WRITING

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 […]

Bruce Conner Remembered

Bruce Conner died in the summer of 2008. For those who may not know, he was a Beat generation artist, the first filmmaker to see the value in “found footage”, and an extraordinary visionary. His collages and films are in museums and archives all over the world. Two different people in Buenos Aires, where I was living last summer, mentioned his death to me without even knowing that I knew him. Bruce was a very important person in my life and psyche.

History of the Artist Abecedarium

Anthropologists, filmmakers, linguists, musicians, painters, poets, writers — all share a fascination with the 26 letters of the alphabet. An abecedarium is traditionally an educational book for children containing words beginning with each letter, but for centuries it has also been a resource for creative work by artists in almost every media. This history of the abecedarium will look at a selection of artists whose intentions are both to celebrate and disrupt this most basic and widespread system of verbal communication.

Watching Richard Fung’s “Sea in the Blood”

Thinking about Richard Fung’s “Sea in the Blood” By Lynne Sachs Two men swimming, the flow of skin against the skin, and there below the surface of the water is a camera.  Richard Fung’s lens is an activated observation machine, the eye gazing at the self.  His memory becomes an animal in the pool – […]

Visit to New Orleans

Visit to New Orleans Grey afternoon everything carved away gaunt woman in once-tight jeans zig-zags patterns, boulevard desolate. Archeological trash pile not for garbage collector. Everything carved away. Dogs no longer here. Old kitten dangling thread, teasing between splinters from a screen door stretching blissful open and shut by the arm of the wind. Woman […]

States of UnBelonging Transcript

STATES OF UNBELONGING a film by LYNNE SACHS in collaboration with NIR ZATS 63 minutes Hebrew spoken by children “When I am big and someone dies, I am going to go to the funeral.” “You can put a doll on the grave, just like in the story.’ Dear Lynne, I patiently wait for the sand […]

Thoughts on Birth and Brakhage

From California to Florida to New York to Maryland to Tennessee, I’ve been making and teaching avant-garde film for 20 years. In my experience, there is only one film, of the many works to which I expose my college students, that consistently creates a passionate, call it vitriolic, reaction: Stan Brakhage’s “Window, Water, Baby, Moving”(1959, 12 min.).

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 […]

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 […]