I'd been painting and writing poetry for years when I discovered filmmaking in 1983. Making movies let me pull together words, vibrant images, reflections on politics, and newly discovered parables.
My films explore the intricate relationship between personal memories and broader, historical experiences. As an experimental maker, I try to make images that lead to new ways of thinking about the language of film. Whether I am shooting early evening light on a broken sidewalk, crumpled sheets or my child sleeping, I try to capture uneasy states of emotion, quiet tensions on the edge of exploding, moments of blissful nothingness. I am drawn to the metaphors of collage, the cinematic stirrings that occur when two disparate film images come into contact.
Voice also provides a ground - be it stable, shifting or very shaky - for my films. In SERMONS AND SACRED PICTURES, I returned to Memphis, my hometown, to listen to eleven people as they explored their almost forgotten pool of memories of a unique, religiously-inspired filmmaker from the 1930s. In THE HOUSE OF SCIENCE, I manipulated found sound, whispers and breaths to create a sense of physicality and to emphasize the range of feelings I heard as I spoke to a group of women and girls. WHICH WAY IS EAST, the film I made in Vietnam, offers a glimpse into my relationship with my sister through a series of written reflections. My most recent film A BIOGRPAHY OF LILITH was my first foray into weaving original music and voice compositions into the fabric of my soundtrack.
I received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and a MA from San Francisco State. I live with filmmaker Mark Street and our daughters Maya and Noa in Brooklyn, New York. During 1998-1999, I am a visiting artist in the film program at Temple University.
A film portrait that falls somewhere between a painting and a prose-poem, a study of 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, 16mm, b&w/so, 4m, $20
"Regular 8mm footage enlarged to 16mm (literally, a 'drawn and quartered' image). Images of a male form (on the left) and a female form (right) exist in their own private domains, separated by a barrier. Only for a moment does the one intrude upon the pictorial space of the other." - Albert Kilchesty, LA Filmforum
1987, 16mm, color/si, 4m, $20
VHS Sale: $25
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."
1987, 16mm, color/so, 9m, $30
How do I tell a life? "Scene One. Born: 1900." No. "Scene Two. Died: 1977." Not enough. To make a film about a man I never knew, I listened to eleven voices, eleven different memories, a group portrait of a preacher who took pictures.
It is springtime in Memphis, 1939. A war is brewing. You follow the crowds down to the banks of the stream. You watch and photograph the dunking and praying of a ceremonial baptism. And now I watch your images. Through your eyes I see the spirit consume each person. And without sound, I hear their voices, the water lapping against the rocks, the children playing by the tree.
I study each frame, each 24th of a second. I see three boys standing in the water. They turn to stare at your camera, at you, now at me, at us. I hold the film in my hand, illuminated, relishing in the stillness of their look across the years.
"Fans of Spencer William's The Blood of Jesus should be fascinated by this documentary ..., a highlight of the Margaret Mead Film Festival." - J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
1989, 16mm, b&w/color/so, 29m, $90
VHS Sale: $30 Home; $60 Other
"Throughout THE HOUSE OF SCIENCE: A MUSEUM OF FALSE FACTS, an image of a woman, her brain revealed, is a leitmotif. It suggests that the mind/body split so characteristic of Western thought is particularly troubling for women, who may feel themselves moving between the territories of the film's title - house, science, and museum, or private, public, and idealized space - without wholly inhabiting any of them. This film explores society's representation and conceptualization of women through home movies, personal reminiscences, staged scenes, found footage, and voice. Sach's personal memories recall the sense of her body being divided, whether into sexual and functional territories, or 'the body of the body' and 'the body of the mind.'" - Kathy Geritz, Pacific Film Archive
"Her task suggests a new, feminized film form in which the coming-of-age rituals are recast into a potent web for affirmation and growth." - Crosby McCloy, SF Cinematheque
"The film takes off on a visual and aural collage, ... combining the theoretical issues of feminism with the discrete and personal remembrances of childhood." - Heather Mackey, The San Francisco Bay Guardian
Awards and Exhibition: Experimental Prize, Athens Film Festival; Juror's Award, Black Maria Film Festival; Chicago Filmmakers; Osnabr�ck Media Arts Festival; LA Filmforum; Oberhausen Film Festival; Pacific Film Archive; First Prize, Utah Film and Video Festival.
1991, 16mm, color/so, 30m, $90
VHS Sale: $35
A film by Lynne Sachs in collaboration with Dana Sachs.
"A frog that sits at the bottom of a well thinks that the whole sky is only as big as the lid of a pot." - Vietnamese Parable
Sachs travels north from Ho Chi Minh city to Hanoi with her sister, Dana, a journalist living in Vietnam. As Americans, they're looking for a Vietnam that televised combat footage and news accounts never conveyed. What they find on their journey leads to the creation of this exquisitely photographed and poignantly narrated travel diary that combines the parables, history and memories of Vietnamese people with the filmmakers' personal reflections.
"What comes through is such a strong sense of the place you can almost smell it." - Chicago Reader
"Brings up questions about what we see, how we see it, and who's doing the seeing." - The San Francisco Bay Guardian
"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 quilt. Which Way Is East, their half-hour film, 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." - Susan Gerhard, The Independent
Awards and Exhibition: Grand Jury Prize, Atlanta Film and Video Festival; Sundance Film Festival; Ann Arbor Film Festival; Prize, Black Maria Film and Video Festival; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Cinematheque; "Arsenal" Film Festival, Rega, Lativa; Pacific Film Archive; Mill Valley Film Festival; Vassar College; Yale University; Cornell Cinema; SF Asian American Film Festival.
1994, 16mm, color/so, 33m, $100
VHS Sale: $40
In a lively mix of off-beat narrative, collage and memoir, A BIOGRAPHY OF LILITH updates the creation myth by telling the story of the first woman. Lilith's betrayal by Adam in Eden and subsequent vow of revenge is recast as a modern tale with present-day Lilith (Cherie Wallace) musing on a life that has included giving up a baby for adoption and working as a bar dancer. Interweaving mystical texts from Jewish folklore with interviews, original music and poetry, Lynne Sachs reclaims this cabalistic parable to frame her own role as mother.
"Sachs' art for fusing documentary and experimental narrative is unquestionably enormous. In this new film, her combination of an interview with a friend, the myth of Lilith and beauteous images of things like jelly fish (which float like iridescent breasts on screen) culminates in stunning cinema." - Molly Hankwitz, Art Papers
Exhibition: Pacific Film Archive; Women in the Director's Chair; Anthology Film Archives; Prize, Charlotte Film Festival.
1997, 16mm, color/so, 35m, $105
A woman drinks tea, washes a window, reads the paper - simple tasks that somehow suggest a kind of quiet mystery within and beyond the image. Sometimes one hears the rhythmic, pulsing symphony of crickets in a Baltimore summer night. Other times jangling toys dissolve into the roar of a jet overhead, or children tremble at the sound of thunder. These disparate sounds dislocate the space temporally and physically from the restrictions of reality. The small home-movie boxes within the larger screen are gestural forms of memory, clues to childhood, mnemonic devices that expand on the sense of immediacy in her "drama." These miniature image-objects represent snippets of an even earlier media technology - film. In contrast to the real time video image, they feel fleeting, ephemeral, and imprecise.
Dallas Video Festival; Delaware Art Museum Biennial; Athens Film Fest; European Media Arts Festival, Germany; New York Film Expo; Black Maria Director's Citation; Moscow Film Festival; Tate Modern, London
2000, VHS, color/so, 9m, sale only - inquire for price
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.
"Sachs suspends in time a single moment of her daughter." Fred Camper, Chicago Reader
Exhibition: San Francisco Cinematheque, Onion City Film Festival
2001, 16mm, b&w/color/si, 4m, $20 rental
A tornado is a spinning cyclone of nature. It stampedes like an angry bull through a tranquil pasture of blue violets and upright blades of grass. A tornado kills with abandon but has no will. Lynne Sachs' "Tornado" is a poetic piece shot from the perspective of Brooklyn, where much of the paper and soot from the burning towers fell on September 11. Sachs' fingers obsessively handle these singed fragments of resumes, architectural drawings and calendars, normally banal office material that takes on a new, haunting meaning.
2002 VHS color/sound, 4 minutes Free with a $20 Donation to Canyon Cinema
Featuring: “Biography of Lilith” & “The House of Science: a museum of false facts”
“This DVD collection presents two of Lynne Sachs' earlier films with several more recent media works -- all of which explore themes of women, culture, science & myth. The creative as well as intellectual inner workings of these projects are revealed for the first time in the context of an elaborately conceived, yet accessible disc.”
BIOGRAPHY OF LILITH updates the creation myth by telling the story of the first woman and for some, the first feminist. In conjunction with the film, the DVD offers a personal introduction to Jewish Kabbala.
THE HOUSE OF SCIENCE: A MUSEUM OF FALSE FACTS investigates science and art's representation of women in our society using home movies, collage, found footage and personal remembrances.
DVD FEATURES INCLUDE:
PRINCIPAL CREDITS
Films, poetry, collages, cinematography, direction: Lynne Sachs
DVD design: Rachel Melman
Music: Pamela Z, Charming Hostess
Jewish Scholars: Daniel Boyarin, Tikvah Frymer-Kinsky,
Rabbi Meyer Fund, Naomi Mark
SCREENINGS: Museum of Modern Art, the Oberhausen Film Festival, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Delaware Biennial, the Pacific Film Archive, and the Tate Modern. The films have won awards at the Atlanta, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Athens, Black Maria, Charlotte and Humboldt Film Festivals.
DVD 2005, 65 minutes + extras $50