CURRENT

November 28, 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.

November 7, 2011

The Films of Gunvor Nelson by Lynne Sachs

The first time I saw Gunvor’s brash, feminist 1966 moving image carnival “Schmeerguntz”, I was about 25 years old, still too young (I thought) to identify with her funky discourse on motherhood and domesticity. In a sense, I watched Gunvor’s cinematic collaboration with her friend Dorothy Wiley as a child might furtively read her mother’s journals.

October 21, 2011

Blogcritic DVD Review: The Last Happy Day

In an interview with Otherzine experimental fil maker, Lynne Sachs talks about realizing “that there was a pattern emerging in my work, a rhythm between films that were open to changes brought by the times and films that followed a very clearly defined vision or concept. ” Later in the interview she relates what she is trying to do in her films to the avant garde poet, Gertrude Stein’s desire to “create provocative ruptures between the sign and the signifier, between the way we are taught to speak (to communicate) and the way we ultimately choose to express ourselves (art).”

September 26, 2011

Nat’l Gallery of Art presents American Originals Now: Lynne Sachs Oct. 16 & 23

The ongoing film series American Originals Now offers an opportunity for discussion with internationally recognized American filmmakers and a chance to share in their artistic practice through special screenings and conversations about their works in progress. Since the mid-1980s, Lynne Sachs has developed an impressive catalogue of essay films that draw on her interests in sound design, collage, and personal recollection. She investigates war-torn regions such as Israel, Bosnia, and Vietnam, always striving to work in the space between a community’s collective memory and her own subjective perceptions.

July 15, 2011

Experimental TV Center presents Sachs & Street at Anthology Film Archives

Street and Sachs, a Brooklyn filmmaking couple, negotiate the thin line between representation and abstraction in each second of this moving image extravaganza. Created in the grand tradition of the Cartesian and chromosomal construct, what looks like a tree can quickly turn into a train, a telephone pole or an angry bowl of soup, as our audience hangs on for dear life. Sachs makes theatrical gestures and tableaux using hands, toys, a plate of cherry pie, and a miniature of the Empire State Building. Street produces photochemically conjured flowers, fishing tackle, and shards of found film – – all flying by at a variety of speeds in the spirit of a Man Ray print.

May 19, 2011

Ten Short Film by Lynne Sachs at Austin Film Society

Wednesday, May 25 at 7 PM
AFS Screening Room (1901 E. 51st St, Gate 2 by water tower)
$5 AFS Members & Students w/ Valid ID / $8 General Public
Q&A with Lynne Sachs via Skype, moderated by Austin experimental filmmaker/teacher Caroline Koebel