Category Archives: SECTIONS

Cinema Eye Honors Reveals First Announcements for 2025 / Contractions

16 of the Year’s Most Acclaimed and Talked About Docs Named to Longlist
Unforgettable Honorees Revealed
Girls State and Ren Faire Top Broadcast Nominations
Annual Shorts List Revealed

Los Angeles, CA, October 24, 2024 — Cinema Eye Honors, the organization that recognizes outstanding artistic achievement in nonfiction and documentary films and series, kicked off its 18th annual celebrations today with its first awards announcements for 2024. Among the announcements were the 16 films on the Audience Choice Prize Longlist, the unveiling of this year’s Unforgettables Honorees, nominees in five Broadcast categories, and the annual Shorts List — spotlighting 11 of the year’s top documentary short films.

Cinema Eye announced its first Honorees of the season, their annual list of the Unforgettables – the on-camera collaborators from eight feature documentaries. The winners include Brian Eno from Gary Hustwit’s Eno, Lhakpa Sherpa from Lucy Walker’s Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa, Chris Smalls from Stephen Maing and Brett Story’s Union and Harper Steele from Josh Greenbaum’s Will & Harper. Filmmakers Shiori Ito (Black Box Diaries) and Basel Adra & Yuval Abraham (No Other Land), who are also onscreen in their films, were also among those named to the list. 

For the first time, Unforgettables who attend Cinema Eye’s Awards Ceremony in New York in January will be presented with a special medallion honoring their contribution to their Cinema Eye winning films.

In today’s Broadcast Film and Series announcements, Apple TV+’s Girls State and HBO’s Ren Faire led with three nominations each. Girls State, the follow-up to the Cinema Eye-winning Boys State from filmmakers Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, received nominations for Broadcast Film, Broadcast Editing and Broadcast Cinematography. Lance Oppenheim’s Ren Faire was also nominated in Broadcast Editing and Cinematography, along with a nod for Nonfiction Series.

The nomination for Ren Faire was one of two for director Oppenheim, who was also nominated for Hulu’s Spermworld. Filmmaker Dawn Porter, who was recently honored by President Biden with a National Humanities Medal, also received two nominations, in Broadcast Film for Hulu’s The Lady Bird Diaries and in Nonfiction Series for Showtime’s Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court.

Other notable nominations in the Broadcast categories include the third Anthology Series nod for HBO’s How To with John Wilson, the first program ever to accomplish that feat. The series, which ended earlier this year with its third season, previously won Cinema Eye Honors for Broadcast Editing for Season One and Anthology Series for Season Two.

Filmmaker Steve James once again claimed the record for the most Cinema Eye nominations in history. He received his 14th nomination this year in the Nonfiction Series category for ESPN’s The Luckiest Guy in the World. Filmmaking team Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi scored their 11th and 9th nominations with recognition in the Anthology Series category for National Geographic’s Photographer.

HBO led all networks and streamers with twelve nominations in all. Apple TV+ scored six nominations, while Netflix received five. Other films and series receiving multiple nominations include Netflix’s America’s Sweethearts: The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, Apple TV+’s The Enfield Poltergeist and HBO’s Telemarketers.

In addition to the Broadcast nominations, Cinema Eye also announced this year’s Audience Choice Award Longlist which includes 16 of the year’s most acclaimed and talked about documentaries. 

Each year, tens of thousands of nonfiction fans have the opportunity to select the final ten nominees and the ultimate winner. 

The last six winners of the Best Documentary Feature Oscar – 20 Days in Mariupol, Navalny, Summer of Soul, My Octopus Teacher, American Factory and Free Solo – were all first nominees for the Audience Choice Prize.

This year’s list includes a number of the most talked about and lauded films of the year, including Copa 71, Daughters, Frida, Grand Theft Hamlet, Piece by Piece, Porcelain War, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, Skywalkers: A Love Story, Sugarcane and Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story.

Finally, Cinema Eye also announced the eleven films on this year’s Shorts List, the organization’s annual list of semi-finalists for its Nonfiction Short Film Honor. Of those eleven films, five or six will be announced as the official nominees. For the second year in a row, Cinema Eye will screen all of the Shorts List films in both Los Angeles and New York, with series of  screenings at Vidiots in LA on Sunday, December 7 and in New York at DCTV on Sunday, November 24. 

Last year’s Oscar winner for Best Documentary Short, The Last Repair Shop, was one of the films on the 2024 Shorts List.

Cinema Eye will return to the historic New York Academy of Medicine in East Harlem for its 18th Annual Awards Ceremony, to be held on Thursday, January 9, 2025. Cinema Eye Week, which includes a number of events and activities for Cinema Eye nominees and honorees, kicks off on Monday, January 6.

Today’s announcements were made at the 7th Annual Cinema Eye Fall Lunch in Downtown Los Angeles. The event was hosted by Amazon MGM Studios, Apple Original Films, Hulu and Netflix. 

A full list of this year’s announcements and nominees follows.

Audience Choice Award Long List

Black Box Diaries
Directed by Shiori Ito

Copa 71
Directed by Rachel Ramsay and James Erskine

Daughters
Directed by Natalie Rae and Angela Patton

Eno
Directed by Gary Hustwit

Frida
Directed by Carla Gutiérrez

Grand Theft Hamlet
Directed by Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane

Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa
Directed by Lucy Walker

No Other Land
Directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor

Piece by Piece
Directed by Morgan Neville

Porcelain War
Directed by Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev

The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
Directed by Benjamin Ree

Secret Mall Apartment
Directed by Jeremy Workman

Skywalkers: A Love Story
Directed by Jeff Zimbalist

Sugarcane
Directed by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
Directed by Ian Bonhôte, Peter Ettedgui

Will and Harper
Directed by Josh Greenbaum

The Unforgettables Honorees

Shiori Ito
Black Box Diaries

Brian Eno
Eno

Lhakpa Sherpa
Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa

Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham
No Other Land

Patrice Jetter
Patrice: The Movie

Jenna Marvin
Queendom

Chris Smalls
Union

Harper Steele
Will and Harper

Broadcast Film Nominees

Bread & Roses
Directed by Sahra Mani
Apple TV+

Girls State
Directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss
Apple TV+

Great Photo, Lovely Life: Facing a Family’s Secrets
Directed by Amanda Mustard and Rachel Beth Anderson
HBO

The Lady Bird Diaries
Directed by Dawn Porter
Hulu

Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play.
Directed by Jeremy O. Harris
HBO

Spermworld
Directed by Lance Oppenheim
FX

Nonfiction Series Nominees

America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders
Directed by Greg Whiteley and Chelsea Yarnell
Netflix

Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court
Directed by Dawn Porter
Showtime

The Enfield Poltergeist
Directed by Jerry Rothwell
Apple TV+

The Luckiest Guy in the World
Directed by Steve James
ESPN

Ren Faire
Directed by Lance Oppenheim
HBO

Telemarketers
Directed by Adam Bhala Lough and Sam Lipman-Stern
HBO

Anthology Series Nominees

Conan O’Brien Must Go
Executive Producers Conan O’Brien, Jeff Ross
HBO

De La Calle
Executive Producers Nick Barili, Jared Andrukanis, Picky Talarico, Lydia Tenaglia, Christopher Collins, Amanda Culkowski, Bruce Gillmer, Craig H. Shepherd
Paramount+

God Save Texas
Executive Producers Lawrence Wright, Alex Gibney, Richard Linklater, Peter Berg, Michael Lombardo, Elizabeth Rogers, Stacey Offman, Richard Perello, Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller
HBO

High on the Hog Season 2
Executive Producers Roger Ross Williams, Geoff Martz, Craig Piligian, Sarba Das, Fabienne Toback, Karis Jagger, Jessica B. Harris, Stephen Satterfield, Michele Barnwell
Netflix

How To with John Wilson Season 3
Executive Producers Nathan Fielder, John Wilson, Michael Koman, Clark Reinking
HBO

Photographer
Executive Producers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhely, Jimmy Chin, Pagan Harleman, Betsy Forhan
National Geographic

Broadcast Editing Nominees

Girls State
Edited by Amy Foote
Apple TV+

The Greatest Night in Pop
Edited by Nic Zimmerman, Will Znidaric, David Brodie
Netflix

Ren Faire
Edited by Max Allman, Nicholas Nazmi
HBO

The Saint of Second Chances
Edited by Alan Lowe, Jeff Malmberg, Miles Wilkerson
Netflix

Telemarketers
Edited by Christopher Passig
HBO

Time Bomb Y2K
Edited by Marley McDonald, Maya Mumma
HBO

Broadcast Cinematography Nominees

America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders
Director of Photography Jonathan Nicholas
Netflix

The Enfield Poltergeist
Director of Photography Ruben Woodin Deschamps, Carmen Pellon Brussosa, David Katznelson
Apple TV+

Girls State
Director of Photography – Nominees to be Determined
Apple TV+

Photographer
Director of Photography Michael Crommett, Rita Baghdadi, Peter Hutchens, Melissa Langer, Pauline Maroun
National Geographic

Ren Faire
Director of Photography Nate Hurtsellers
HBO

You Were My First Boyfriend
Director of Photography Brennan Vance, J. Bennett
HBO

Shorts List Semifinalists

Contractions
Directed by Lynne Sachs / NY Times Op-Docs

Eternal Father
Directed by Ömer Sami / New Yorker

I Am Ready, Warden
Directed by Smriti Mundhra / MTV Documentary Films

Incident
Directed by Bill Morrison / New Yorker

Instruments of a Beating Heart
Directed by Ema Ryan Yamazaki / NY Times Op-Docs

Love in the Time of Migration
Directed by Erin Semine Kökdil and Chelsea Abbas / LA Times

Makayla’s Voice: A Letter to the World
Directed by Julio Palacio / Netflix

The Medallion
Directed by Ruth Hunduma / New Yorker

A Move
Directed by Elahe Esmaili / NY Times Op-Docs

The Only Girl in the Orchestra
Directed by Molly O’Brien / Netflix

A Swim Lesson
Directed by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack / POV

B-Roll Press & Zine Bazaar / The Jitters

https://monirafoundation.org/event/b-roll-press-zine-bazaar/
Monira Foundation In Collaboration with Film Diary NYC presents:
 
B-Roll Zine Bazaar
October 20, 2024 12-6pm
1st Floor Cinema, 888 Newark Ave
 
B-Roll Zine Bazaar will feature a curated selection of artists and book-makers offering zines, prints, and ephemera. The bazaar will take place in the Mana Legacy cinema room on the first floor of Mana Contemporary, with a 6-hour long screening of silent diary films happening simultaneously. Vendors and filmmakers TBA in early October.

About B-Roll Press & Zine Bazaar

B-Roll Press is a micropress founded by Saint Piñero and Sage Ó Tuama in 2020, publishing zines by photographers and filmmakers who focus on the personal and poetic from the fringes of society. B-Roll is one facet of Saint and Sage’s shared curatorial practice which also encompasses Film Diary NYC.

The first edition of B-Roll Zine Bazaar will be an experiment that merges our film curation with our interest in self-publishing.

Places, Politics, Performances: Diaries from the Film-Makers’ Cooperative

Curated by Matt McKinzie and Robert Schneider for B-Roll Press’ Zine Bazaar, organized by Saint Piñero and Sage Ó Tuama

Join us at Mana Contemporary on SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20th, at 12pm, for a program of silent diary films from the FMC’s collection, curated by Matt McKinzie and Robert Schneider for B-Roll Zine Bazaar, organized by Saint Piñero and Sage Ó Tuama of Film Diary NYC!

PROGRAM:

I. Diaries of Performance:

She/Va, Marjorie Keller, Super 8mm-to-digital, 3 minutes, 1973

How a Sculpture Eats a Painting, Marja Samsom, Super 8mm-to-digital, 5 minutes, 1975

Picnic, Marja Samsom, Super 8mm-to-digital, 3 minutes, 1975

Hoover, Marja Samsom, Super 8mm-to-digital, 3 minutes, 1977

II. The Personal is Political:

The Jitters, Lynne Sachs, 16mm-to-digital, 3 minutes, 2023

Private Imaginings and Narrative Facts, Edward Owens, 16mm-to-digital, 6 minutes, 1966

Elegy in the Streets, Jim Hubbard, 16mm-to-digital, 30 minutes, 1989

III. Out of the City and Into the Countryside:

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Jonas Mekas, 16mm-to-digital, 16 minutes, 2003

Home Movies / NYC to San Diego, Taylor Mead, 16mm-to-digital, 13 minutes, 1968

Sidewalks, Marie Menken, 16mm-to-digital, 6 minutes, 1966

Lights, Marie Menken, 16mm-to-digital, 6 minutes, 1966

Excursion, Marie Menken, 16mm-to-digital, 5 minutes, 1968

Notebook, Marie Menken, 16mm-to-digital, 11 minutes, 1962

Farm Diary, Gordon Ball, Super 8mm-to-digital, 64 minutes, 1964

Total Run Time: 174 minutes.

*To be screened twice during the zine bazaar.

Notes by Matt McKinzie and Robert Schneider:

The Film-Makers’ Cooperative is honored to present a three-hour program of silent diary films for B-Roll Press’ Zine Bazaar at Mana Contemporary, organized by Saint Piñero and Sage Ó Tuama of Film Diary NYC. One of the oldest and largest distributors of avant-garde films, video, and media art in the world, the Film-Makers’ Cooperative (FMC) was founded in New York City in 1961 by a group of 22 experimental moving image artists aiming to cultivate an alternative space for filmmakers working outside of the mainstream. With works like Walden (1969) and Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972), FMC co-founder Jonas Mekas helped pioneer the “diary film,” defined by Film Diary NYC as “experimental, autobiographical films that capture the personal history and daily experiences of the filmmaker.” In presenting this collection of diaristic work, we hope to echo Mekas’ and Film Diary’s mission of championing art that illuminates its makers’ interiorities, observations, day-to-day experiences, and the spaces and communities in which they live and work.

Split into three sections, this lineup highlights work from the FMC’s holdings that spans from its inception in the early 1960s to as recent as 2023. The first section examines the role of performance and role-playing in personal filmmaking. In former FMC director Marjorie Keller’s Super-8mm found footage/home movie She/Va, a young dancer is “re-choreographed through film editing.” Subsequently, the Super-8mm self-portraits How a Sculpture Eats a Painting, Picnic, and Hoover find performance artist Marja Samson acting out micro-narratives in disparate everyday settings, in turn presenting a “conceptual museum fantasy,” a “Georges Méliès-influenced scene interrupted by a tiger,” and a “glamorous resistance on housekeeping.” That Samson’s and Keller’s films engage with gender roles and notions of femininity and performance feels pertinent considering they were made during the height of the second-wave feminist movement in the 1970s.

Lynne Sachs’ recent 16mm short The Jitters is classified by the artist as a “performance,” thereby bridging the first section with the second, which consists of diaristic work that exemplifies the adage “the personal is political.” In The Jitters, Sachs and her partner Mark Street “jitter” around their bedroom in the nude, as captured by Sachs’ Bolex. Sachs writes: “I wanted to create a film with my Bolex 16mm camera that reflects who I am at this moment in my life. I bought my camera in 1987, used. It has lived with me for four decades, and it has witnessed pretty much every aspect of my existence.”

Equal parts playful and revelatory, The Jitters is as much a performance as it is a radical celebration of bodies, intimacy, aging, and longevity — the longevity not only of Sachs’ and Street’s partnership, but of Sachs’ four-decade relationship with her filmic apparatus and its role in documenting her life and the lives of her friends and family.

Friends and family are recurrent in the work of Edward Owens, a Black, gay filmmaker who was, for decades, written out of the history of the American avant-garde despite being a key member of the New American Cinema movement and a protégé of both Jonas Mekas and Gregory Markopoulos. His mother and friends appear frequently in his work, though perhaps most indelibly in his 1966 evocation Private Imaginings and Narrative Facts. Made at the height of the Civil Rights movement, Owens’ intermingling of dreamlike footage of Black and white relatives and peers feels groundbreaking, as does the tender intimacy with which he conveys them. Owens’ footage of his mother in particular, engaging in quotidian activities at home (resting, conversing, smoking a cigarette, having a glass of water), offers a rare antidote to the images of suffering and subjugation experienced by Black people that were rife in mainstream American filmmaking throughout the 1960s.

While Owens does not explicitly contextualize these private moments from his personal life within a broader historical or political moment, Elegy in the Streets sees Jim Hubbard directly correlate home footage of his partner Rober Jacoby (who passed away due to complications from AIDS) with 16mm footage of AIDS marches, protests, and vigils in the 1980s. Hubbard notes: “The film attempts to create a filmic rendering of the elegiac form, utilizing a procession of mourners, a catalog of flowers, a visit to the underworld and other poetic techniques… The film is nearly 30 minutes long and silent… that is a lot to ask of an audience, but it is silent for several crucial reasons. First, it is a literalization of the phrase ‘Silence = Death.’ Second, I live in New York City, a very loud place to live and, for me, silence is a great luxury. Third, I believe that film is a visual medium and sound is typically used to manipulate and limit the emotional response of the audience. I want each member of the audience to experience the film uniquely and personally. Silence forces the viewer to really look at what there is to see.”

In addition to “exploring the AIDS crisis from both a personal and a political perspective,” Elegy in the Streets functions as a city symphony film — composed of images of New York City, its residents, and its infrastructure during a significant historical period. This designation bridges the second section of the program with the third and final one, which presents a suite of diary films exploring lived environments.

In effect, this section charts a filmic journey out of the city and into the countryside, beginning with Jonas Mekas’ Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which amalgamates footage Mekas shot while first living in Williamsburg in 1950 with footage of the same neighborhood that Mekas shot in 1972. Critic Max Goldberg describes the film (which was not assembled and placed into distribution until 2003) as a “pocket-sized city symphony” in which “bygone Brooklyn is richly evoked in the everyday life of the street: the elevated train, Lithuanian storefronts and especially in the faces of children surprised to encounter this man with a movie camera.” Similar to Mekas’ Williamsburg, Brooklyn is Taylor Mead’s Home Movies / NYC to San Diego, which takes the viewer on, as Mead himself described it, “The Grand Tour” through a “millennium of culture” and was shot on the “cheapest, littlest hand-held camera I could buy.”

Four shorts by Marie Menken follow, wherein the trailblazing avant-garde filmmaker documents (to quote John Hawkins) “the magic patterns in the pavements of a city” (Sidewalks) and abstractly renders displays of Christmas lights on a wintry nighttime stroll (Lights), before embarking on a sped-up boat ride outside of New York (Excursion) and landing in a sylvan environment of trees and leaves far beyond the metropolis (Notebook). Gordon Ball’s hour-long personal documentary Farm Diary (which concludes the program) continues that sylvan journey, and features “ghostly strangers” (among them: Peter and Julius Orlovsky, Candy O’Brien, and Allen Ginsberg) on Ball’s mountaintop farm during, to quote Ginsberg, “the archetypal first year back to the land.”

Capsule Reviews: Preview Of SFFILM’s Doc Stories / Beyond Chron / Contractions

https://beyondchron.org/capsule-reviews-of-all-we-imagine-as-light-and-ernest-cole-lost-and-found-plus-preview-of-sffilms-doc-stories-10/

by Peter Wong on October 14, 2024

In Payal Kapadia’s radiant Cannes Grand Prix Award-winning “All We Imagine As Light,” three women navigate life in modern-day Mumbai.  Lonely senior nurse Prabha has an absent husband working in Germany.  Roommate and younger nurse Anu has a semi-secret romance with a Muslim boy.  Cook Parvati faces the prospect of losing her home to a greedhead developer.  Events cause these women to grow and change as people, including discovering traditions aren’t as helpful in life as expected.

***

Was it living under apartheid, pigeonholing as the “racism photographer,” or something else that permanently shadowed the life and career of talented South African photographer Ernest Cole?  Raoul Peck’s newest documentary “Ernest Cole: Lost And Found” attempts to answer these questions using Cole’s own words (voiced by Lakeith Stanfield) and Cole’s extraordinary photographs.  Can these two sources explain why Cole lived a life of precarity or how 60,000 of Cole’s negatives were found in a Swedish bank safe?

***

Peck’s newest film is showing as part of this year’s SFFILM’s Doc Stories film series.  The director had appeared at a previous documentary film event with his seminal James Baldwin documentary “I Am Not Your Negro.”

Aside from Peck’s Baldwin documentary, over the years of its existence Doc Stories has shown such powerful films as Matthew Heineman’s “The First Wave,” Ben Proudfoot’s “Almost Famous: The Queen Of Basketball,” and Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’ “The Mission.”  This year, Doc Stories presents its 10th program from October 17-20, 2024 at the Vogue Theater in San Francisco.

One of the films shown at the very first Doc Stories series was Amy Berg’s “Janis: Little Girl Blue.”  This electrifying biopic of rock legend Janis Joplin mixed together the late musician’s personal letters (read by Cat Power), stories from the likes of Pink and Melissa Etheridge, and footage from Joplin’s concerts and studio sessions.  This screening is free, but tickets must be requested.

Opening Night honors goes to “One To One: John & Yoko” from directors Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards.  The film follows post-Beatles breakup John Lennon and Yoko Ono as they undergo both a spiritual awakening and a political radicalization during the course of the early 1970s.  Aside from personal phone recordings and home video, the film will mix in footage from the 1972 full-length charity concert Lennon and Ono put on for the children of Willowbrook Institution.

When Proudfoot’s Academy Award-winning short film was shown at Doc Stories, it was as part of the New York Times Op-Docs shorts block.   This year’s package of shorts includes: Elahe Esmaili’s “A Move” (what results when the film’s Iranian director appears at a family gathering sans hijab), Lynne Sachs’ “Contractions” (a timely and poetic expression of grief and dismay made by reproductive rights activists during the overturning of Roe v. Wade), and Raquel Sancinetti’s animated “Madeleine” (the titular old woman’s refusal to leave her retirement home doesn’t stop her decades-younger companion Raquel from finding a creative way to take the older woman on the journey of a lifetime).

Doc Stories’ other short film block is called “The Persistence Of Dreams.” It includes such shorts as Mona Xia and Erin Ramirez’ “Kowloon!” (would you believe America’s largest Chinese restaurant is located in…Saugus, Massachusetts), Amelie Hardy’s “Hello Stranger” (while her clothes are drying at a local Nova Scotia laundromat, Cooper shares the story of her gender affirmation journey), and Kyle Thrash and Ben Proudfoot’s “The Turnaround” (the story of how Philadelphia Phillies superfan Jon McCann’s plan to turn things around for his beloved baseball team became the stuff of legend).

A different kind of institution saving is chronicled in Elizabeth Lo’s “Mistress Dispeller.”  It follows Wang Zhenxi (aka Teacher Wang), a woman who’s part of a growing Chinese industry dedicated to repairing failing marriages.  But if Wang’s tactics are anything to go by, her methods raise plenty of ethical red flags.  The case followed here involves an errant husband and his mistress, and how Wang manipulates the extramarital lovers to end their affair.

Benjamin Ree’s film “The Remarkable Life Of Ibelin” begins with a different sort of ending: the death of online gamer Mats Steen from a rare muscular disease.  But when Steen’s grieving parents Robert and Trude accessed their late son’s blog posts, they discovered that their son didn’t lead a lonely life playing the online game “World Of Warcraft.”  Mats was the avatar known as Ibelin, and he wound up forging unexpected bonds with both fellow gamers within the game and beyond.

A different sort of teamwork with far different stakes gets chronicled in Brett Story and Stephen Maing’s “Union.”  This documentary follows the efforts of aspiring rapper Chris Smalls to convince the workers at an Amazon fulfillment center on Staten Island to join the Amazon Labor Union.  Motivational speeches and offers of free marijuana may sound like dubious ways of getting workers to sign up.  But the Amazon bosses are notoriously anti-union to the point of using anti-organizing tactics to stop the union.  So all’s fair in love and worker relations.

A far more intractable conflict is depicted in the Berlin Film Festival award-winner “No Other Land.”   Made by a Palestinian-Israeli filmmaker collective (Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor), the film documents the struggle over several years by Palestinian residents of Masafer Yatta to prevent the IDF from evicting them and seizing the land for a “training ground” (aka land to be given to Jewish settlers).   This film promises to be a hot ticket partly thanks to current interest in Israeli-Palestinian friction.  Also, no US distributor has as yet stepped forward to pick up the film for mass distribution.

Speaking of taboo subjects, talking about climate change has led to actual death threats against meteorologists reporting on the subject.  In hopes of digging past the heated rhetoric and get back to “what happened and why,” “The White House Effect” from local filmmakers Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos, and Jon Shenk exhume the decades of failed U.S. policy that led in a way to Hurricanes Helene and Milton.  The filmmakers show why repeated policy failures on fighting climate change effects can’t be blamed solely on greedhead polluters.  There was political maneuvering involved, as seen in what happened to Jimmy Carter’s environmental agenda and George H.W. Bush’s initial support for the EPA.

A country’s government may be a big fan of building grandiose architectural projects.  But as Victor Kossakovsky’s new essay film “Architecton” shows, building grandiose physical structures has been a continual human obsession over the centuries of humanity’s existence.  Will humanity ultimately pay a price for attempting to satisfy its unending urges to build bigger and allegedly better?

A person who paid a different sort of price is Sara Jane Moore, who was imprisoned for attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford.  Filmmaker Robinson Devor wanted to tell Moore’s story on film.  However, the former assassin would agree to an interview only if she was the only person filmed.  Devor agreed to Moore’s terms but turned these limitations into Doc Stories’ Closing Night Film “Suburban Fury.”  The viewer understands from the start that Moore is an unreliable narrator.  But figuring out what parts of Moore’s story are true and which fable is made harder by an inability to verify her story.  Was Moore actually an FBI informant whose job was gaining the confidence of political radicals?

(“All We Imagine As Light” screened as part of Mill Valley Film Festival 47.  It next screens at 3:00 PM on October 19, 2024 as part of the Third I Film Festival at the Roxie Theatre (3117-16th Street, SF).  Following that screening, it will begin a theatrical run on November 22, 2024 at the Roxie Theatre.

(“Ernest Cole: Lost And Found” screens at 11:00 AM on October 19, 2024 as part of SFFILM’s “Doc Stories 10” at the Vogue Theater (3290 Sacramento Street, SF.))

This Side of Salina

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison Street, Syracuse 
October 10 – December 21, 2024
https://www.lightwork.org/archive/lynne-sachs-new-work/

Urban Video Project (UVP), a program of Light Work in partnership with the Everson Museum of Art and Onondaga County, is an outdoor architectural projection venue dedicated to the public presentation of film, video and moving image arts. UVP is one of few projects in the United States dedicated to ongoing public projections and adds a new chapter to Central New York’s legacy as one of the birthplaces of video art using cutting-edge technology to bring art of the highest caliber to Syracuse, New York.

Light Work UVP centers on a large-scale architectural projection onto the famous Everson Museum building designed by I.M. Pei. The projection can be viewed from the adjacent plaza. The Everson Museum is located in downtown Syracuse at 401 Harrison Street at the corner of Harrison and South State Streets, across from the War Memorial and OnCenter.

The Urban Video Project projection runs from dusk to 11pm, Thursday through Saturday during exhibition dates.

This Side of Salina

HD video and stereo sound
Duration: 12 min
2024

Four Black women from the city of Syracuse, New York, reflect on sexuality, youthful regret, emotional vulnerability, raising a daughter, and working in reproductive health services. In a series of their own choreographed vignettes, each woman thoughtfully engages with the neighborhoods she’s known all of her life. Two performers flip through classic 1960s titles by Black authors in a bookstore. Others sit in a hat store finding time to pour into each other, as mentors and confidantes. These are businesses that are owned by local Black women, and they know it. In Brady Market, a community grocery, they playfully shop and chat with ease and confidence. They dance to their own rhythms in the outdoor plaza of the Everson Museum of Art. Together they look down at the city from its highest point and ponder how to battle the inequities of the place that they call home.

Commissioned by Light Work as part of the UVP Residential Media Commission program

CREDITS 

Featuring: J’Viona Baker, Vernahia Davis, Ja’Rhea Dixon, Angela Stroman
Director: Lynne Sachs
Cinematographers: Anneka Herre, Lynne Sachs, Zelikha Zohra Shoja, Monae Kyhara Sims
Editor: G. Anthony Svatek 
Production support: Minnie S. McMillian, Devon Narine Singh, Hilary Warner
Additional recording: Saptarshi Lahiri
Sound Design: Kevin T. Allen

In consultation with Anneka Herre, Program Director of Light Work | Urban Video Project, Tiffany Lloyd, Director of Women’s Health and Empowerment, Allyn Foundation Campaign Manager, Layla’s Got You

Shot on location in Syracuse, New York at Black Citizens Brigade, Brady Market, The Classic Bop Hat Boutique, Everson Museum of Art Community Plaza, and Upper Onondaga Park

Light Work’s Urban Video Project is pleased to present the exhibition of This Side of Salina exploring reproductive justice from October 10 – December 21 at the architectural projection venue on the Everson Museum facade in downtown Syracuse.

Previous UVP exhibitions include:

Crystal Z Campbell: Makahiya

Theo Cuthand: Extractions

Sofía Gallisá Muriente: Lluvia con Nieve (Rain with Snow)

Colectivo Los Ingrávidos: The Battle Trilogy

Suneil Sanzgiri: Golden Jubilee

Hito Steyerl: Strike

Ephraim Asili: Fluid Frontiers

Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Walled Unwalled

HOLD/RELEASE: Jennifer Reeder | Kelly Sears | Lauren Wolkstein

YOKO ONO: REMEMBERING THE FUTURE

Christopher Harris: Extended Forecast

Ben Russell: Good Luck (Portraits)

Kevin Jerome Everson: Grand Finale

Deborah Stratman: Xenoi

Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Fireworks (Archives)

Between Species: Sam Easterson | Leslie Thornton | Robert Todd | Maria Whiteman

Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel: Leviathan

The Otolith Group: Anathema

Cauleen Smith:Crow Requiem

Isaac Julien: Western Union: Small Boats (The Leopard)

Ann Hamilton: table

Phil Solomon: Still Raining, Still Dreaming

Dani (Leventhal) ReStack: Platonic

Psychic Geographies: Basma Alsharif | Jacqueline Goss | Mariam Ghani | Michael Robinson | Sayler/Morris

Bill Viola: Quintet of the Astonished

This Side of Salina

This Side of Salina

HD video and stereo sound
Duration: 12 min
2024

Four Black women from the city of Syracuse, New York, reflect on sexuality, youthful regret, emotional vulnerability, raising a daughter, and working in reproductive health services. In a series of their own choreographed vignettes, each woman thoughtfully engages with the neighborhoods she’s known all of her life. Two performers flip through classic 1960s titles by Black authors in a bookstore. Others sit in a hat store finding time to pour into each other, as mentors and confidantes. These are businesses that are owned by local Black women, and they know it. In Brady Market, a community grocery, they playfully shop and chat with ease and confidence. They dance to their own rhythms in the outdoor plaza of the Everson Museum of Art. Together they look down at the city from its highest point and ponder how to battle the inequities of the place that they call home.

Commissioned as a large-scale architectural projection by Light Work as part of the UVP Residential Media Commission program, supported by New York State Council for the Arts. The installation runs from October 10 – December 21, 2024.

CREDITS 

Featuring: J’Viona Baker, Vernahia Davis, Ja’Rhea Dixon, Angela Stroman
Director: Lynne Sachs
Cinematographers: Anneka Herre, Lynne Sachs, Zelikha Zohra Shoja, Monae Kyhara Sims
Editor: G. Anthony Svatek 
Production support: Minnie S. McMillian, Devon Narine Singh, Hilary Warner
Additional recording: Saptarshi Lahiri
Sound Design: Kevin T. Allen

In consultation with Anneka Herre, Program Director of Light Work | Urban Video Project, Tiffany Lloyd, Director of Women’s Health and Empowerment, Allyn Foundation Campaign Manager, Layla’s Got You

Shot on location in Syracuse, New York at Black Citizens Brigade, Brady Market, The Classic Bop Hat Boutique, Everson Museum of Art Community Plaza, and Upper Onondaga Park

Light Work’s Urban Video Project is pleased to present the exhibition of This Side of Salina exploring reproductive justice from October 10 – December 21 at the architectural projection venue on the Everson Museum facade in downtown Syracuse.

Women Make Waves 2024 / Contractions

10/18-10/27 2024
Taipei, Taiwan

https://www.wmw.org.tw/en/film/unit/344

The program includes short films from Portugal, Poland, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Brazil, China, Croatia, and the United States. From a lockdown love story, Gen Z manifesto against patriarchal norms, to a sharp social commentary on gender struggles. The length of the film demonstrates an attitude, from there extends a myriad of different universes.

Lynne Sachs hosts an interactive workshop: The Body in Space.

Cinema Program

Dildotectonics
Portugal|2023|DCP|color|15min

What’s softest in the world rushes and runs over what’s hardest in the world.
Singapore|2024|DCP|color|15min

My First Funeral
South Korea|2023|DCP|color|38min

Such Miracles Do Happen
Poland|2023|DCP|color|14min

VALERIJA
Croatia|2023|DCP|color|16min

Quebrante
Brazil|2024|DCP|color|23min

Contractions
USA|2024|DCP|color|13min

Postcards from the Verge
Poland|2023|DCP|color|40min

Those Who Loved Me
Japan|2024|DCP|color|15min

Myself When I Am Real
USA|2024|DCP|color|18min

A Message from the Co-Curator of the Festival

Thank you for your powerful work! It reminded me of how a work of art is really a dialogue with the contemporary and is a voice of resistance:

“The four shorts tonight shared unique perspectives on the relationships between women/human kind and the body, time, history, and even the universe.

Unlike some of Lynne’s other works, with fluid space and poetics, in Contractions, we are hit with testimonies, plain and clear, combined with a visual and audio experience just as direct, about the predicaments of women and the medical system in Tennessee since June 24, 2022.

I noticed that in the beginning of the film, there is deep breathing sound. Then we see an open sky so blue and suffocating, with the voices of women, about the restrictions on women’s rights, on their bodies, and on what they can imagine about their own lives.

Lynne’s works are very charismatic with her organic, empathetic, and breathing-like camera eye. In Contractions, the camera is static or moves very slowly. It has a sense of control and horror, but at the same time, the static shots become a  steadfast and unwavering gaze; steadfast and unwavering, like those women that are “standing still” in the film, some alone, some leaning on each other.

I am truly touched by those strong women that continue to help each other despite the danger, and refuse to take it as it is. And it is strangely cathartic to hear the additional audio piece We Continue to Speak, knowing that we are all shaken with anger and we will continue to fight!

Thank you so much for the film. 

Ting-Wu Cho

Co-curator

Women Make Waves Film Festival 2024

Taipei, Taiwan

Interviewing with Empathy: Interactive discussion with Lynne Sachs / Syracuse University

https://newhouse.syracuse.edu/event/2024-oct-17/interviewing-with-empathy-reproductive-justice-topics?utm_content=buffer15f8d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

October 17th 2024 from 11 AM to noon at the CODE^SHIFT Lab (425, Newhouse 3, Reading Room)

The Newhouse School’s CODE^SHIFT lab invites you to an interactive discussion with  Lynne Sachs, a documentary filmmaker and Light Work commissioned artist.  Using her film “Which Way is East,” Sachs will discuss how to establish trust with sources and conduct interviews with empathy while working on media projects. The session will conclude with a discussion on her latest collaboration with Light Work/Urban Video Project, “This Side of Salina.”

This session is co-hosted by Profs Lauren Bavis (MND) and Srivi Ramasubramanian (COM) for CODE^SHIFT Lab in collaboration with Light Work

RSVP: NHCodeshift@syr.edu by Oct 15 if interested. Seats are limited

The Body in Space: An Interactive Workshop | Women Make Waves International Film Festival

https://www.wmw.org.tw/en/category/173

9/29/24 Virtual Meeting
10/26/24 In-Person Session and Performance
Taipei, Taiwan

Women Make Waves International Film Festival

Cinema Program 2024

Established in 1993, Women Make Waves Int’l Film Festival, Taiwan has been one of the major film festivals in Taiwan and has established itself as the biggest one dedicated to supporting female talents. It is also the longest running and largest issue-oriented film festival in Taiwan. Women Make Waves Int’l Film Festival aims to celebrate the achievements of outstanding female talents, to explore different aspects of female experiences, feminism, and beyond, and to promote equality and rights of all genders. By covering a wide range of genres, issues, and representations of gender, WMWIFF seeks to promote great cinematic arts by female talents and to advocate gender equality through films with feminist consciousness and various subjects.

In 1993, the inaugural Women Make Waves, jointly organized by the Awakening Foundation and B&W Film Studio, was the predecessor of Women Make Waves Int’l Film Festival Taiwan. In 2000, Women Make Waves was renamed as Women Make Waves Film/Video Festival. This marked the first time the film festival hosted screenings at the cinema. The film festival expanded significantly, solidifying itself as one of the major cultural events. In 2012, the film festival was officially renamed as Women Make Waves Int’l Film Festival Taiwan. 

In 1998, as the film festival entered its 5th edition, gender studies and discourses had become prominent in Taiwan. To ensure the prospect of the film festival, Taipei Women’s Film Association was founded in September of the same year. HUANG Yu-Shan served as the first chairwoman of the Association.  In 2001, the film festival established the model of nation-wide film tours, marking one of the first film festivals to do so in Taiwan. It has jointly held screenings with local theaters, organizations, universities, educational institutions, and cultural venues, in order to reduce rural-urban differences and promote gender equity through films beyond Taipei. 

The Body in Space——An Interactive Workshop

In this fast-paced, exhilarating, collaborative and interactive workshop, experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs will guide her participants through her own evolution as a filmmaker, her own conception a “somatic cinema,” and work as a group to create our own live film performance, which will be presented to the public on 10/26.

Words from Lynne…

In filmmaking, we are always negotiating the photographing of images that contain the body. We bring experiential, political or aesthetic contingencies to both the making and viewing of a cinema that contains the human form. If a body is different from our own – in terms of gender, skin color, or age – perhaps we frame it differently without even realizing it. We all know that looking at a body on screen affects us emotionally, psychologically and physically? When we speak of “space,” we must consider three dimensional issues of the here and now as well as more speculative conditions that arrive when we contemplate the future.

LECTURE-NOTES-The-Body-in-Space-Lynne-Sachs-Women-Make-Waves-Taipei-Taiwan-2024.docxDownload

Union Docs | From Clue to Chronicle: The Art of the Forensic Documentary

https://uniondocs.org/event/tracing-the-document-investigating-the-encounter/#1477608256488-ac7d3d1a-ae9084d0-801ebd47-97fc

Nov 8, 2024 at 10:00 am – Nov 10, 2024 at 5:00 pm

Join us for an intensive workshop led by renowned filmmaker Lynne Sachs, where we will explore how one of the most challenging yet enthralling aspects of the documentary process can be the investigative nature of the practice.

In this workshop Lynne Sachs will take us on her own journey through the making of her soon-to-be-completed essay film “Every Contact Leaves a Trace”. By laying bare her own revelations and disappointments, she will help us to navigate how the “search” in and of itself can be as interesting as the discovery.  While celebrating the shared sensibility of the documentary maker and the detective, Sachs will ask us to expand our understanding of forensics, evidence, and proof within the parameters of her own artistic practice.

On Friday, interdisciplinary artist A.S.M. Kobayashi (Say Something Bunny!)  will share her approach to incorporating forensics into performative work, focusing on how research can function as a form of proof and artistic expression. On Saturday, Jennifer Reeves (The Time We Killed, When It Was Blue) will discuss the psychological dimensions of her filmmaking process, shedding light on how she navigates the inner lives of her subjects while investigating deeper themes of introspection. On Sunday, director, producer and cinematographer Miryam Charles (Cette maison) will explore how filmmakers can refract aspects of reality, offering innovative ways to think about representation and storytelling.

Over the course of the workshop, we will engage in discussions about hybrid approaches to depicting reality, experiment with techniques that challenge conventional expectations of documentary, and reflect on the role of performance in the creative process. Whether you are just beginning a project or are already in the midst of production, this workshop provides a space to investigate your own work through new and creative methods.

The workshop is open to filmmakers, media artists, scholars, and creatives at any stage of their projects. It will offer practical tools, fresh ideas, and a supportive environment for those eager to explore the investigative aspects of documentary filmmaking.

Seats are limited, so be sure to sign up soon. Please note that this workshop requires in-person participation, and all attendees must present proof of vaccination. For any questions, feel free to reach out to raphaelle@uniondocs.org.

With Lynne Sachs, Miryam Charles, Jennifer Reeves & A.S.M Kobayashi

SF Film | Shorts Block: New York Times Op-Docs

https://sffilm.org/event/new-york-times-op-docs-2024/

PRESENTED IN COLLABORATION WITH


Program Description

SFFILM’s celebrated collaboration with the New York Times continues into its tenth year to present another showcase of their award-winning short-form documentary series, NYT Op-Docs. This year, SFFILM has curated five films that provocatively explore the complex and precarious spaces that various women occupy in an ever-modernizing world. The constant ebb and flow of progress and regression characterizes these stories of perseverance in the midst of trauma and heartache, collision with antiquated tradition, the murkiness of a new digital frontier, a fight for bodily self-determination, and a friendship uncompromised by generational boundaries. As women continue to fight for autonomy globally, we invite you to this appropriately bold addition to our festival program.
—Jordan Klein

Guests Expected

Director Faye Tsakas and Producer Rowan Ings for short Christmas, Every Day are expected to attend. Films are listed in order of play.

Christmas, Every Day
Faye Tsakas, USA 2024, 14 min
A quotidian exploration of what it means to be an influencer, from the perspective of two tween girls from rural Alabama

A Move
Elahe Esmaili, Iran 2024, 26 min
Iranian filmmaker Elahe Esmaili challenges long-standing cultural norms when she arrives at her family’s gathering without a hijab.

Contractions
Lynne Sachs, USA 2023, 12 min
Reproductive rights activists present a timely and poetic expression of grief and dismay in the midst of the overturning of Roe v Wade.

The Final Chapter
Frøydis Fossli Moe, Norway 2024, 14 min
Frøydis receives a phone call that her father is dying from cancer, which forces her to confront her past traumas experienced during her upbringing.

Madeleine
Raquel Sancinetti, Canada 2023, 15 min
Madeleine stubbornly refuses to leave her retirement home. Her friend Raquel, who is 67 years her junior, finds a creative way to take her on the journey of a lifetime.