CONTRACTIONS Lynne Sachs, USA, 2024, 12′ International Premiere
“A couple of years after the annulment of the ruling known as Roe v. Wade, which, since 1973, guaranteed the right to abortion in the United States, weeds are growing on the walls of an empty clinic in Memphis, Tennessee. In this abandoned setting, a group of women, some holding hands with their companions, seem to recreate a kind of off-screen abortion: the entrance and exit of the clinic. We do not see their faces, but the sound guides us: in the voices of two women we hear the testimonies of those who once exercised a right, now lost.” – Karina Solórzano
In 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States ended a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion. Contractions takes us to Memphis, Tennessee where we contemplate the discontinuation of abortion services at a women’s health clinic. We hear from an obstetrician-gynecologist and a reproductive justice activist. We watch 14 women who witness and perform abortions with their backs to the camera. In a place where a woman can no longer make decisions about her own body, they speak with the full force of their collective presence.
Film followed by a special audio piece: WE CONTINUE TO SPEAK (Lynne Sachs, 4 min. 33 Sec., audio, 2024 ). Filmmaker Lynne Sachs records the participants and producers of her film Contractions as they vocalize their reactions to the reduction of women’s bodily autonomy in the United States.
Denial
Paul Moakley, Daniel Lombroso. On the eve of Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection bid, he captivated his supporters with a narrative that led to widespread denial, diverting attention from those upholding our country’s ethics and election laws. This distraction allowed conspiracy theories to overshadow essential facts, culminating in the January 6th attack on the Capitol. As the 2022 midterm election approached, civil servant Chairman Bill Gates of Maricopa County was instrumental in determining the vote and delivering results for the largest voting district in a swing state that could sway a national election.
Hold the Line
Daniel Lombroso. When the largest Protestant organization in the U.S. decides to purge women in leadership positions, one prominent female pastor fights back.
I Am The Immaculate Conception
Frank Eli Martin
In 1985, the Irish village of Ballinspittle witnessed a mass visionary experience at the local grotto, where worshippers claimed to see the statue of Mary move. Nearly forty years later, only a few local devotees remain, including the statue’s caretaker Patrick Joseph Simms. I Am The Immaculate Conception documents the mystical landscape of rural Irish Catholicism and delves into a darker undercurrent beneath its surface.
Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr
Kimberly Reed. After Zooey Zephyr’s expulsion from the Montana House of Representatives for defending transgender medical care, she made a nearby bench her “office.” Director Kimberly Reed’s intimate camera transforms this shocking political moment into a portrait of trans and queer joy.
Sunday, May 12 2024 at 8:15 PM Anthology Film Archives, New York City
Prismatic Ground is a New York festival centered on experimental documentary and avant-garde film. Hosted with media partner Screen Slate at handful of venues across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, the festival will hold its fourth edition May 8-12, 2024 (with a virtual component, in which participation is voluntary,).
We seek work that pushes the formal boundaries of non-fiction in the spirit and tradition of experimental filmmaking. This “spirit” is somewhat amorphous, undefinable, and open to interpretation, but refers to work that engages with its own materiality, privileges a heightened artistic experience over clear meaning, and/or conveys a liberatory political sensibility in the agitprop tradition.
Contractions screening with Malqueridas by Tana Gilbert
Malqueridas Tana Gilbert 75 min
They are women. They are mothers. They are prisoners serving long sentences in a correctional facility in Chile. Their children grow up far from them, but remain in their hearts. In prison, they find affection in other partners who share their situation. Mutual support among these women becomes a form of resistance and empowerment. ‘Malqueridas’ builds their stories through images captured by them with cell phones inside the prison, recovering the collective memory of a forgotten community. —Square Eyes/Tana Gilbert
On March 28, acclaimed filmmaker Lynne Sachs visited the CODE^SHIFT lab to host a workshop and screening of her latest film, “Contractions“. During the session, Sachs presented the 12-minute short film and engaged with participants, sharing tips for conducting oral history research and documentary filmmaking.
Sachs, who is based in Brooklyn, has had a 30-year career as an experimental filmmaker and poet. Born in Tennessee, she completed her undergraduate studies at Brown University, studying History with a focus on studio art. Sachs has produced over 40 films in addition to live performances, installations, and web projects. She has tackled a myriad of topics, often confronting social and political issues. According to Sachs’ website, her films have screened at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), Tate Modern, Image Forum Tokyo, Wexner Center for the Arts, as well as festivals worldwide.
“The workshop was so amazing! I appreciate being able to discuss the film with the director. You could tell she was passionate about health and reproductive rights for women. As an audience member, the film held my attention and left me feeling inspired and moved. Lynne was able to give her audience a glimpse into the new challenges women and healthcare professionals are facing after the overturn of Roe v. Wade. I am thankful that Dr. Srivi provided a space to discuss such an important issue.” – Minnie McMillian, PhD Student (Psychology), College of Arts & Sciences
It was Sachs’ latest residential commission that brought her to Syracuse. In 2023, she received the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Support for Artists grant, and she is in the city to create commissioned work for the Urban Video Project (UVP), a media art program which projects the work of filmmakers and video artists onto the facade of the Everson Museum of Art in downtown Syracuse. During the workshop, Sachs was joined by Anneka Herre, faculty member in Syracuse’s College of Visual and Performing Arts and UVP Program Director.
To create her ongoing project, titled “Citizen Second Class” , Sachs plans to work with local artists, reproductive care providers, and activists to explore issues of reproductive justice and bodily autonomy. She is particularly interested in doing so through the lens of Central New York’s history with womens’ rights. This project is part of a larger effort in which Sachs is involved, called “The Abortion Clinic Film Collective”, a group of artists from around the country who came together in the wake of the landmark 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade.
“This is such a timely moment for a film like Contractions, which discusses the discontinuation of abortion services in Memphis. I felt privileged to see the screening with the director Lynne Sachs, along with other women concerned with the state of women’s health and reproductive rights in the country. Lynne’s film transported us to the testimonies of health workers who have experienced firsthand the effects of the overturn of Roe v Wade in such a sensitive, touching, and poetic way that makes it hard to describe. I’m still thinking about her film, and I feel incredibly moved to have been a part of the screening of her film here at Newhouse.” – Raiana de Carvalho, PhD Student (Mass Communications), Newhouse School
After the session, Lynne sat down for a video interview for CODE^SHIFT’s ongoing “Chai with Srivi” series. Speaking to undergraduate RA Nicole Cheah, Sachs detailed how she came to be the storyteller she is today, what feminist filmmaking meant to her, her ongoing project in Syracuse, and more. Once edited, the interview will be published on the CODE^SHIFT YouTube page.
Otherhood* | Deborah Stratman | USA, Jordan, Brazil | 2023 | 3 Mins Mother and child confront the other. Meanwhile, some ladies are thinking. *In-Person Screening Only
Contractions* | Lynne Sachs | USA | 2024 | 12 Mins What happens when those who gestate no longer have control of their bodies? In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ended a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion in the United States. CONTRACTIONS takes us to Memphis, Tennessee where we contemplate the discontinuation of abortion services at a women’s health clinic. *In-Person Screening Only
I Am a Horse | Chaerin Im | Republic of Korea, Denmark | 2022 | 8 Mins Unable to find girls in the diverse artwork of the Korean artist Lee Jung-seob, filmmaker Chaerin Im unravels an imaginative tale of women born with half of their bodies as a horse and a tiger. The tale is inspired by her mother’s Korean birth dreams (Tae-mong) while pregnant with her twin sister and herself.
Grandmamauntsistercat* | Zuza Banasinska | The Netherlands, Poland | 2024 | 23 Mins Created from the Polish Educational Archive materials, this film tells the story of a matriarchal family through the eyes of a child grappling with the reproduction of ideological and representational systems. *In-Person Screening Only
Hemorrhage | Ruth Hayes | USA | 2023 | 4 Mins Animated agitprop against the end of Roe and the evisceration of women’s rights to choose.
legs | Jennifer Still, Christine Fellows, Chantel Mierau | Canada | 2023 | 15 Mins Three artists work in stride to translate, in sound and motion, the heart of a poem. They collaborate with life’s unexpecteds – snapped clotheslines, drained swimming pools, terminal diagnoses – and learn what falls away is not necessarily gone.
First Aid – Test Series 1 | Maria Anna Dewes, Myriam Thyes | Germany | 2022 | 9 Mins Care and violence, acknowledgement and reprehension, to give or withdraw support: the video finds performative, sculptural, bizarre and poetic images for this range of diverse gestures and actions. They line up like a series of tests reflecting interpersonal relationships and current social conditions.
“What is the responsibility for a film festival during the oppression of Palestinians in Israeli-controlled Gaza and the efforts of various liberation movements in countries like Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Senegal? Should film festivals even occur? There are ever-evolving questions that cause me to be skeptical about the politics and rationale to cover influential fests like IDFA, Sundance, and Berlinale when they play both sides in their statements: remaining damn near silent or criminalizing artists stating their solidarity with Palestine and not abiding by the inimical IHRA definition of anti-semitism (meaning any critiques of Zionism) respectfully. On February 23, the True/False Film Festival in liberal Columbia, Missouri, demanded an immediate ceasefire with a pro-Palestinian stance and recognized Palestinians’s multi-generational fight for their emancipation. The demand offered many first time and veteran attendees a haven to form a political alliance with the fest’s ideology and use their playfulness in creative nonfiction as social activism, as the six-thousand-plus signatory coalition—Film Workers for Palestine—held the banner “Ceasefire Now” at the fest’s annual March March.
True/False puts their money in their mouth with their words as they amplified Yousef Srouji’s Three Promises (2023) as the True/Life Fund recipient. His hour-long documentary is an extension of his eponymous 2022 short. The director’s mother, Suha, captures home videos of her family life, her spouse Ramzi, Yousef, and his sibling Dima in Palestine during the early 2000s. The Second Intifada emerges at this time to combat the Nakba dispossession of Palestinians, and Suha’s intimate cinematography grounds us with the family at their several homes as we hear bombs and gunshots miles away. Yousef spreads his family’s archival catalog in non-chronological order, as the trauma caused by the violence prevents him from thinking linearly. Yet, the narrative choice evokes the ever-lasting feeling of belonging among his Christian family as they celebrate Christmas and he lives out his childhood. Three Promises is a cathartic, healful endurance against the ongoing genocide in Palestine. With True/Life’s attentive lens in recognizing the vividness of Suha’s DV footage, they will send the proceeds to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund and towards Yousef’s efforts in manufacturing a sustainable digital archive for home videos made in Palestine, thus preserving the country’s history, as the Israeli military has already destroyed many of Al Jazeera’s archives to date.
Deracination is a common theme that permeates this year’s six world premiere features (nearly all directorial debuts) at True/False, such as what it means to be an artist in gentrified NYC in Elizabeth Nichols’s lyrically punk Flying Lessons (2024), as well as filmmaker Rachel Elizabeth Seed finding her matriarchal lineage through her mothers’ images in her riveting A Photographic Memory (2024). The one that holds me dearly is Emily Mkrtichian’s There Was, There Was Not (2024). Named after an Armenian aphorism, it analyzes the makeup of the Republic of Artsakh through Judo champion Sose, minesweeper Sveta, politician Siranush, and women’s center owner Gayane. In 2018, the territory celebrated thirty years of peace following a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but the homelands were demolished in 2023. To honor the characters’ joy and resistance, Mkrtichian negotiates how much outsiders should know about violence in the little-known Artsakh through text. However, the context felt out of place as most of the text happens in the second half with little room for character growth. Though she could have condensed some of the history, Mkritichian’s intimate compositions on holding onto her protagonists during griefful moments redirect the structure of There Was, There Was Not. Therefore, the film isan observational heart pounder that explores the acts of preservation, mourning, and displacement.
Another True/False selection that mirrors its philosophy of finding new visual grammar with political sensibilities is João Pedro Bim’s Behind Closed Doors (2023). The all-archival doc follows a revelation of a 1968 previously-obscured audio recording of Brazil’s National Security Council enacting the Institutional Act. No. 5. The act suspended many civil rights, including habeas corpus, and was written after the 1964 Brazil coup d’état. His tethering of archival, nationalist images, and sounds (predominantly a record scratch) elicits outrage, revolt, and power to the people. His overlay of clips theorizes the normality of propaganda and shows how media mediates the spread of totalitarianism to the public. The strength of the people is what feared the council and unspooled regression to ensure hierarchical control in today’s Brazil. It is a Godardian essay on the banality of evil and a catastrophic shutdown of democracy. The film’s structure also speaks to the daring spirit of its next festival appearance in NYC’s First Look Film Festival (along with the aforementioned Flying Lessons) at the Museum of the Moving Image for conveying a contemporary message from past media sources.
Shorts at True/False are never to be underestimated for their ingenious experimentations. They are provocations instead of proof of concepts for potential feature-length adaptations. The Pope of Trash, John Waters, will likely perceive Evan Gareth Hoffman as a disciple of garbage cinema with his archival short Nortel (2024). Hoffman shared with the crowd that he agglomerates the “trashiest options” available (silly promotional materials, reality TV clips, “shoplifting TikToks,” skincare social media enthusiasts, reverb voiceover, etc.) to examine the eponymous corporation and its CEO Frank Dunn’s rise and decimation after they constructed literal flying cars in the 1960s. Hoffman undercuts them with a hilarious soundtrack (consisting of songs like Black Eyed Peas’s “I Gotta Feeling” and Taylor Swift’s “You’re On Your Own, Kid”) juxtaposing with Dunn’s doom. In what one might consider a narrative Rick and Morty “Interdimensional Cable” episode, Hoffman goes outside the box with the concept of sponsored content by finding the incongruity and the goad in publicity campaigns. Commercials aren’t just documents in Hoffman’s palms but also a radicalization and a search for truth in the digitalized age.
Filmic poet Lynne Sachs cranks in a new short with Contractions (2024), surprisingly her first work at the twenty-one-year-old fest after her heavy output of films like the poetic short Swerve (2022) and personal feature Film About a Father Who (2020). Shot on the first anniversary of the reversal of Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2023, in Sachs’s hometown, Memphis, a driver named Jane and gynecologist Dr. Kimberly Looney narrate the intense experiences of getting people abortions in states with legal facilities (Illinois, for example). We see opaque pairs of pregnant people and their escorts (all actors) line up and slowly enter the building. The cast’s gestures enact trauma, nerves, and capriciousness in doing something once legally acceptable that is now the opposite. They carry a history where their reproduction rights are currently in paralysis.
Motifs of open and closed spaces once liberating for pregnant people are refined into barriers that prevent them from fulfilling their wishes. Due to the fact they made the film in Tennessee, a place where they could get arrested, Sachs and her producers, Emily Berisso and Laura Goodman, said in their Q&A that they enlisted security to protect them from prosecution, which elevates Sach’s heedful balance of spreading enough sobbing information and protecting her sources simultaneously. Unbeknownst to the rest of the team, Berisso assembled thirteen additional volunteer marshals and a medic in this labor of love. Recalling the ending of BlacKKKlansman (2018), snippets of the blue sky become black and white as we head into the upside down.”
Saturday, April 20, 2024 7:30 PM 9:00 PM AgX Film Collective 144 Moody Street, Building 18, 2nd Floor Waltham, MA, 02453 United States (map)
In the Abortion Clinic Film Collective series, we hear from medical directors and staff, mothers and daughters, criminal defense attorneys and advocates, about how their personal and professional lives have been affected post-Dobbs. Each portal provides a window into the broad and life-threatening ramifications of that Supreme Court decision and its devastating legacy for the health and well-being of our country.
Doors open at 7pm. Program begins at 7:30pm.
Screening will be followed by a discussion led by participating filmmaker and AgX member Raymond Rea.
Program Details (approximately 50 min total runtime):
A Mile and a Half, Ray Rea, 5.5 min
The border between North Dakota and Minnesota is physically only a narrow river but legislatively a canyon. In the sister city straddling that border a move of a mile and a half saved lives.
Contractions, Lynne Sachs, 12 min
In a place where a woman can no longer make decisions about her own body, we listen to an OB-GYN who can no longer perform abortions and a “Jane” who drives patients across state lines while a group of activists perform outside a women’s health clinic.
As Long as We Can, Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, 10.5 min
As the Arizona state supreme court hears arguments on whether to reinstate an abortion ban that originated in 1864, we glimpse into the day-to-day activities of this for-now still functioning clinic, one of just two left in the state that provides surgical abortions.
Retracing Our Steps, Kelly Gallagher, 8.5 min
A woman reflects back on her time spent assisting abortion seekers when Roe v. Wade was the law of the land.
The Longest Walk, Đoan Hoàng Curtis, 9 min
A filmmaker returns to Kentucky in the wake of its total abortion ban, to revisit the clinic – now closed – where she terminated a pregnancy that resulted from her assault at age 13. She reaches out to the male classmate who witnessed the aftermath of her assault decades earlier.
We Are About to Commit a Felony, Sasha Waters, 4 min
Arson at a Planned Parenthood and the closing of a community clinic endanger the lives of women in Knoxville, TN. A teaching doctor reflects on what the post-Dobbs world means for her patients and her students, who are the next generation of reproductive care workers.
PLEASE NOTE: Masks are strongly encouraged at this event to help protect the most vulnerable among our community. If you are hoping to attend but feel that you need a specific accommodation of any sort, please do not hesitate to reach out to hi[at]agxfilm.org.
The 62nd Ann Arbor Film Festival will take place March 26–31, 2024 (online March 26–April 7). Each program is different. Films are not rated. All programs are intended for mature audiences except for Saturday’s Almost All Ages (6+) program. Some films have imagery of a stroboscopic nature.
EDUCATION PARTNER U-M Department of Afroamerican and African Studies
COMMUNITY PARTNERS U-M Black Film Society African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County
DONOR Jackie & John Farah
Contractions Lynne Sachs Brooklyn, NY | 2024 | DCP
WORLD PREMIERE (online unavailable)
In 2022, the US Supreme Court ended a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion in the United States. In a place where a woman can no longer make decisions about her own body, a group of activist performers “speak” with the full force of their collective presence.
Festival Poster
State Theater
Michigan Theater with Barbara Hammer Tribute
Map of Filmmakers
Michigan Theater Lobby
Festival Director Leslie Raymond
Archival festival ephemera at Domnick’s Restaurant, Ann Arbor
Archival festival ephemera at Domnick’s Restaurant, Ann Arbor
Archival festival ephemera at Domnick’s Restaurant, Ann Arbor
Archival festival ephemera at Domnick’s Restaurant, Ann Arbor
Archival festival ephemera at Domnick’s Restaurant, Ann Arbor
Archival festival ephemera at Domnick’s Restaurant, Ann Arbor
Archival festival ephemera at Domnick’s Restaurant, Ann Arbor
Archival festival ephemera at Domnick’s Restaurant, Ann Arbor
Archival festival ephemera at Domnick’s Restaurant, Ann Arbor
Archival festival ephemera at Domnick’s Restaurant, Ann Arbor
Archival festival ephemera at Domnick’s Restaurant, Ann Arbor
Jerry Fialka, attends the Ann Arbor Film Festival every year
Kornelia Boczkowska and Scott Stark
Leslie Raymond, Barbara Twist, and Lynne meeting to discuss the Barbara Hammer Experimental Film Award
With cinema as a focal point, Ragtag Film Society exists to captivate and engage communities in immersive arts experiences that explore assumptions and elicit shared joy, wonder, and introspection.
Embedded within this program are an array of storytelling approaches and diverse techniques, each offering a distinct lens through which to explore the themes of identity, community, and human connection. As this program unfolds, the films interweave these themes into a rich tapestry of narratives, inviting us to delve into the intricacies of the human experience. From the movements of experimental choreography to the vibrant art strokes that animate the frame, and the immersive worlds of fictional reenactments, these films showcase a spectrum of creative expressions, each contributing to the multifaceted exploration of our shared humanity. (Eynar Pineda, Artistic Co-Director)
Amma ki Katha | Dir. Nehal Vyas; 2023; India, USA; 21 min A creative and incisive look at how history is written and rewritten as a filmmaker unpacks the myth-making of her homeland, India.
L’Esquisse | Dir. Tomas Cali; 2023; France; 9 min Animated strokes blend with live-action, when an immigrant artist encounters a new muse who helps them make meaning in a new country.
Four Holes | Dir. Daniela Muñoz Barroso; 2023; Cuba, France; 20 min Filmmaker and subject find common ground in this humorous portrait of Pepe, the mastermind behind a DIY golf course on the outskirts of Madrid.
Two Sun | Dir. Blair Barnes; 2024; USA; 5 min A mood piece with its own rhythm, this evocative film explores the relationship to the self and our ever-evolving understanding of identity.
Contractions | Dir. Lynne Sachs; 2024; USA; 12 min Intimate confessions, paired with experimental choreography outside a woman’s clinic in Memphis, offer a glimpse into post Roe v. Wade America. (Plays in Shorts: Impossible Solution)
Producers Emily Berisso and Laura Goodman and Editor Anthony Svatek with Lynne Sachs at the Premiere of Contractions at True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri.
Lynne telling a Campfire Story at True / False Film Festival.
