Seven Forms of Filmmaking: Lynne Sachs from Fandor Keyframe on Vimeo.

All of Lynne Sachs‘ films blur the lines between avant-garde, documentary and narrative, but few employ as many different styles and mediums as States of Unbelonging. This essay film, as much rumination as documentary, traces Sachs’ three-year journey to learn about Revital Ohayon, an Israeli filmmaker killed in her home with her two children during the conflict of 2002.

To explore Ohayon’s life, as well as her own anxiety about death, conflict and distance, Sachs uses TV news/documentary, her own impressionistic footage from New York, her collaborator Nir Zats’ serene “objective” videos from Israel, super 8 shots of Ohayon’s kibbutz, clips from Ohayon’s narrative films, home movies and straightforward interviews with the victim’s family. “The Medium & The Message: 7 Forms of Filmmaking in States of Unbelonging” examines each of these strategies in turn. Appropriately, this video essay not only reflects the removed analysis of the filmmaker’s work but also the path of my own emotional engagement with the material.