Tag Archives: epistolary

Lynne Sachs Focus at Camera Lucida (Ecuador)

October 14-17, 2021 Loja Teatro Bolivar
November 11-19, 2021 Cuenca Teatro Sucre
November 20 – December 10, 2021 Online Ecuador 
https://www.ecamaralucida.com/2021-lynne-sachs


Program in English

Mirada Epicentro (Ceter Focus)

Authors who have made their way looking inward, achieving a work where the constant regression to aesthetic searches, thematic investigations and particular narratives, have a point at which the gaze gravitates, infects and expands.

In this edition, we are happy to share in Mirada Epicentro the work of Lynne Sachs, Bruno Varela and Ecuador de Territory, a program made up of the authors Alberto Muenala, Eriberto Gualinga and Sani Montahuano.

A Month of Single Frames
2020 – U.S.A – 14’
In 1998, filmmaker Barbara Hammer had a one-month artist residency in the C Scape Duneshack which is run by the Provincetown Community Compact in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The shack had no running water or electricity. While there, she shot 16mm film with her Beaulieu camera, recorded sounds with her cassette recorder and kept a journal.

In 2018, Barbara began her own process of dying by revisiting her personal archive. She gave all of her Duneshack images, sounds and writing to filmmaker Lynne Sachs and invited her to make a film with the material.

Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor
2018 – U.S.A – 8’
From 2015 to 2017, Lynne 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.

E•pis•to•lar•y: letter to Jean Vigo
2021 – U.S.A / España – 5’
In a cinema letter to French director Jean Vigo, Lynne Sachs ponders the delicate resonances of his 1933 classic “Zero for Conduct” in which a group of school boys wages an anarchist rebellion against their authoritarian teachers. Thinking about the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the United States Capitol by thousands of right-wing activists, Sachs wonders how innocent play or calculated protest can turn so quickly into chaos and violence.

Drawn and Quartered
1987 – U.S.A – 4’
Optically printed images of a man and a woman are fragmented by a film frame that is divided into four distinct sections. An experiment in form/content relationships that are peculiar to the medium, 1987

Film About a Father Who
2020 – U.S.A – 74’
Over a period of 35 years between 1984 and 2019, filmmaker Lynne Sachs shot 8 and 16mm film, videotape and digital images of her father, Ira Sachs Sr., a bon vivant and pioneering businessman from Park City, Utah. FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO is her attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings. With a nod to the Cubist renderings of a face, Sachs’ cinematic exploration of her father offers simultaneous, sometimes contradictory, views of one seemingly unknowable man who is publicly the uninhibited center of the frame yet privately ensconced in secrets. In the process, Sachs allows herself and her audience inside to see beyond the surface of the skin, the projected reality. As the startling facts mount, Sachs as a daughter discovers more about her father than she had ever hoped to reveal.

Following the Object to its Logical Beginning
1987 – U.S.A – 9’
Like an animal in one of Eadweard Muybridge’s scientific photo experiments, five undramatic moments in a man’s life are observed by a woman. A study in visual obsession and a twist on the notion of the “gaze”.

Maya at 24
2021 – U.S.A – 4’
Lynne Sachs films her daughter Maya in 16mm black and white film, at ages 6, 16 and 24. At each iteration, Maya runs around her mother, in a circle – clockwise – as if propelling herself in the same direction as time, forward. Conscious of the strange simultaneous temporal landscape that only film can convey, we watch Maya in motion at each distinct age.

Photograph on Wind
2001 – U.S.A – 4’
My daughter’s name is Maya.  I’ve been told that the word maya means illusion in Hindu philosophy.  As I watch her growing up, spinning like a top around me, I realize that her childhood is not something I can grasp but rather  – like the wind – something I feel tenderly brushing across my cheek.

Same Stream Twice
2012 – U.S.A – 4’
In 2001, I photographed her at six years old, spinning like a top around me. Even then, I realized that her childhood was not something I could grasp but rather – like the wind – something I could feel tenderly brushing across my cheek.

Still Life with Woman and Four Objects
1986 – U.S.A – 4’
A film portrait that falls somewhere between a painting and a prose poem, a look at a woman’s daily routines and thoughts via an exploration of her as a “character”. By interweaving threads of history and fiction, the film is also a tribute to a real woman – Emma Goldman, 1986 .

The house of science: a museum of false facts
1991 – U.S.A – 30’
Offering a new feminized film form, this piece explores both art and science’s representation of women, combining home movies, personal remembrances, staged scenes and found footage into an intricate visual and aural college. A girl’s sometimes difficult coming of age rituals are recast into a potent web for affirmation and growth.

Viva and Felix Growing Up 
2015 – U.S.A – 10’
Capturing fragments of the first three years of her twin niece’s and nephew’s lives with their two dads (her brother Ira Sachs and his husband Boris Torres) and their mom (Kirsten Johnson), Sachs affectionately surveys the construction of family.

Which way is east
Lynne Sachs / Dana Sachs
1994 – U.S.A – 33’
When two American sisters travel north from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, conversations with Vietnamese strangers and friends reveal to them the flip side of a shared history.  Lynne and Dana Sachs’ travel diary of their trip to Vietnam is a collection of tourism, city life, culture clash, and historic inquiry that’s put together with the warmth of a quilt.  “Which Way Is East” starts as a road trip and flowers into a political discourse.  It combines Vietnamese parables, history and memories of the people the sisters met, as well as their own childhood memories of the war on TV.  To Americans for whom “Vietnam” ended in 1975, “Which Way Is East” is a reminder that Vietnam is a country, not a war.  The film has a combination of qualities: compassion, acute observational skills, an understanding of history’s scope, and a critical ability to discern what’s missing from the textbooks and TV news. (from The Independent Film and Video Monthly, Susan Gerhard)


Program in Spanish

Mirada Epicentro

Autoras y autores que han labrado su camino mirando hacia dentro, logrando una obra donde la regresión constante a búsquedas estéticas, investigaciones temáticas y narrativas particulares, disponen un punto en el cual la mirada gravita, se contagia y se expande.

En esta edición, nos alegramos compartir en Mirada Epicentro la obra de Lynne Sachs, Bruno Varela y Ecuador de territorio, un programa conformado por los autores Alberto Muenala, Eriberto Gualinga y Sani Montahuano. 

A Month of Single Frames
2020 – U.S.A – 14’
En 1998, la cineasta Barbara Hammer tuvo una residencia artística de un mes en Cape Cod, Massachusetts. La choza no tenía agua corriente ni electricidad. Mientras estuvo allí, filmó una película de 16 mm, grabó sonidos y llevó un diario. En 2018, Barbara comenzó su propio proceso de muerte revisando su archivo personal. Ella le dio todas sus imágenes, sonidos y escritura de la residencia a la cineasta Lynne Sachs y la invitó a hacer una película.

Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor
2018 – U.S.A – 8’
De 2015 a 2017, Lynne visitó a Carolee Schneemann, Barbara Hammer y Gunvor Nelson, tres artistas multifacéticos que han abrazado la imagen en movimiento a lo largo de sus vidas. Desde la casa del siglo XVIII de Carolee en los bosques del norte del estado de Nueva York hasta el estudio de Barbara en West Village y el pueblo de la infancia de Gunvor en Suecia, Lynne graba una película con cada mujer en el lugar donde encuentra la base y la chispa.

E•pis•to•lar•y: letter to Jean Vigo
2021 – U.S.A / España – 5’
En una epistolar fílmica dirigida al director francés Jean Vigo, Lynne Sachs reflexiona sobre su clásico de 1933 “Zero for Conduct”, en el que los escolares libran una rebelión anarquista contra sus maestros autoritarios. Al pensar en el asalto del 6 de enero de 2021 al Capitolio de los EE. UU. Por parte de activistas de derecha, Sachs se pregunta cómo un juego inocente o una protesta calculada pueden convertirse tan rápidamente en caos y violencia.

Drawn and Quartered
1987 – U.S.A – 4’
Imágenes impresas ópticamente de un hombre y una mujer fragmentadas por un fotograma de película que se divide en cuatro secciones distintas. Un experimento en las relaciones forma / contenido que son peculiares del medio, 1987.

Film About a Father Who
2020 – U.S.A – 74’
Desde 1984 al 2019, Lynne Sachs filmó a su padre, un animado e innovador hombre de negocios. Este documental es el intento de la cineasta por entender las redes que conectan a una niña con su padre y a una mujer con sus hermanos. Con un guiño a las representaciones cubistas de un rostro, la exploración de Sachas ofrece visiones simultáneas y a veces contradictorias de un hombre aparentemente incognocible que públicamente se ubica de forma desinhibida en el centro del encueadre, pero en lo privado se refugia en secretos.

Following the Object to its Logical Beginning
1987 – U.S.A – 9’
Como un animal en uno de los experimentos fotográficos científicos de Eadweard Muybridge, una mujer observa cinco momentos poco dramáticos en la vida de un hombre. Un estudio sobre la obsesión visual y un giro en la noción de “mirada”.

Maya at 24
2021 – U.S.A – 4’
Conscientes del extraño paisaje temporal simultáneo que solo el cine puede transmitir, vemos a Maya en movimiento en cada época distinta.

Photograph on Wind
2001 – U.S.A – 4’
El nombre de mi hija es Maya. Me han dicho que la palabra maya significa ilusión en la filosofía hindú. Mientras la veo crecer, girando como una peonza a mi alrededor, me doy cuenta de que su infancia no es algo que pueda comprender, sino más bien, como el viento, algo que siento acariciar con ternura mi mejilla.

Same Stream Twice
2012 – U.S.A – 4’
En 2001, la fotografié a los seis años, girando como una peonza a mi alrededor. Incluso entonces, me di cuenta de que su infancia no era algo que pudiera comprender, sino más bien, como el viento, algo que podía sentir con ternura rozando mi mejilla.

Still Life with Woman and Four Objects
1986 – U.S.A – 4’
Un retrato cinematográfico que se sitúa entre una pintura y un poema en prosa, una mirada a las rutinas y pensamientos diarios de una mujer a través de una exploración de ella como un “personaje”. Al entrelazar hilos de historia y ficción, la película también es un homenaje a una mujer real: Emma Goldman, 1986.

The house of science: a museum of false facts
1991 – U.S.A – 30’
Ofreciendo una nueva forma de película feminizada, esta pieza explora la representación de las mujeres tanto en el arte como en la ciencia, combinando películas caseras, recuerdos personales, escenas escénicas y metraje encontrado en una intrincada universidad visual y auditiva. Los rituales de mayoría de edad a veces difíciles de una niña se reconvierten en una potente red de afirmación y crecimiento.

Viva and Felix Growing Up 
2015 – U.S.A – 10’
Durante los primeros tres años de la vida de mi sobrino y mi sobrina gemela, usé mi cámara Bolex de 16 mm para filmarlos mientras crecían en la ciudad de Nueva York con sus dos papás (mi hermano Ira Sachs y su esposo Boris Torres) y su mamá (Kirsten Johnson). . La película termina con un abrazo por el Día del Orgullo Gay.

Which way is east
Lynne Sachs / Dana Sachs
1994 – U.S.A – 33’
Cuando dos hermanas estadounidenses viajan al norte desde la ciudad de Ho Chi Minh a Hanoi, las conversaciones con desconocidos y amigos vietnamitas les revelan la otra cara de una historia compartida.

Epistolary: A Letter to Jean Vigo at Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente de La Plata (Buenos Aires)

In Theaters: October 5, 2021 – 9:30PM ; Online: October 10-12
https://festifreak.com/ff/epistolary-letter-to-jean-vigo/

SYNOPSIS
In E-pis-to-lar-y: letter to Jean Vigo, Lynne Sachs reflects on the delicate resonances between the 1933 classic Zero for Conduct in which a group of schoolchildren wage an anarchist rebellion against their authoritarian teachers.

Thinking about the insurrection of January 6, 2021 in the United States Capitol by right-wing protesters, Lynne Sachs wonders how innocent play or calculated protest can so quickly turn into chaos and violence?

DIRECTOR’S NOTE
Every film I make is a reflection of ideas that infiltrate my mind, intertwined with my daily reality. I’m fascinated with the urge to disobey, with anarchic desires, and continually wondering how best to confront authority. It is in this deep ambivalence that I decide to make E-pis-to-lar-y: letter to Jean Vigo, a correspondence through cinema with Vigo, director of the exquisite Zero for Conduct, in a nod to irreverent and bad children behaviors. Making this movie gave me the opportunity to fight the horrors of January 6, 2021.

BIO
Lynne Sachs (United States, Memphis, 1961)
Filmmaker and poet living in NY. His work explores an intricate relationship between his personal observations and the extensive historical experience plotting together text, collage, painting, politics. Strongly engaged in a feminist dialogue between film theory and practice, she seeks a rigorous play between image and sound, reinforcing the aura and visual texture of her work in each project.


MANIFEST # 17FESTIFREAK

The world of the future bears little resemblance to our dystopian nightmares. There are fewer helpful automata than submissive humans. And it seems that hyperconnection dwarfed the world instead of enlarging it. The contact became a link.

The inner adventure of a year ago became normal. And doing the things that we liked was reduced to a memory. It took us a long time to get back to the theaters, but we did. This year, FestiFreak returns to common spaces, to the joint habitability of the place that always sheltered us and where the best fantasies are possible.

Although with the necessary public restrictions in the framework of the pandemic, FestiFreak will have functions at the INCAA Cine Select and Cine EcoSelect Spaces in La Plata, and also at the En Eso Somos Cultural Center. There we will find ourselves reversing the inertia of isolation and apathy that the virus brought. Taking care of the disease and enjoying the company of others, the unpredictable coexistence with other people, other looks and other worlds.

And we will continue in virtuality. The hybridization that began last year showed us that there is a wide audience out there that values the curatorship of the festival and the search for new ways of making films. That he is greedy and curious, like those of us who do FestiFreak, for films that leave the convention, that they exceed and that they experiment. They are more than we thought and they are far away. For them, and for those who cannot enter the room due to sanitary limits, our online programming will be available.

We will also expand into Europe again. This time with a special program co-produced with Filmhuis Cavia (Amsterdam) in direct connection with Argentina.

# 17FestiFreak will be held between October 1 and 17, 2021. It will have its national competitions, its international exhibition, its training space dedicated to audiovisual preservation, its expanded version and new ways of intervening and interacting with the cinematographic image in different formats. Whether in a room, virtually, with a projector or a magnetic tape as mediators, we were always on the screens. That was our place. As in a loop that has never stopped,

We invite you to return.

IDA: Sachs on Criterion Channel

SEPTEMBER 28, 2021
Screen Time: Week of September 27, 2021
BY BEDATRI D. CHOUDHURY
https://www.documentary.org/blog/screen-time-week-september-27-2021

 Two female laundry workers are wearing floral aprons and standing against a wooden wall. From Lynne Sachs’ ‘The Washing Society.’ Courtesy of The Criterion Channel.

Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. 

At IDA, we deeply mourn the passing of Melvin Van Peebles, the “the godfather of modern Black cinema.” Van Peebles was an actor, poet, artist, filmmaker and playwright, among other things. Celebrate his humbling legacy with filmmaker Joe Angio’s How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)on Amazon Prime. 

In Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue, filmmaker Jia Zhangke speaks to three authors who, like Jia, all hail from China’s Shanxi province. Through their conversations and writings, the filmmaker reconstructs a portrait of his homeland from the prism of the 1950s social revolution and the unrest it brought along. Starting September 30, you can watch the film on Mubi. 

Also playing on Mubi is Hannah Jayanti’s delightful science fiction documentary, Truth or Consequences. Taking off a fictional premise, the documentary takes place around the world’s first commercial Spaceport in New Mexico. Through its gaze set on a near future, the film unravels our histories and weaves them all with empathy and adventure.

Afro-Cuban musician brothers Ilmar and Aldo López-Gavilán grew up learning the violin and the piano—separated from one another; one in Russia and the other in Cuba. Los Hermanos, directed by Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider, follows the brothers as they collaborate (for the first time) and perform all across the US. The film is available to view on PBS starting October 1.

When filmmaker Sian-Pierre Regis’ mother, Rebecca, is let go from her job, Regis decides to take her on trips across the world. As the son helps take items off his mother’s bucket list, he reveals the dark underscoring of American society by ageism, the care crisis, and economic insecurity. Duty Free is a documentary that emerges out of the mother-son travels as Rebecca reclaims her life and dreams. Watch the film on Vimeo. 

Familial relationships also form the core of many of Lynne Sachs’ experimental nonfiction works. Starting October 1, you can watch seven of her experimental shorts on Criterion ChannelWhich Way Is East (1994), The Last Happy Day (2009), Wind in Our Hair (2010), The Washing Society (2018), Girl Is Presence (2020), E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo (2021), and Maya at 24 (2021). 

October 2021 Programming on Criterion Channel to Include Lynne Sachs Octet

OCTOBER 2021 PROGRAMMING ON THE CRITERION CHANNEL ANNOUNCED
CriterionCast
Ryan Gallagher
September 26, 2021
https://criterioncast.com/column/calendar/criterion-channel/october-2021-programming-on-the-criterion-channel-announced

Each month, the programmers at the Criterion Channel produce incredible line-ups for their subscribers. For October, the Channel will feature films from Wayne Wang, Arthur Dong, Doris Wishman, and more!

Below you’ll find the programming schedule for the month, along with a complete list of titles that Criterion has in store for us. Don’t forget to check the Criterion Channel’s main page regularly though, as they occasionally will drop surprises that aren’t included in the official press release.

EXCLUSIVE STREAMING PREMIERES

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13

FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO

Featuring seven short films and a new introduction by the filmmaker

Over a period of thirty-five years between 1984 and 2019, filmmaker Lynne Sachs shot 8 and 16 mm film, videotape, and digital images of her father, Ira Sachs Sr., a bon vivant and pioneering businessman from Park City, Utah. Film About a Father Who is her attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings. Like a cubist rendering of a face, Sachs’s cinematic exploration of her father offers multiple, sometimes contradictory, views of a seemingly unknowable man who is publicly the uninhibited center of the frame yet privately shrouded in mystery. With this meditation on fatherhood and masculinity, Sachs allows herself and her audience to see beneath the surface of the skin, beyond the projected reality. As the startling facts mount, she discovers more about her father than she had ever hoped to reveal.

This exclusive streaming premiere is accompanied by a selection of experimental short films by Sachs, many of which also reflect her probing exploration of family relationships

  • Which Way Is East, 1994
  • The Last Happy Day, 2009
  • Wind in Our Hair, 2010
  • The Washing Society, 2018
  • Girl Is Presence, 2020
  • E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo, 2021
  • Maya at 24, 2021

Women & Hollywood: “Lynne Sachs Film Series Coming to Criterion Channel, “Film About a Father Who” to Make Streaming Premiere”

Women and Hollywood
Sept. 20, 2021. 
by Laura Berger
https://womenandhollywood.com/lynn-sachs-film-series-coming-to-criterion-channel-film-about-a-father-who-to-make-streaming-premiere/

Following career retrospectives at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 and the Museum of the Moving Image in 2021, Lynne Sachs is being paid tribute to by the Criterion Channel. A press release announced that her films will join the channel next month along with a newly recorded interview with the filmmaker, exploring her works. Her latest feature, “Film About a Father Who,” a documentary about her own father, will be making its exclusive streaming premiere on the channel on October 13.

“The Criterion Channel is thrilled to present the exclusive streaming premiere of Lynne Sachs’ ‘Film About a Father Who’ this October. This raw and deeply personal excavation of the filmmaker’s complex family history will be accompanied by a number of Sachs’ experimental shorts, many of which also focus on exploring familial dynamics and family histories” said Penelope Bartlett, Director of Programming at the Criterion Channel.

Shot over a period of 35 years, “Film About a Father Who” is a portrait of Sachs’ businessman father, who had nine children with five women. The film is described as “her attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings.”

“Over the course of my 30-year career in the film industry, it’s taken me an embarrassingly long time to move from seeing myself as a film student to a director,” Sachs wrote in a 2020 guest post for Women and Hollywood exploring the impact that artistic collaboration has had on her work. “As director, I acknowledge my dedication to my practice, the fact that I have made over 30 films ranging from three to 83 minutes long, the awards I’ve received, and the money I’ve been paid to do my job.”

Check out programming information about the film series below.

The Criterion Channel’s Directed by Lynne Sachs series programming includes:

Debuting on the Criterion Channel Oct. 13:

FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO (2020)
Over a period of 35 years between 1984 and 2019, filmmaker Lynne Sachs shot 8 and 16mm film, videotape and digital images of her father, Ira Sachs Sr., a bon vivant and pioneering businessman from Park City, Utah. Film About a Father is her attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings.

Debuting on the Criterion Channel Oct. 1:

E•PIS•TO•LAR•Y: LETTER TO JEAN VIGO (2021)
In a cinema letter to French director Jean Vigo, Lynne Sachs ponders the delicate resonances of his 1933 classic Zero for Conduct in which a group of school boys wages an anarchist rebellion against their authoritarian teachers.

MAYA AT 24 (2021)
Conscious of the strange simultaneous temporal landscape that only film can convey, we watch Maya in motion at each distinct age.

GIRL IS PRESENCE (2020)
During the 2020 global pandemic, filmmaker Lynne Sachs and her daughter Noa collaborated with Anne Lesley Selcer to create Girl is Presence. Against the uncertain and anxious pandemic atmosphere, inside domestic space, the ‘girl’ arranges and rearranges a collection of small and mysterious things.

THE WASHING SOCIETY (2018)
Collaborating together for the first time, filmmaker Lynne Sachs and playwright Lizzie Olesker observe the disappearing public space of the neighborhood laundromat and the continual, intimate labor that happens there. With a title inspired by the 1881 organization of African-American laundresses, The Washing Society investigates the intersection of history, underpaid work, immigration, and the sheer math of doing laundry.

WIND IN OUR HAIR (2010)
Inspired by the stories of Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, yet blended with the realities of contemporary Argentina, Wind in Our Hair is an experimental narrative about four girls discovering themselves through a fascination with the trains that pass by their house. A story of early-teen anticipation and disappointment, Wind in Our Hair is circumscribed by a period of profound Argentine political and social unrest.

THE LAST HAPPY DAY (2009)
During WWII, the US Army hired Sachs’ Hungarian cousin, Dr. Sandor Lenard, to reconstruct the bones of dead American soldiers. Sachs’ portrait of Lenard, who is best known for his translation of Winnie the Pooh into Latin, resonates as an anti-war meditation composed of letters, abstracted war imagery, home movies of children, and interviews.

WHICH WAY IS EAST (1994)
When two American sisters travel north from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, conversations with Vietnamese strangers and friends reveal to them the flip side of a shared history. Lynne and Dana Sachs’ travel diary of their trip to Vietnam is a collection of tourism, city life, culture clash, and historic inquiry that’s put together with the warmth of a quilt.

Cryptofiction Presents Five Films by Lynne Sachs

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/lynnesachs2
https://www.crypto-fiction.com/on-demand


Cryptofiction is excited to present five films by Lynne Sachs including: “Which Way is East” (1994); “Investigation of a Flame” (2001); “States of UnBelonging” (2005); “Your Day is My Night” (2013); and “Epistolary: Letter to Jean Vigo” (2021).

Lynne discovered her love of filmmaking while living and studying in San Francisco where she worked closely with artists Craig Baldwin, Bruce Conner, Barbara Hammer, Gunvor Nelson, and Trihn T. Min-ha. During this time, she produced her early, experimental works on celluloid which took a feminist approach to the creation of images and writing— a commitment which has grounded her body of work ever since.

From essay films to hybrid docs to diaristic shorts, Sachs has produced 40 films as well as numerous projects for web, installation, and performance. She has tackled topics near and far, often addressing directly the challenge of translation — from one language to another or from spoken work to image. These tensions were investigated most explicitly between 1994 and 2006, when Lynne produced five essay films that took her to Vietnam, Bosnia, Israel, Italy and Germany—sites affected by international war–where she looked at the space between a community’s collective memory and her own subjective perceptions.

Over her career, Sachs has been awarded support from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation. Her films have screened at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, Wexner Center for the Arts, the Walker and the Getty, and at festivals including New York Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, Punto de Vista, DocAviv, and DocLisboa. Retrospectives of her work have been presented at the Museum of the Moving Image, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema, Festival International Nuevo Cine in Havana, and China Women’s Film Festival. Her 2019 film “A Month of Single Frames” won the Grand Prize at Oberhausen Festival of Short Films in 2020. In 2021, both the Edison Film Festival and the Prismatic Ground Film Festival at the Maysles Documentary Center awarded Lynne for her body of work in the experimental and documentary fields.


Cryptofiction: Interview with Lynne Sachs


ABOUT

Cryptofiction is an international distribution and production platform based in London, UK.

With over 25 years of combined experience as filmmakers and over a decade as distributors, our team is devoted to bring the attention and viewership deserved by the remarkable and courageous titles that we represent. In addition to distribution services, we offer a wide range of production support for rising and established moving-image makers.

OUR MISSION

We are dedicated to supporting and representing independent cinema from around the world.

Our top priority is to foster excellence amongst an intergenerational community of visionaries and to help younger talent meet and rise in conjunction with established filmmakers. Our on-demand platform is a virtual extension of our distribution agenda. Dedicated to supporting and promoting excellent independent cinema from around the globe, we have carefully curated an exciting set of programs consisting of a mix of young and established filmmakers. As part of our ongoing programming, we offer a new range of films and thematics every 3 months. Unlike similar commercial platforms, we do not and will not operate on a subscription basis. Our viewers are encouraged to browse and watch their desired programs whenever they wish. We are hoping this platform would become a viable means to generate passive income for the remarkable artists and filmmakers that we represent. 

In addition to our on-demand services, we run an annual virtual film festival also dedicated to global intergenerational discourses on relevant thematics and contemporary issues. Supplementing these platforms are a series of one-off events and surprise programmings that bring timely attention to the work of filmmakers as unique socio-political struggles arise.


Mania Akbari (b. Tehran, 1974) is an internationally acclaimed artist and filmmaker. Her provocative, revolutionary and radical films were recently the subject of retrospectives at the BFI, Lon- don (2013), the DFI, Denmark (2014), Oldenburg International Film Festival, Germany (2014), Cyprus Film Festival (2014) and Nottingham Contemporary UK (2018). Her films have screened at festivals around the world and have received numerous awards including German Independence Honorary Award, Oldenberg (2014), Best Film, Digital Section, Venice Film Festival (2004), Nantes Special Public Award Best Film (2007) and Best Director and Best film at Kerala Film Festival (2007), Best Film and Best Actress, Barcelona Film Festival (2007). Akbari was exiled from Iran and currently lives and works in London, a theme addressed in ‘Life May Be’ (2014), co-directed with Mark Cousins. This film was released at Karlovy Vary Film Festival and was nominated for Best Documentary at Edinburgh International Film Festival (2014) and Asia Pacific Film Festival (2014). Akbari’s latest film ‘A Moon For My Father’, made in collaboration with British artist Douglas White, premiered at CPH:DOX where it won the NEW:VISION Award 2019. The film also received a FIPRESCI International Crit- ics Award at the Flying Broom Festival, Ankara.

Doc NYC’s Monday Memo Features Sachs’ Criterion Channel Octet

Doc NYC: Monday Memo
August 15, 2021
https://mailchi.mp/docnyc.net/mondaymemo-2021-08-16?e=dfb43bb105

This week’s memo is kind of wild – there was a lot going on. Some of the highlights include various conversations around truth and the ethics of documentary filmmaking, discussions about the lack of online screenings for fall film festivals this year, award announcements from BlackStar, Locarno and DokuFest, and an excellent piece from Isabel Ochoa Gold on cinema and its relationship to cat videos. There is much to dig through, so buckle up and enjoy!

– Jordan M. Smith

Octet Of Lynne Sachs Documentaries Coming to Criterion Channel
Matthew Carey reports at Deadline: “A collection of documentaries from acclaimed filmmaker Lynne Sachs is coming to the Criterion Channel in October.  The streaming platform will showcase seven Sachs films beginning October 1, ranging from the 1994 short Which Way Is East to her most recent work, including E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo, an exploration of the French director’s classic 1933 film Zero for Conduct (Zéro de Conduite).  On October 13, the Criterion Channel will exclusively stream her latest feature documentary, Film About a Father Who, which examines Sachs’ relationship with her unorthodox father, Ira Sachs Sr, whose children include Lynne and fellow filmmaker Ira Sachs Jr.”

Deadline Exclusive: “Raw And Deeply Personal”: Octet Of Lynne Sachs Documentaries Coming to Criterion Channel

By Matthew Carey
August 13, 2021 5:43pm
https://deadline.com/2021/08/criterion-channel-director-lynne-sachs-streaming-debut-news-1234814823/

EXCLUSIVE: A collection of documentaries from acclaimed filmmaker Lynne Sachs is coming to the Criterion Channel in October. 

The streaming platform will showcase seven Sachs films beginning October 1, ranging from the 1994 short Which Way Is East to her most recent work, including E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo, an exploration of the French director’s classic 1933 film Zero for Conduct (Zéro de Conduite). 

On October 13, the Criterion Channel will exclusively stream her latest feature documentary, Film About a Father Who, which examines Sachs’ relationship with her unorthodox father, Ira Sachs Sr, whose children include Lynne and fellow filmmaker Ira Sachs Jr.

Film About a Father Who is her attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings,” the director has written. “With a nod to the Cubist renderings of a face, Sachs’ cinematic exploration of her father offers simultaneous, sometimes contradictory, views of one seemingly unknowable man who is publicly the uninhibited center of the frame yet privately ensconced in secrets. In the process, Sachs allows herself and her audience inside to see beyond the surface of the skin, the projected reality. As the startling facts mount, Sachs as a daughter discovers more about her father than she had ever hoped to reveal.”

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Penelope Bartlett, director of programming at the Criterion Channel, commented, “The Criterion Channel is thrilled to present the exclusive streaming premiere of Lynne Sachs’ Film About a Father Who this October. This raw and deeply personal excavation of the filmmaker’s complex family history will be accompanied by a number of Sachs’ experimental shorts, many of which also focus on exploring familial dynamics and family histories.”

Sachs’ work was the subject of a career retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image this year and at Sheffield Doc/Fest last year. Sachs has been the recipient of support from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation.

“Since the 1980s, Lynne Sachs has created cinematic works that defy genre through the use of hybrid forms and cross-disciplinary collaboration, incorporating elements of the essay film, collage, performance, documentary and poetry,” according to the director’s website. “Her highly self-reflexive films explore the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences. With each project, Lynne investigates the implicit connection between the body, the camera, and the materiality of film itself.”

The Criterion Channel programming will include a newly-recorded interview with Sachs discussing her work. Complete details on the Sachs’ documentaries coming to the platform: 

Debuting on the Criterion Channel Oct. 13:

FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO (2020)
Over a period of 35 years between 1984 and 2019, filmmaker Lynne Sachs shot 8 and 16mm film, videotape and digital images of her father, Ira Sachs Sr., a bon vivant and pioneering businessman from Park City, Utah. Film About a Father is her attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings.

Debuting on the Criterion Channel Oct. 1:
E•PIS•TO•LAR•Y: LETTER TO JEAN VIGO (2021)

In a cinema letter to French director Jean Vigo, Lynne Sachs ponders the delicate resonances of his 1933 classic Zero for Conduct in which a group of school boys wages an anarchist rebellion against their authoritarian teachers.

MAYA AT 24 (2021)
Conscious of the strange simultaneous temporal landscape that only film can convey, we watch Maya in motion at each distinct age.

GIRL IS PRESENCE (2020)
During the 2020 global pandemic, filmmaker Lynne Sachs and her daughter Noa collaborated with Anne Lesley Selcer to create Girl is Presence. Against the uncertain and anxious pandemic atmosphere, inside domestic space, the ‘girl’ arranges and rearranges a collection of small and mysterious things.

THE WASHING SOCIETY (2018)
Collaborating together for the first time, filmmaker Lynne Sachs and playwright Lizzie Olesker observe the disappearing public space of the neighborhood laundromat and the continual, intimate labor that happens there.  With a title inspired by the 1881 organization of African-American laundresses, The Washing Society investigates the intersection of history, underpaid work, immigration, and the sheer math of doing laundry.

WIND IN OUR HAIR  (2010)
Inspired by the stories of Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, yet blended with the realities of contemporary Argentina, Wind in Our Hair is an experimental narrative about four girls discovering themselves through a fascination with the trains that pass by their house. A story of early-teen anticipation and disappointment, Wind in Our Hair is circumscribed by a period of profound Argentine political and social unrest.

THE LAST HAPPY DAY (2009)
During WWII, the US Army hired Sachs’ Hungarian cousin, Dr. Sandor Lenard, to reconstruct the bones of dead American soldiers. Sachs’ portrait of Lenard, who is best known for his translation of Winnie the Pooh into Latin, resonates as an anti-war meditation composed of letters, abstracted war imagery, home movies of children, and interviews.

WHICH WAY IS EAST (1994)
When two American sisters travel north from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, conversations with Vietnamese strangers and friends reveal to them the flip side of a shared history. Lynne and Dana Sachs’ travel diary of their trip to Vietnam is a collection of tourism, city life, culture clash, and historic inquiry that’s put together with the warmth of a quilt.

Cinema Parallels (Bosnia) Presents a Focus on Lynne Sachs

Cinema Parallels
June 10- 12, 2021
Curated by
Adriana Trujillo
https://cinemaparallels.com/en/program/

Edition 2021

The most important question for us in a post-pandemic period was: Do we really need a film festival?

Even when we haven’t return to a total recover, we still need vaccination the total of our population, people are now suffering so many losts, and the virus is still out there.

But the answer to all of this is questions is yes! we need to make reality, the festival again here in Banja Luka. If we believe in images as a language of encounter, in the role of the independent voices and the power of the community, then a film festival is not a distraction or a non-essential activity. It’s actually a necessary coming together.

We want to make sense of our moment, and to try to re-imagine how important is the art in our past time of isolation, in our daily life and in our dreams of a common future.

See you in the cinema soon, and please:

Don’t forget your mask!


About selection

The selection of this year proposes a fluid cartography that explore our current situation as humans. It is more than evident that the pandemic changed the whole society and these dramatic changes and new scenarios also affect films, cinemas and the way “we see”. The current situation with Covid-19, will also be reflected in this year’s festival program, not only in terms of safety measures and limited audience, but also in the form we propose the narrative of this edition that we name it: Re-imagine audio-visions: The present as our future.

For the image of this edition (the poster) we selected the portrait the now famous cover of the Italian magazine La Domenica del Corrier (16, December of 1962), by Walter Molino, where we can see a saturated street of New York, with people in their individual transportation, in a kind of an “individual-personal bubble”, that is actually a “singoletta” (personal bicycle), imagined by Molino as a solution for traffic, but with the pandemic and the social isolation in context, we cannot avoided to connected his retro-futuristic creative projection of our surreal present, here is why we re-call the edition; The present as our future. With this premise in mind, our selection departs precisely from the future. The first day of Cinema Parallels, we will open with: Space Dogs režija: Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter, followed by Lúa vermella režija: Lois Patiño, both films projecting contexts in resemble mirror format, we will see realities from an equidistant visualities.

With this premise in mind, our selection departs precisely from the future. The first day of Cinema Parallels, we will open with: Space Dogs režija: Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter, followed by Lúa vermella režija: Lois Patiño, both films projecting contexts in resemble mirror format, we will see realities from an equidistant visualities.

The second day of the festival we will have Srećan Božić, Yiwu (Merry Christmas, Yiwu) režija: Mladen Kovačević, followed by LYNNE SACHS TRIBUTE with the Washing Society, Tornado, The Small Ones and E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo. The second day we are focused on a retro-visor mirror, about our social and geo-political contexts, and the last day of festival is dedicated to the personal, to our bodies, to our house and intimate spaces, this day we take “our dressing mirror”, we will project Things We Dare Not Do, režija: Bruno Santamaría.

We will close with a regional documentary selection of shorts that we name PARALLELS JOY: Sunce, vrati se (Sunshine, Come Back) režija: Milica Jokić, Korijeni režija: Stefan Tomić, Osamdeset dinara (Eighty Serbian Dinars) režija: Inma de Reyes, University of Disaster and Dreaming of Prey to Grasp Shadow režija: Radenko Milak and Zašto mama vazda plače? (Why is Mom Always Crying?) režija: Karmen Obrdalj.

The pandemic has severely hit the entire audiovisual sector and the situation remains critical in many places, therefore, it is important to organize a film festival, but also, is important to support international and local filmmakers and films. We think in the cinema as a place of resistance; we believe that seeing a movie with other people in a theatre is a powerful and irreplaceable experience, and also is a key place for the encounter with other visions and expand our points of view, at the end, is all about to be exposed to different contexts, realities and images, and from there try to understand us more and more as society, as humans.

See you at the cinema!

Adriana Trujillo


Program

Thursday, June 10

18.00 Festival Opening

18.15 Space Dogs / Dir. Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter / 91 min. / 2019 /Austria – Germany

(Q&A: with Simon Peter, Sound Designer of the film)

20.30 Red Moon Tide Dir. Lois Patiño / 84 min. / 2020 / Spain

Friday, June 11

18.00 Merry Christmas, Yiwu / Dir. Mladen Kovacevic / 94 min. / Serbia
(panel discussion with representatives of the Confucius Institute, University of Banja Luka)
20.30  FOCUS ON LYNNE SACHS
 The Washing Society / 44 min. / 2018 / United States
 Tornado / 4 min. / 2002 / United States
 The Small Ones / 3 min. / 2006 / United States
 E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo / 5 min. / 2021 / United States

Saturday, June 12

18.00 Things We Dare Not Do / Dir. Bruno Santamaría / 75 min. / 2020 / México
20.00 PARALLELS JOY: DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM SELECTION

 Sunshine, Come Back/ Dir. Milica Jokic / 12:23 / 2017 / Serbia
 The Roots / Dir. Stefan Tomic / 15:40 / 2020 / Bosnia and Herzegovina
 Eighty Serbian Dinars / Dir. Inma de Reyes / 10 min. / 2019 / Serbia
 University of Disaster / Dir. Radenko Milak / 13:21 / 2017 / Bosnia and Herzegovina
 Dreaming of Prey to Grasp Shadow / Dir. Radenko Milak / 6:45 / Bosnia and Herzegovina
 Why is Mom Always Crying? / Dir. Karmen Obrdalj / 15:38 / 2019 / Bosnia and Herzegovina
(Q&A: Panel with short film directors, producers, artist and filmmakers)


About Cinema Parallels

Cinema Parallels is devoted to supporting independent and innovative films, screening cinema of the real in all it’s forms and diversity, through a special curatorial selection of international and regional contemporary films in the heart of the Balkans.


Cinema Parallels will celebrate its second edition during spring in Banja. Cinema Parallels is organized by Video Kabinet developed with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Srpska Republic and in partnership with Gradsko Pozorište Jazavac.


Background

The art should ask questions, for which there are often no answers, that it is the basis for the exchange of ideas. Films encourages critical thinking, freedom of expression and creativity, and only then ceases to be goods and entertainment and become culture and art. A culture makes the identity of a city, state, or country. In this context, a festival of contemporary cinema is absolutely necessary for Banja Luka as a epicenter of the Republic of Srpska.

Cinema Parallels born in 2019, with the main idea to develop a place to share, an encounter of unique points of views that are been able to question our world. We are dedicated to program and support moving-image works with singular voices in productions from all around the world in different formats, capturing reality from a different perfective and a wide range of contemporary non-fiction, and bring this productions to the city.

Last year, our festival, like all other cultural projects was postpone.

We explored the possibility of a virtual encounter, buy finally we decide to continue in 2021. We wait until now to recover experiences, audience and images, with the firm and original purpose to keep confronting our world. Believing that films are a point of encounter and a universal language, keeping the idea that in our unprecedent time, conversations and encounters are now act of resistance.

“The letters that were not are also are” at Zumzeig Cine (Barcelona)

The letters that were not are also are
Zumzeig Cine
https://zumzeigcine.coop/cinema/films/las-cartas-que-no-fueron-tambien-son/

Collective audiovisual project that leads to a set of letters filmed for the love of cinema.

Synopsis

Garbiñe Ortega, artistic director of Punt de vista, conceived the creation of a collective audiovisual project in which several filmmakers made a filmed letter addressed to another filmmaker they did not know personally and which was as far away as possible from the his own cinema. Thus was born ‘The letters that were not also are’.

Ten short films that find a new dimension when shown together. The result is an exciting journey through their affinities, their admiration and their creative processes. These are the letters that make it up:

Deborah Stratman to Nancy Holt
Lynne Sachs to Jean Vigo
Alejo Moguillansky to Michelangelo Antonioni
Raya Martin to Wes Craven
Jessica Sarah Rinland to Chick Strand
Diana Toucedo to Danièle Huillet
Beatrice Gibson to Barbara Loden, Nina Menkes and Bette Gordon
Nicolás Pereda to Chantal Akerman


Zumzeig Cine is a cooperative and participatory cinema with programming and other cultural activities in Barcelona, Spain.