SACHS My great Uncle Charlie was a prominent Memphis businessman who took a giddy pleasure in shooting some of the most elegant, compassionate photographs I’ve ever seen.  I remember his close-up portrait taken in the late 1950’s of a wizened black man looking into the lens.  I […]

2001

First Steps in a Terra Incognita

FIRST STEPS IN A TERRA INCOGNITA BY LYNNE SACHS Feb. 17, 2001  I tell my next door neighbor that I’m going abroad for a couple of weeks and she wishes me a good vacation.  I tell my old boyfriend Sam, I’m going to Sarajevo on a student exchange program, and he asks me how it […]