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Lynne Sachs included in Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive / Online Archive of California

https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8x06fvr/?query=lynne+sachs

Collection Guide

Collection Title: Sachs (Lynne) Collection
Collection Number: PFA.MSS.017  
Get Items:  Contact UC Berkeley::Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Collection Overview

Description: The collection represents the work of experimental documentary filmmaker Lynne Sachs, who has worked primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City since the 1980s. Included are articles and film screening notes about Sachs and her films; essays and other writings by Sachs; correspondence with other filmmakers including Barbara Hammer and Sylvia Schedelbauer; as well as still images and artist’s statements from each of the videos included in the original donation.

Background: Lynne Sachs is a New York-based filmmaker whose work combines experimental and documentary film traditions with a strongly feminist perspective. She has produced over 40 films as well as many performances and installation works, and publishes essays and poetry as extensions of her visual arts practice. Her films have screened at prestigious institutions and festivals worldwide and won numerous awards, including the 2020 Grand Prize at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen for a film made together with fellow experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer. Sachs began making films in San Francisco while attending San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Art Institute, drawing inspiration from and collaborating with many filmmakers including Bruce Conner, George Kuchar, Gunvor Nelson, Carolee Schneemann, and Trinh T. Min-ha. Sachs has also taught filmmaking at New York University, Hunter College, and the University of California, Berkeley, among other institutions.

Extent: 2.5 cartons Generally printouts and photocopies of flyers, essays, correspondence, and press clippings.

Availability: The collection is open for research in person in the BAMPFA Film Library and Study Center. Remote access to digital files in the collection is not currently possible, pending arrangements with the donor. Please contact the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive Film Library and Study Center for details.

Filmform / Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor added to Swedish Film Archive

https://www.filmform.com/works/5693-carolee-barbara-gunvor/

Lynne’s first film to be included in the Swedish Collection, Filmform. This film includes Gunvor Nelson who is one of the greatest Swedish experimental filmmakers.

“Gunvor Nelson is one of the most highly acclaimed filmmakers in classic American avant-garde film.
She grew up in Kristinehamn. (born 1931). Her mother was a teacher and her father was the owner and editor-in-chief of the local newspaper, Kristinehamns-Posten. On leaving school she studied at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, but moved to the US and California in 1953 to study art and art history.

Nelson met her husband-to-be Robert Nelson when she was studying at the California School of Fine Arts (from 1961 onwards, the San Francisco Art Institute). Robert Nelson is one of the great humorists of the American avant-garde. The Nelsons were a vital part of the new film culture that evolved in the San Francisco area and they played a key role in one of America’s oldest and most respected film cooperatives, the Canyon Cinema.

Gunvor Nelson made her first two films together with Dorothy Wiley, wife of the artist William T. Wiley, who in turn made films with Robert Nelson. Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley’s debut Schmeerguntz (1966) is a humorous and grotesque feminist classic in which the everyday reality of a young mother is contrasted with the ideal of the American woman.

An uncompromising filmmaker, Nelson has a unique voice in experimental cinema. She regards her own works as “personal films”, a recurring element of which is the connection with her own life and experiences. The early films are based around the experiences of a younger woman, culminating in My Name Is Oona (1969), an expressive portrait of her daughter, and Moons Pool (1973), an existentially expressive underwater journey which centres on her own body.

With Trollstenen (‘The Magic Stone’, 1976), which centres on Nelson’s family and upbringing, she began a series of films about Kristinehamn and her family. Typically for Nelson, elements which are local and private fuse together with the general and universal. Nelson’s family and generational study Red Shift (1984), and her painfully sensitive portrayal of her dying mother in Time Being (1991) are regarded as the high points of her family and hometown productions.

Around this time (1983-1990) Nelson also made a total of five different collage films at Filmverkstan in Stockholm, works which give free rein to her own associations and her experimentation with animated images. These films are often regarded both as Nelson’s most demanding and most creative works.
Nelson moved back to Kristinehamn and Sweden in December 1992, a homecoming already hinted at in her rhythmically edited collage film Frame Line (1983). Having returned to Sweden she quickly moved on to digital video and was rediscovered in Swedish art circles, resulting in a number of awards and retrospectives both at home and abroad.

Gunvor Nelson has also influenced several generations of filmmakers in her role as a teacher, primarily at the San Francisco Art Institute (1970-1992).” -Filmform

Filmform (est. 1950) is dedicated to preservation, promotion and worldwide distribution of experimental film and video art. Constantly expanding, the distribution catalogue spans from 1924 to the present, including works by Sweden’s most prominent artists and filmmakers, available to rent for public screenings and exhibitions as well as for educational purposes.

Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor

From 2015 to 2017, Lynne Sachs visited with Carolee Schneemann, Barbara Hammer and Gunvor Nelson, three multi-faceted artists who have embraced the moving image throughout their lives. From Carolee’s 18th Century house in the woods of Upstate New York to Barbara’s West Village studio to Gunvor’s childhood village in Sweden, Lynne shoots film with each woman in the place where she finds grounding and spark.