Sachs said she hopes people will see her father as a unique character, but not that different from most dads.
She said, “I want people who watch it to imagine, ‘Well, how might I explore my father? What would be the questions I would ask? Maybe there were things he kept from me, because maybe he was protecting me — or maybe he had a side he didn’t want me to know.’”
As much I call myself a cinéphile, there are certain times in my filmmaking process — be it the production or post-production phase — when I try not to watch anything that is not going to help me strategize on how to solve a particular obstacle in front of me.
“These poems are innovative but never intimidating or deliberately opaque. Instead, they invite us in, encouraging us to play along. They give us a structure to enter into our own retrospective lives, our own distillations of time, our own superimpositions of the newsworthy world onto our most intimate moments.” – Sharon Harrigan
I’ve been devoted to WBAI 99.5 FM New York for years so what a thrill to read from my YEAR BY YEAR POEMS (Tender Buttons Press) this week live on their Pacifica Radio Network.
Join us at Burke’s Books for a reading and book signing with Lynne Sachs for her book of poetry, “Year by Year”
Almost 30 years in the making and constructed from rediscovered Super 8 and 16mm home movies, VHS tape recordings and new digital video footage, “Film About a Father Who” — the title is a reference to Yvonne Rainer’s 1974 landmark “Film About a Woman Who…” — is, at base, a portrait of Ira Sachs Sr., the “Bohemian businessman” whose Memphis children were only three of what eventually was revealed to be nine children among six mothers.
“Here we have a family. And most families have fall-outs. And the ruptured and the intense one in Lynne’s film—amazing documentary—reveals how far blood lines can stretch without losing connection altogether…”
In its program description, Slamdance said the film “offers simultaneous, sometimes contradictory views of one seemingly unknowable man who is publicly the uninhibited center of the frame yet privately ensconced in secrets. … As the startling facts mount, Sachs as a daughter discovers more about her father than she had ever hoped to reveal.”
Now in its 19th year, Doc Fortnight will run from February 5 to 19, 2020, and will include 12 world premieres, 17 North American premieres, and 14 US premieres from 38 countries.
Peter Baxter, Co-Founder and Director of Slamdance Film Festival, talks about this year’s festival, which features Lynne Sachs festival premiere, a documentary on her father and Park City bon vivant Ira Sachs Sr., “Film About A Father Who”.