Lynne Sachs
Encyclopedia
Lynne Sachs is an American experimental filmmaker who makes films, videos, installations and web projects exploring the relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences. She is known for weaving together poetry, collage, painting, politics and layered sound design. After graduating from Brown University
and majoring in history, she developed an interest in experimental documentary filmmaking while attending the 1985 Robert Flaherty Documentary Film Seminar through a scholarship. There, she was particularly inspired by the works of Bruce Conner
, who would later become her mentor, and Maya Deren
. That same year, Sachs moved to San Francisco to attend San Francisco State University
and later the San Francisco Art Institute
. It was during this time that she studied and collaborated with Trinh T. Minh-ha
, George Kuchar
and Gunvor Nelson
.
In 1989, she returned to Memphis, her hometown, to shoot Sermons and Sacred Pictures, her first long format experimental documentary. The film is a portrait of Reverend L. O. Taylor, an African-American minister and filmmaker from the 1930s and 40s. This film screened at the Museum of Modern Art
and the Margaret Mead Film Festival
that year.
Over the last two decades she has worked in sites affected by international war, such as Vietnam
, Bosnia, Israel
and Germany
. Her films and web projects expose what she defines as the “limits of a conventional documentary representation of both the past and the present”. It is in this style that she has produced five pieces (Which Way Is East, The House of Drafts, Investigation of a Flame
, States of Unbelonging and The Last Happy Day) grouped together as the I AM NOT A WAR PHOTOGRAPHER series.
Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation
and Jerome Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts
, as well as residencies at the Experimental Television Center
and the MacDowell Colony
. Sachs’ films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art
, the Pacific Film Archive, the Sundance Film Festival
and the New York Film Festival
.
In 2007, the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema
presented a retrospective of her work. That same year, she collaborated with Chris Marker
on a remake of his short film Three Cheers for the Whale. She returned to Argentina
in 2008 to film her first narrative project, Wind in Our Hair, inspired by the short stories of Julio Cortázar
. Additionally, she co-edited with film historian Lucas Hildebrand the Summer 2009 Millennium Film Journal issue #51 on “Experiments in Documentary”.
She currently teaches experimental film and video at New York University
and lives in Brooklyn
, New York with filmmaker Mark Street and their two daughters. She is the sister of filmmaker Ira Sachs
and author Dana Sachs. She has been an active member of the board of The Film-Makers' Cooperative
since 1996.
, Lynne Sachs ventured into the realm of online installations with artist and designer Susan Agliata on the piece Abecedarium NYC. The interactive project is an online alphabet of obscure words represented by short films made by Sachs and other collaborators such as filmmakers David Gatten
and George Kuchar
. In addition to this, the project is meant to stand as an ongoing exploration through participatory blog threads and collaboration with other online media forums open to the public.
In 2010 Sachs teamed up with her brother Ira Sachs
and decided to adapt his short film Last Address into an exterior window installation on the sides of the Kimmel Center in Manhattan, New York. The piece is a meditation on some of the most prolific New York-based artists of the 80's and 90's who died of AIDS in this city, such as Ethyl Eichelberger
, David Wojnarowicz
and Reynaldo Arenas. The installation was up for several months; designer Bernard Blythe and media artist Sofía Gallisá were collaborators.
In recent years, one of the recurring themes in Sachs' work has been the translation of language and how it affects cultural interaction. Her exploration of this subject has been reflected in her last five films, which include the story of a Hungarian doctor who translated Winnie the Pooh into Latin (The Last Happy Day), a visual haiku about her visit to Japan made in collaboration with Mark Street (Sound of a Shadow) and her most recent project, Your Day is My Night, which weaves reality and fiction and features Chinese and Puerto Rican performers. In the Autumn of 2010, The Hungarian Quarterly journal also published an article written by Sachs on the story behind The Last Happy Day and her discovery of her cousin Sandor Lenard.
In 2011, Oxford University Press
published "The Essay Film: From Montaigne After Marker", a book by Timothy Corrigan which dedicates a chapter to discussing Sachs' film "States of Unbelonging" in relation to works by Harun Farocki
and Ari Folman
. Later that same year, The National Gallery of Art presented a two-week series of screenings and lectures of her work as part of their American Originals Now series.
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
and majoring in history, she developed an interest in experimental documentary filmmaking while attending the 1985 Robert Flaherty Documentary Film Seminar through a scholarship. There, she was particularly inspired by the works of Bruce Conner
Bruce Conner
Bruce Conner was an American artist renowned for his work in assemblage, film, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, and photography, among other disciplines.-Early life:...
, who would later become her mentor, and Maya Deren
Maya Deren
Maya Deren , born Eleanora Derenkowsky, was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s...
. That same year, Sachs moved to San Francisco to attend San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
and later the San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute is a school of higher education in contemporary art with the main campus in the Russian Hill district of San Francisco, California. Its graduate center is in the Dogpatch neighborhood. The private, non-profit institution is accredited by WASC and is a member of the...
. It was during this time that she studied and collaborated with Trinh T. Minh-ha
Trinh T. Minh-ha
Trinh T. Minh-ha is a filmmaker, writer, academic and composer. She is a world-renowned independent filmmaker and feminist, post-colonial theorist. She teaches courses that focus on women's work as related to cultural politics, post-coloniality, contemporary critical theory and the arts...
, George Kuchar
George Kuchar
George Kuchar was an American underground film director, known for his "low-fi" aesthetic.-Early life and career:...
and Gunvor Nelson
Gunvor Nelson
Swedish artist Gunvor Grundel Nelson was born in 1931 in Stockholm, Sweden. Now living in Kristinehamn, Sweden. She has worked as an experimental filmmaker since the 1960s...
.
In 1989, she returned to Memphis, her hometown, to shoot Sermons and Sacred Pictures, her first long format experimental documentary. The film is a portrait of Reverend L. O. Taylor, an African-American minister and filmmaker from the 1930s and 40s. This film screened at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
and the Margaret Mead Film Festival
Margaret Mead Film Festival
The Margaret Mead Film Festival is an annual film festival held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It is the longest-running, premiere showcase for international documentaries in the United States, encompassing a broad spectrum of work, from indigenous community media to...
that year.
Over the last two decades she has worked in sites affected by international war, such as Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, Bosnia, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. Her films and web projects expose what she defines as the “limits of a conventional documentary representation of both the past and the present”. It is in this style that she has produced five pieces (Which Way Is East, The House of Drafts, Investigation of a Flame
Investigation of a Flame
Investigation of a Flame is a documentary about the Catonsville Nine and their nonviolent act of civil disobedience. This documentary film examines the courageous attempt of protesters to call attention to the Vietnam War.- Overview :...
, States of Unbelonging and The Last Happy Day) grouped together as the I AM NOT A WAR PHOTOGRAPHER series.
Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
and Jerome Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts
New York State Council on the Arts
The New York State Council on the Arts is an arts council serving the U.S. state of New York. It was established in 1960 through a bill introduced in the New York State Legislature by New York State Senator MacNeil Mitchell , with backing from Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and began its work in 1961...
, as well as residencies at the Experimental Television Center
Experimental Television Center
The Experimental Television Center is a one of a kind video art production studio in Owego, New York. Since its foundation in 1971, the center has been instrumental to the field of video art by providing artists with the tools of video art production through artist residencies and grants...
and the MacDowell Colony
MacDowell Colony
The MacDowell Colony is an art colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and wife of composer Edward MacDowell. She established the institution and its endowment chiefly with donated funds...
. Sachs’ films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, the Pacific Film Archive, the Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
and the New York Film Festival
New York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival has been a major film festival since it began in 1963 in New York. The films are selected by the Film Society of Lincoln Center...
.
In 2007, the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema
Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema
The Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente is an international festival of independent films organized each year in the month of April, in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.The festival is managed by the Ministerio de Cultura del Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, it is not...
presented a retrospective of her work. That same year, she collaborated with Chris Marker
Chris Marker
Chris Marker is a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist. His best known films are La jetée , A Grin Without a Cat , Sans Soleil and AK , an essay film on the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa...
on a remake of his short film Three Cheers for the Whale. She returned to Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
in 2008 to film her first narrative project, Wind in Our Hair, inspired by the short stories of Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...
. Additionally, she co-edited with film historian Lucas Hildebrand the Summer 2009 Millennium Film Journal issue #51 on “Experiments in Documentary”.
She currently teaches experimental film and video at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
and lives in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York with filmmaker Mark Street and their two daughters. She is the sister of filmmaker Ira Sachs
Ira Sachs
Ira Sachs is an American filmmaker. His first film was the acclaimed short Lady .He directed Sundance Film Festival selection The Delta and directed Sundance Film Festival Grand Prize winning Forty Shades of Blue...
and author Dana Sachs. She has been an active member of the board of The Film-Makers' Cooperative
The Film-Makers' Cooperative
The Film-Makers' Cooperative aka The New American Cinema Group is an artist-run, non-profit organization which was founded in 1962 in New York City by Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, Stan Brakhage, Gregory Markopoulos, Lloyd Michael Williams and other filmmakers to distribute avant-garde films through...
since 1996.
Films and other media
- Drawn and Quartered (1986)
- Still Life With Woman and Four Objects (1986)
- Following the Object to Its Logical Beginning (1987)
- Sermons and Sacred Pictures (1989)
- The House of Science: a museum of false facts (1991)
- Which Way Is East: Notebooks from Vietnam (1994)
- A Biography of Lilith (1997)
- Window Work (2000)
- Photograph of Wind (2001)
- Horror Vacui: Nature Abhors a Vacuum (2000)
- Investigation of a Flame (2001)
- Tornado (2002)
- The House of Drafts (2002)
- Atalanta 32 Years Later (2006)
- Noa, Noa (2006)
- The Small Ones (2006)
- States of UnBelonging (2006)
- XY Chromosome Project (2007)
- Abecedarium: NYC (2007)
- Georgic for a Forgotten Planet (2008)
- The Last Happy Day (2009)
- Wind in Our Hair (2009)
- The Task of the Translator (2010)
- Sound of a Shadow (2011)
- Your Day is My Night (In progress)
Multimedia and recent years (2005-present)
Commissioned in 2008 by the New York Public LibraryNew York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
, Lynne Sachs ventured into the realm of online installations with artist and designer Susan Agliata on the piece Abecedarium NYC. The interactive project is an online alphabet of obscure words represented by short films made by Sachs and other collaborators such as filmmakers David Gatten
David Gatten
David Edward Gatten is an American experimental filmmaker and moving image artist. Since 1996 Gatten's films have explored the intersection of the printed word and moving image, cataloging the variety of ways in which texts functions in cinema as both language and image, writing and drawing, often...
and George Kuchar
George Kuchar
George Kuchar was an American underground film director, known for his "low-fi" aesthetic.-Early life and career:...
. In addition to this, the project is meant to stand as an ongoing exploration through participatory blog threads and collaboration with other online media forums open to the public.
In 2010 Sachs teamed up with her brother Ira Sachs
Ira Sachs
Ira Sachs is an American filmmaker. His first film was the acclaimed short Lady .He directed Sundance Film Festival selection The Delta and directed Sundance Film Festival Grand Prize winning Forty Shades of Blue...
and decided to adapt his short film Last Address into an exterior window installation on the sides of the Kimmel Center in Manhattan, New York. The piece is a meditation on some of the most prolific New York-based artists of the 80's and 90's who died of AIDS in this city, such as Ethyl Eichelberger
Ethyl Eichelberger
Ethyl Eichelberger was an American drag performer, playwright, and actor. He became an influential figure in experimental theater and writing, and performed nearly forty plays...
, David Wojnarowicz
David Wojnarowicz
David Wojnarowicz was a painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, and activist who was prominent in the New York City art world of the 1980s.-Biography:...
and Reynaldo Arenas. The installation was up for several months; designer Bernard Blythe and media artist Sofía Gallisá were collaborators.
In recent years, one of the recurring themes in Sachs' work has been the translation of language and how it affects cultural interaction. Her exploration of this subject has been reflected in her last five films, which include the story of a Hungarian doctor who translated Winnie the Pooh into Latin (The Last Happy Day), a visual haiku about her visit to Japan made in collaboration with Mark Street (Sound of a Shadow) and her most recent project, Your Day is My Night, which weaves reality and fiction and features Chinese and Puerto Rican performers. In the Autumn of 2010, The Hungarian Quarterly journal also published an article written by Sachs on the story behind The Last Happy Day and her discovery of her cousin Sandor Lenard.
In 2011, Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
published "The Essay Film: From Montaigne After Marker", a book by Timothy Corrigan which dedicates a chapter to discussing Sachs' film "States of Unbelonging" in relation to works by Harun Farocki
Harun Farocki
Harun Farocki is a German filmmaker.He has made over 90 films, the vast majority of them short experimental documentaries...
and Ari Folman
Ari Folman
Ari Folman is an Israeli film director, screenwriter and film score composer.-Biography:Ari Folman was born in Haifa to Holocaust survivors. His wife is also a film director...
. Later that same year, The National Gallery of Art presented a two-week series of screenings and lectures of her work as part of their American Originals Now series.
External links
- Lynne Sachs official website
- Lynne Sachs on IMDB
- Senses of Cinema Top Ten Documentaries of 2005
- States of Unbelonging review
- Investigation of a Flame review
- Investigation of a Flame in the New York Times
- Investigation of a Flame official website
- Baltimore Sun online chat with Lynne Sachs
- Horror Vacui review
- Biography of Lillith review
- Lynne Sachs remembers Bruce Conner
- I Am Not A War Photographer by Lynne Sachs
- Spoiler Alert Radio interview of Lynne Sachs
- M.M. Serra interviews Lynne Sachs about the Filmmakers' Coop
- Between Women: The Filmworks of Lynne Sachs
- Review of The Last Happy Day in Film Threat
- Roundtable on Digital Experimental Cinema in October Magazine