Food brings us together. It can be the connector needed to form relationships both romantic and platonic–and for some, food can be their calling in life. Swerve uses food to bring together five unique individuals (and an audience) as they navigate the streets of Queens. While food is ultimately the catalyst for their journeys, each of them speaking in verse, expressing themselves in an incredibly effective way, lets emotion rise to the surface as they make an impression on viewers around the world.
While Swerve is technically a documentary, it plays
out in a way that allows it to appear like a narrative and an artistic version
of the real world. We see the subjects of the film navigating Queens both above
and below ground, on the crowded streets amongst thousands and alone at a
table. The juxtapositions created throughout the course of Swerve
open the world’s eyes to the diversity of not just New York City, but the rest
of the globe as well. Viewers are invited back into the world that they already
know, but it shows it from a series of angles by which they may not have
already been familiar. These angles are literal and figurative, and each one
plays an integral role in the reception of the film.
As these literal camera angles take form throughout the film, viewers see exactly what Director Lynne Sachs wants them to. When she wants viewers to see the hustle and bustle of the busy streets, that’s what they see. When she wants them to understand the mental and emotional statuses of the five subjects, they do; and when she wants them to feel relaxed, one with the sometimes calming sentiments present in Swerve, that’s exactly what they feel. Sachs is a brilliant creator who knows the ins and outs of developing something that can and will appeal to the masses. Her prowess in this respect is uplifting and full of passion, and she does a spectacular job of bringing her vision to life in Swerve.
I often struggle with documentaries that have parts written for
them, as I tend to want these films to happen naturally rather than being
manipulated into something that forces an agenda. Swerve has
verse written for it, and the individuals on screen are tasked with presenting these
lines in a fashion that mirrors the visuals and the sentiment present in the
film. For the first time I believe that the script written for a documentary is
not only acceptable, but essential. It works wonders for the film, and it
brings everything to life in a vibrant and infectious fashion.
Rhyme plays a pivotal role in the reception of Swerve,
as it becomes the most inviting part of the entire film. Creating rhyming
poetry that has a genuine purpose and a profound effect on those involved can
be challenging, but this team has managed to create something meaningful beyond
the visuals, something that surely resonates with viewers.
Swerve is
powerful, full of passion, energetic, honest, and relatable. It never loses its
vigor, and it never loses focus–keeping viewers intrigued from beginning to
end. It’s smooth sailing throughout the course of Swerve, and
anyone that has time to watch this short documentary will certainly gain
something positive along the way.
Directed by Lynne Sachs.
Starring Emmy Catedral, Ray Ferriera, Paolo Javier, Jeff Preiss,
Inney Prakash, & Juliana Sass.
Join us on Saturday, September 24th at 6pm in the FMC Screening Room for “HOME” MOVIES: A program of avant-garde shorts exploring homes and domestic spaces from the 1940s through the 2010s. Curated by Matt McKinzie.
“The past two years have seen us retreat into our homes in
an unprecedented way. The necessity of lockdowns, quarantine periods, and
social distancing with the rise of Covid-19 (and more recently, monkeypox) have
forced us to contend with domestic spaces – our kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms –
almost constantly, unable to venture into the outside world in a totally safe
way.
There are certain notions associated with the domestic sphere
and homes in general. Often, “home” is a “constant”: a fixed geographical space
where we retreat, eat, bathe, and sleep. Lockdowns and quarantines within the
past two years have complicated that space; home is where we do practically everything now.
The term “home movie” is defined as: “a film made at home, or without professional equipment or expertise, especially a movie featuring one’s own activities.” But a “home movie” is not necessarily a “home” movie.
After all, “home movies,” in the
traditional sense, might arbitrarily depict everything from birthdays to
holidays to family picnics to weddings to graduation ceremonies… the list goes
on. These moments, while valuable in their own ways, don’t necessarily convey
or examine the “home.”
This program, “Home”
Movies, looks at films specifically about homes and the domestic
sphere, and asks: how have filmmakers, throughout history, documented and
examined homes and domestic spaces? How have they explored and subverted the
“home,” on screen, in ways physical, personal, and/or political? What larger
patterns and trends can be discerned from the various filmic depictions of
homes and domestic spaces, depending on when a given film was made and the
identity and lived experiences of the filmmaker? And, for experimental and
avant-garde filmmakers specifically, how has one’s home — due to the
independent and low-budget nature of the job — operated as a site for work and
creativity even before “work-from-home” was commonplace?
The inspiration for this
screening also stems from my current life situation. I’m grateful to curate
this program as I permanently relocate from Connecticut to New York City —
leaving one home behind to build another home here.”
—Matt McKinzie
PROGRAM
Peace O’ Mind (1983),
Directed by Mary Filippo; 16mm, B&W, sound, 8.5 minutes
An Avant-Garde Home Movie (1961),
Directed by Stan Brakhage; 16mm, color, silent, 3.5 minutes
Still Life with Woman and Four
Objects (1986), Directed by Lynne Sachs; 16mm, B&W, sound, 4 minutes
Home (1975),
Directed by Dan Perz; 16mm, color, sound, 7 minutes
Domicile (1977),
Directed by Gary Doberman; 16mm, color, silent, 9 minutes
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943),
Directed by Maya Deren; 16mm, B&W, sound, 14 minutes
Windows in the Kitchen (1983),
Directed by Elaine Summers; 16mm, color, sound, 12 minutes
Window Work (2000),
Directed by Lynne Sachs; Video, color, sound, 9 minutes
Open Eyes in Shadow Series:
Domestic Notes (2019), Directed by Rrose Present; Digital, color, sound, 4.5
minutes
RESET ME/Dirty Clothes Are
Washed At Home (2017), Directed by Rrose Present; Digital, color, sound, 2
minutes
Kitchen (2020),
Directed by Michael Siporin Levine; Digital, color, sound, 8 minutes
A
rare chance to catch this unconventional, impressionistic portrait of Carolee
Schneemann.
Rather
than a simple survey of Schneemann’s life and work, Breaking the Frame is
structured thematically, as a kind of collage, and aims to capture the artist
in her own words and images.
Contemporary
interviews with Schneemann are interwoven with excerpts from her film works,
documentation of performances – including Meat Joy (1964) and Interior Scroll
(1975) – and more recent museum commissions and exhibitions. Schneemann’s
philosophical observations on spatial theory, nature and politics of the human
body – drawn from her diaries and read in voiceover – offer insights into the
process and execution of some of her most famous pieces.
Dreamlike and meandering in tone and structure, some of the film’s most thrilling sections ramble through Schneemann’s 18th-century Hudson Valley farmhouse.
108 min
Breaking the Frame screens here with Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor (2018), a short, tripartite documentary profile of Schneemann and fellow artist-filmmakers Barbara Hammer and Gunvor Nelson.
Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics is the first survey in the UK of the work of American artist Carolee Schneemann (1939-2019) and the first major exhibition since her death in 2019. Tracing Schneemann’s diverse, transgressive and interdisciplinary work over six decades, the show celebrates a radical and pioneering artist who remains a feminist icon and point of reference for many contemporary artists and thinkers.
Addressing urgent topics from sexual expression and the objectification of women to human suffering and the violence of war, Schneemann’s work is concerned with the precarious lived experience of humans and animals. With over 300 objects, the exhibition draws from the Carolee Schneemann Foundation, as well as numerous private and public collections, spanning the extraordinary range of Schneemann’s artistic output. Bringing together paintings, sculptural assemblages, performance photographs, films and large-scale multimedia installations, as well as rarely seen archival material including scores, sketches, scrapbooks, programmes and costumes, this exhibition positions Schneemann as one of the most relevant, provocative and inspiring artists of the last century.
A
pair of films from singular filmmaker Lynne Sachs investigating the connection
between the body, the camera, and the materiality of film itself.
About
A Biography of Lilith:
Lynne
Sachs explores the possibilities of a new creation myth in A Biography
of Lilith through a mixture of collage, mythology, cabalistic parable,
folklore, interviews, and memoir to provide a narrative of the first woman and,
perhaps, the first feminist. Situated on the margins of both documentary and
experimental narrative, the film spans Lilith’s betrayal by Adam in Eden to her
revenge story in the present-day, as a mother who gives up her baby for
adoption and works as a bar dancer. Featuring music by Pamela Z and Charming
Hostess. [35 mins; documentary; English]
Lynne
Sachs | 1991 | USA | Not rated | 16mm
About
The House of Science: A Museum of False Facts:
The House of Science: A Museum of False Facts inspects and interrupts representations of women in the house, the museum, and in science, bridging between public, private, and idealized spaces to generate a new, dual image of women, of “a ‘me’ that is two—the body of the body and the body of the mind.” Through a lively assemblage of home movies, personal reminiscences, staged scenes, found footage, and voice, Sachs’ feminized film form reclaims the body divided among these spaces: “We look at ourselves from within, collect our own data, create our own science, begin to define.” [30 mins; documentary; English]
Film About A Father Who & Lynne Sachs Masterclass at MajorDocs MajorDocs September 1, 2022 Festival dates: October 4-8, 2022 https://majordocs.org/festival/
PHILOSOPHY
THE FIRST SLOW FILM FESTIVAL
MajorDocs is
the international creativedocumentary film festival in Mallorca;
a space to discover other realities and other perspectives through carefully
selected creative documentaries.
In
a time defined by the sheer excess of content, MajorDocs proposes a slow
experience: a journey through eight films, each with a deep author’s gaze,
that encourage us to stop, step away from our daily lives and connect with not
just the other, but also with our own sensibility.
Five
days to reflect, ask and discuss each film with its author in
an intimate and close setting, without lecterns or pedestals. Each screening
will be a unique event without counterprogramming since it is our goal to take
care of each film and each author.
During
the festival, renowned filmmakers and new talents will share their experiences
with the public. An event that will stimulate the critical eye through
screenings and talks, as well as workshops and discussions on documentary
cinema.
An
unmissable date for anyone who enjoys looking without limits, discovering the
unknown and stirring their heart.
MANIFESTO
MajorDocs
goes out and looks for a creative documentary…
Hybrid, innovative, transgressive, adventurous.
Able to transcend the present and keep questioning ourselves in the future.
Useless – in which art prevails over functionality.
That digs deeply into the ins and outs of a complex world without staying on the surface.
That leaves a mark on the audience and is able to short-circuit the passive spectator.
In which the author’s gaze prevails over the facts.
Able to transcend, if the film demands for it, the limits of the classic narrative.
Over
a period of 35 years, filmmaker Lynne Sachs shot 8 and 16mm film, videotape and
digital images of her father, Ira Sachs Sr., a bon vivant, seductive, extravagant
and pioneering businessman. Film About a Father Who is her
attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and her
siblings.
October 5, 2022 / 10:00 – 11:30 Fundació Sa Nostra
Lynne Sachs will explore the intricate relationship between
personal observations and broader historical experiences. Using examples from
the essay films, experimental documentaries, and performances she has produced
over the last three decades, she will guide her workshop participants on a
journey investigating the connection between the body, the camera, and the
materiality of film itself.
* Session in English.
Lynne Sachs (Memphis, Tennessee, 1961) is a filmmaker and poet living in Brooklyn, New York. Her work explores the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences by weaving together text, collage, painting, politics and layered sound design. Strongly committed to a feminist dialogue between cinematic theory and practice, she searches for a rigorous play between image and sound, pushing the visual and aural textures in her work with every new project. Her moving image work ranges from short experimental films, to essay films to hybrid live performances. Lynne has made 37 films, including features and shorts, which have screened, won awards or been included in retrospectives at New York Film Festival, Museum of Modern Art, Sundance, Oberhausen, Viennale, Sheffield Doc/Fest, BAFICI, RIDM Montréal, Vancouver Film Festival, Doclisboa, Havana IFF, and China Women’s Film Festival. In 2014, she received the Guggenheim Fellowship in the Creative Arts.
JURY & AWARD WINNERS
Jury Andrés Duque, Ainhoa Andraka, and Lynne Sachs
It
may seem old hat to say an experimental filmmaker’s career defies easy
classification, but in the case of Lynne Sachs, it’s necessary. Sachs has
produced over 40 films in as many years, as well as web projects, multimedia,
and live performances. Additionally, she has written original fiction and
poetry which appears in her films. Sachs has worked closely with filmmakers
like Craig Baldwin, Bruce Conner, Barbara Hammer, Chris Marker, Gunvor Nelson,
Carolee Schneemann, and Trinh T. Min-ha. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Sachs’
recent work includes five films with sound artist Stephen Vitiello, a
collection of site-specific live performances featuring two years of research
with NYC laundry workers, and a poetry collection, Year by Year Poems,
published in 2019 by Tender Buttons Press.
However
wide ranging the works of Sachs may be, there are common themes and concerns.
Her films frequently expose intimate and private details—often with personal
memories—and explore the problem of translation, not only between one text and
another but between text and image as well. Her predilection for collage,
mixed- media, and hybridized form is intrinsic to the themes she explores,
which often traverse public and private experiences. There is an ever- present
connection to be found between the concept and the material, the form and the
content.
The
late 1980s and early 90s marks a period in Sachs’ career when her biggest
concern as a woman and an artist were the political and personal themes of
gender, the body, sexuality, and language. Like many of the “downtown”
avant-garde filmmakers working in NYC at this time, Sachs was inspired by
feminist literature, finding herself in a reading group with fellow filmmakers
such as Peggy Ahwesh and Lynn Kirby that engaged with the challenging ideas of
French authors
Luce
Irigery (Speculum of Other Woman) and Hélène Cixous (The Newly Born
Woman). In Sachs’ words, this was “some of the most powerful, eye-opening
literature I had ever experienced. For each of us, the discovery of the
expansive, rigorous and playful essays of [these authors] completely changed
our sense of language and the body.”
The
impact that this had on her perspective as a filmmaker can be directly sensed
in the narration in The House of Science: A Museum of False Facts (1991,
30 min., 16mm), not simply through an abstract, intellectual stance, but also
through a visceral, lived experience:
“Narration:
A speculum before me, I hold the mirror just inches away and learn to
look—sometimes shyly, occasionally detached, and now, more often than not,
bravely. I touch myself with knowledge. I trace a path across my chest,
searching for surprises I’d rather not find, knots in the fabric.
Male
voice from the movie: Look!!!
Narration:
Undressed, we read our bodies like a history. Scars, muscles, curves of the
spine. We look at ourselves from within, collect our own data, create our own
science, begin to define.”
It
is through the form of the film itself that Sachs seeks to define not just
women’s experience but her own personal experience of fragmentation she felt
throughout adolescence. Narration here is not an overdetermined explanation of
events, but one among many types of media ranging from home movies, staged
scenes, found footage, and even Sachs’ own body, as the film explores the
fragmented divide between what it names “the body of the body” and “the body of
the mind.” This split is not just between the body and the mind but between
what is felt and experienced in the body versus what is said and shown in
private and public spaces from the home to the museum to the clinic, unable to
be fully defined in any of them. The House of Science is a means of not
only detailing these stories but of reclaiming authorship of one’s own body.
In
A Biography of Lilith (1997, 35 min. 16mm), Sachs expounds on this
theme, this time exploring the broader cultural narratives that define the
experience of gender and identity. A mixture of narrative, collage, and memoir,
the film reimagines the creation myth of the first woman as a modern tale of
revenge following Lilith’s betrayal by Adam in Eden. Sachs juxtaposes high-art and
mundane images of Lilith: in haunting silver, in Medieval Hebrew protection
amulets, Baroque paintings, Mesopotamian ceramics, in Jean Seberg’s portrayal
of the crazed Lilith in a mental hospital, in the TV-sitcom “Cheers.”
Like
in the critical examination of sources in House of Science, here in
Lilith Sachs plays text against image in an attempt to rewrite these received
narratives: “I’m learning to read all over again, / a face, this time,
connected to a body. / At first, I feel your story from within– / Nose rubs
against belly, elbow prods groin. / Your silent cough becomes / a confusing dip
and bulge. / You speak and I struggle to translate.”
As
in many of her films, Sachs’ personal life and struggles are deeply connected
with the themes she presents. In this case, it was her first child that raised
the issue of the historical roots of our social definitions of motherhood for
her: “I was captivated by this story and all of the folklore that came with it,
especially since new mothers were historically told to be afraid of Lilith. She
was too willful and aware of her sexuality, which was exactly what attracted
me. I discovered Lilith when I was pregnant with my first daughter and finished
the film right after I gave birth to my second. My film Biography of Lilith is
a reflection of all the awe, fear, frustration, and excitement that was part of
this experience.”
An
artist who continues to inspire and innovate, Lynne Sachs’ films have been
presented at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), Tate Modern, Image Forum Tokyo,
Wexner Center for the Arts, and festivals such as New York Film Festival, Oberhausen
International Short Film Festival, Punto de Vista, Sundance, Vancouver IFF,
Viennale and Doclisboa, among many others. In 2021, she received awards for her
lifetime achievements in experimental and documentary fields from the Edison Film Festival and Prismatic
Ground Film Festival. A Biography of Lilith received prizes at NY Film
Expo; Black Maria; New York Women’s Film Festival and The House of Science has
received numerous prizes at national and international film festivals and
venues. As part of the IU Underground Film Series at the IU Cinema, The
House of Science: A Museum of False Facts and Biography of Lilith will be
shown on Saturday, September 24 at 7pm. The event is free but ticketed—visit
cinema.indiana.edu to reserve tickets.
The Underground Film Series, curated by IU graduate students, explores the artistic and subversive possibilities of film through the unique vision of noncommercial or otherwise marginalized filmmakers. The series encompasses modes of filmmaking from full-length feature films to documentaries, to short films, to video art. The Underground Film Series works to bring unconventional films that are not easily accessible by other means to the attention of the IU and Bloomington communities. By screening avant-garde and experimental films, the Underground Film Series brings audiences to films in danger of being lost or forgotten.
IU Cinema September 24, 2022 1213 E. 7th Street, Bloomington, IN 47405 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM Free, but ticketed
Lynne Sachs explores the possibilities of a new creation
myth in A Biography of Lilith through a mixture of collage, mythology,
cabalistic parable, folklore, interviews, and memoir to provide a narrative of
the first woman and, perhaps, the first feminist. Situated on the margins of
both documentary and experimental narrative, the film spans Lilith’s betrayal
by Adam in Eden to her revenge story in the present-day, as a mother who gives
up her baby for adoption and works as a bar dancer. Featuring music by Pamela Z
and Charming Hostess. [35 mins; documentary; English]
______________________
The House of Science: A Museum of False Facts inspects and interrupts
representations of women in the house, the museum, and in science, bridging
between public, private, and idealized spaces to generate a new, dual image of
women, of “a ‘me’ that is two—the body of the body and the body of the mind.”
Through a lively assemblage of home movies, personal reminiscences, staged
scenes, found footage, and voice, Sachs’ feminized film form reclaims the body
divided among these spaces: “We look at ourselves from within, collect our own
data, create our own science, begin to define.” [30 mins; documentary; English]
The
18th edition of the Camden Intl. Film Festival, kicking off Sept. 15, will
feature a handful of award-contending documentaries fresh off showings at
Telluride and the Toronto film festivals. The Maine-based festival will unfold
in a hybrid format, with both in-person events over a three-day period
concluding Sept. 18, and online screenings available from Sept. 15 to Sept. 25
to audiences across North America.
This
year’s CIFF highlights include the U.S. premiere of Tamana Ayazi and Marcel
Mettelsiefen’s Netflix release “In Her Hands,” which follows one of
Afghanistan’s first female mayors during the months leading up to the Taliban
takeover the country in 2021; Chris Smith’s “Sr.,” centered on the life and
career of Robert Downey Sr. and his relationship to his son, Robert Downey Jr.;
and Steve James’ “A Compassionate Spy,” about Manhattan Project physicist,
Soviet spy and University of Chicago alum Theodore Hall. Each of the three
featured documentaries will have made its world premiere before CIFF, at
festivals in Toronto, Telluride and Venice, respectively.
The
fest will also offer a special sneak preview of Patricio Guzman’s “My Imaginary
Country,” which chronicles the recent protests in Chile in which millions took
to the street to demand democracy, dignity, and a new constitution.
It
is also teasing “a special secret screening” which will be the opening night
film, with little additional information besides the fact that it is a new film
by an Academy Award-winning director that will be in attendance.
Located
in a small, remote village on the coast of Maine that is two hours from a major
airport, CIFF
has become an Oscar campaign hotspot in recent years. Last year, Oscar
contending docus including “The Rescue” (Nat. Geo), “Procession” (Netflix),
“Ascension” (MTV Documentaries), and “Flee” (Neon) all screened at CIFF, where
the who’s who of the doc community — including Oscar winner Alex Gibney,
Cinetic Media founder and principal John Sloss and former Sundance Institute
CEO Keri Putnam – come to celebrate the fest.
“Much
of our slate this year will be brand new to audiences in the U.S. or North
America, and one of the greatest things we can do as a festival is to build
buzz and momentum for (films) here,” says Ben Fowlie, executive and artistic
director of the Points North Institute and founder of CIFF. “This means getting
filmmakers to Maine for their in-person screenings and connecting them with
attending industry and press.”
All
told, the 2022 fest will include 34 features and 40 short films from over 41
countries. Over 60% of the entire program is directed or co-directed by BIPOC
filmmakers; this is the sixth consecutive edition that the festival has reached
gender parity within the program.
“This
year’s program celebrates the diversity of voices and forms in documentary and
cinematic nonfiction,” says Fowlie. “This year’s program emphasizes the
international that represents the ‘I’ in CIFF and reminds us time and again of
the limitless creative potential and potency of the documentary form.”
Alex
Pritz’s “The Territory,” Reid Davenport’s “I Didn’t See You There,” and
Margaret Brown’s “Descendant” are among the Sundance 2022 docus screening at
CIFF. Jason Kohn’s “Nothing Lasts Forever,” which premiered at the Berlin Intl.
Film Festival in February and Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Hall’s “Subject,” which
debuted at Tribeca Festival in June, are also part of this year’s lineup.
“We
were drawn to films that were aesthetically and politically urgent, that
transformed us and that transported us somewhere new as viewers,” says Fowlie.
“We are always looking for films and filmmakers that are taking creative risks
and pushing the boundaries of traditional cinematic language with bold,
singular visions. For all of the selected work, it is important for us to have
an understanding of the film and filmmaker’s relationships with the
communities, contributors, and collaborators involved.”
A
program of Points North Institute, CIFF will also present two world premieres:
Mike Day’s “Cowboy Poets,” about American national cowboy poetry gatherings and
“Lily Frances Henderson’s “This Much We Know,” about the investigation of Las
Vegas teenager Levi Presley’s suicide, which leads to the story of a city with
the highest suicide rate in the country, and a nation scrambling to bury
decades of nuclear excess in a nearby mountain.
The
festival will present seven North American premieres, including “Foragers” by
Jumana Manna, recent Locarno premieres “It Is Night in America” by Ana Vaz and
Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s “Matter Out of Place,” as well as “Polaris” by Ainara
Vera, which premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
In
honor of Diane
Weyermann, the industry veteran and former chief content officer at
Participant who died in October 2021, CIFF will screen several of the last
films she executive produced, including James’ “A Compassionate Spy,’ Geeta
Gandbhir and Sam Pollard’s “Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power” and
Margaret Brown’s “Descendant.”
For
the third consecutive year, CIFF will present its filmmaker solidarity fund.
The fund will provide $300 honoraria to all feature and short filmmaking teams
participating in the virtual festival. This year also marks the return of
in-person panels and masterclasses through the festival’s Points North Forum
program, which will feature conversations around the ethics of film financing,
an exploration of experimental filmmaking about the climate, a masterclass led
by veteran editor Maya Daisy Hawke and a special performance lecture on
sensorial cinema led by award-winning Iranian artist Maryam Tafakory.
The
forum program will conclude with a “town hall” gathering of the documentary
community following the screening of “Subject,” which explores the life-altering
experience of documenting one’s life on screen through the participants of five
acclaimed docus.
The
2022 festival will run concurrently with Points North Artist Programs, a
fellowship that supports early- and mid-career filmmakers. This year 21 projects
will be supported through four fellowship programs.
A complete list of the program’s features and short can be found below.
Features Program
“5 Dreamers and the Horse” “A Compassionate Spy” “After Sherman” “All Of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars” “All That Breathes” “Burial” “Cowboy Poets” “Crows Are White” “Day After… “ “Descendant” “Detours” “Dos Estaciones” “Foragers” “Geographies of Solitude” “Herbaria” “I Didn’t See You There” “In Her Hands” “It Is Night in America” “Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power” “Matter Out of Place” “My Imaginary Country” “Nothing Lasts Forever” “Polaris” “Rewind & Play” “SR.” “Subject” “Terranova” “The Afterlight” “The Territory” “This Much We Know” “What We Leave Behind”
Shorts Program
“Aralkum” “The Ark” “The Artists” “Belongings” “Bigger on the Inside” “Brave” “Call Me Jonathan” “Congress of Idling Persons” “Constant” “Dapaan” “Deerfoot of the Diamond” “Echolocation” “Everything Wrong and Nowhere to Go” “Fire in the Sea” “The Family Statement” “The Flagmakers” “Irani Bag” “La Frontiere” “Handbook” “Life Without Dreams” “Lungta” “Masks” “Moune O” “Murmurs of the Jungle” “My Courtyard” “Nazarbazi” “One Survives by Hiding” “Pacman” “Paradiso” “Seasick” “Solastalgia” “Somebody’s Hero” “The Sower of Stars” “Subtotals” “Swerve” “Unsinkable Ship” “Weckuwapok” “Weckuwapasihit” “When the LAPD Blows Up Your Neighborhood”
“He knows he will live in me after he is dead, I will carry him like a mother. I do not know if I will ever deliver.”
Sharon Olds, from the book of poems, The Father
There are so many possible entry points into Lynne Sachs’s A Film About a Father Who, an incredibly poignant and astute film sonnet on the director’s father, Ira Nathan Sachs, that over my repeated viewings I’ve begun to think of the film as a kind of quilt. Each of its patches unique and carefully hand-stitched into the fabric of its mosaic parts. Or perhaps a wondrous maze that a viewer winds her way through, and out, by pulling a delicate Ariadne’s thread.
I think it’s apt that the Greek mythology should have sprung to my mind. Aren’t all families somehow mythic, especially the troubled ones? The patriarch of the Sachs clan is certainly very Sphinx-like: an object, at once, of boundless adoration and love, but also a slippery man of mystery whose acts arouse genuine puzzlement in all his children. A god whose many faces are like a visage of a broken statue — bits that can never be whole again, but only awkwardly pieced, with glue, disjointed surfaces showing through, sharp edges painful to the touch.
In the film’s first introductory clip, the scionSachs, Sr. appears with his characteristic wisps of blond hair clinging to his skull, his bushy moustache, and somewhat restless and piercing blue eyes. He’s a “hippie businessman,” who “works as little as possible,” and “bottles water he can never stock.” In one shot, he stands framed by a mountainous vista (it turns out that Sachs developed hotels in Park City, Utah, where the Sundance Film Festival is held). The father speaks of his love for skiing, where you “go up slow and come down fast.” A comment that Sachs comments on in her own presciently clipped way: “To own a mountain from which there is nothing you can do but come down.”
I was struck by how this sentence is a gorgeous metaphor for pretty much how we relate to our parents — the most primordial love, which turns them into heroic, mythical, statue-like beings, mountain slopes from which, indeed, they can only come down. And how much of growing into adulthood is about the sudden vertigo of having to rewind, recalibrate our memories of the familial bind, from the times when we were still too innocent, too small, to have truly understood it. If we love them enough, we catch them coming down. We are mindful to pick up the pieces, glimpsing in their downfall from immortal heights the first sightings of our own fragility.
A Film About a Father Who is then an origin story, but one that’s never smug about its certainties, and always self-doubtful of how “it all” began. Sachs opens the film with a scene in which she’s cutting her elderly father’s hair, a moment so low-key yet so potent, because it is non-verbal. Everything else in the film – the tale of how the father managed to lie and cheat for so many years, how he hid his multiple affairs and his many children by different women from each other, for decades – all this will need to be explained. But the hair-cutting, with Sachs holding the scissors, untangling the knots, so that to snip them, lives outside language, time, it is an act of generosity and love, through which a small portion of care may me given back. Then there’s the scissors, which once again circle back to the metaphor of quilting, cutting things to pieces, and stitching them together — film editing itself like quilting, the kind of hands-on experimental cinema that Sachs practices, in particular, like the intricate, patient, artisanal task.
Sachs begins her story with the immediate family nucleus, her father, mother and her siblings, Dana and the filmmaker Ira Sachs. In this first central patch, there is still a certain sense of cohesion, as if the rest of the film could shoulder the illusion of producing a unified body of work; as if the process of delving into the past could heal, through rendering the small patches whole. Nothing like this occurs, it turns out. The more there is to discover, the more women and children enter the picture, the more quilt-like the film’s overall composition becomes. It demands to be seen as unruly, with each person, each story and heartache, finding its own proper place.
Among the father’s lovers are Diana, whose faint voice betrays terrible shyness, both on the subject’s part, but perhaps also the filmmaker’s. The inherent question of how to probe without hurting, how to make space for learning and empathy, but also establish a critical distance, is always keenly felt. Over the course of the film, this empathetic investigation becomes emboldened — either reflecting the director’s natural progression, or perhaps a mere artifact of thoughtful, painstaking editing, through which each woman’s testimony enriches the others. With Diana, for example, Sachs plants the idea of “companionship,” which apparently Sachs’s father used to seduce the young immigrant, Diana. And yet, Diana’s profile, cast against a dim window, is so lonely, so desolate, the word gains a heartbreaking, bitterly ironic twang.
If, as Tolstoy believed, all happy families are alike, but the unhappy ones suffer in distinct ways, Sachs’s film is indeed an epic that embodies a Tolstoian ethos. “I’ve been making this film about my father for twenty-six years now,” Sachs says at one point. In another she adds, “Can I make myself forget that for the first twenty years of my sister’s life I didn’t know of her existence?”
It’s a challenge to tell a story of such breadth without giving in to the tyranny of summary. But Sachs is never guilty of it, perhaps because, from the start, she strikes a patient but also an ironic tone. She holds out each cesura and is never rushed. Her carefully planted voiceovers, which echo, like refrains, emphasize dissonance, slippage, and paradox—as if to borrow Emily Dickinson’s motto, “Tell the truth, but tell it slant.” It’s a particularly poignant approach to a subject who is himself quite unable to offer this level of complete honesty, or transparency. We might have grown frustrated with such a subject, as too illusive, too coy, and yet, when centered in and filtered through Sachs’s voice, her father’s slipperiness becomes part of the game, a psychological, moral, philosophical quest for a glimmer of comprehension, and solace.
Again and again, this filmic richness emerges, where the previous parts of the film serve as a commentary on what comes next. Take the early family videos, for example. There is so much light, the children bouncing about, the colors overexposed, pushed, which on one hand reminds us of the fragility of earlier technologies, but on the other, doesn’t let us forget that family videos are a particular brand of narrative—or, one might say, fantasy. One makes a family. One constructs a memory. The film contains these small patches of idealized moments, frozen in time, it holds them in, like quilted patches, but it can also reveal them as such.
What’s brilliant about A Film About a Father Who is that this commentary on the past, on the nature of memory, on storytelling, on love, so often arises directly through its own filmic material. For example, the first dialogue with the mother is framed by a window with a bright light behind it, and it too seems part of the established idealized childhood space. As if the previous Impressionist brushes of light and movement, it too seems to point to brighter times. But when the dialogue continues, with some footage in the kitchen, a subtle change can be felt: It’s as if in a Rorschach test, what first seemed like light, now is the reverse, the shadow, the impermeability that beams into the kitchen, whereas the light is shut out, outside.
Thus the film builds and sustains its own cognitive dissonance. Sometimes, Sachs’s commentary seems to almost spill over, frame to frame, like a river, sometimes lyrical, sometimes critical, on her father’s behavior—while the image occasionally stops, holds almost still, desperately focusing the lens, surrendering to a blur. Somewhere in this tension, there’s language that fails, phrases like “a hippie businessman,” which try to establish just what the father is, how he might be summed up, then slowly letting go of substantive terms, and allowing adjectives, “caring,” “selfish,” “careless,” “loving” to cast their spell. If there’s a vertigo in these descriptions, it’s once again because the Sphinx-like puzzle isn’t meant to be solved. The film presents no solution; it can only ask, but this asking is also somehow enough. It is the necessary work.
The extended family grows, and so do group meetings, to include the younger generations. Some of the father’s children are born roughly around the same time as Sachs’s own daughter, Maya. In one scene, the young woman, Beth, expresses anger at having been cast out, and grown up in a harsh financial situation. Yet another mentions that she felt like the family’s powerful matriarch, Grandmother “Maw-Maw,” was going to disinherit her son, if more children surfaced, and so her existence was hidden. Earlier hesitations or questions are recast in a more discerning light. The careful trudging around fraught issues give in to Sachs’s direct question to her father about the lies. And if there is no immediate healing within the film’s constructed timeframe, there is a gesture and a reconciliation in a therapeutic exchange, in which each person voices her own hurt.
“Daughter, sister, mother, I cleave from one to another,” Sachs comments in the voiceover, heeding the lexical and experiential complexity of her many roles. And so the film never settles. It presents no center from which to control, contain, or judge. Instead, like Ariadne’s thread, it tugs, pulls, apart, anew, and so we’re guided the maze, enlightened, by the strings of love.
About Ela Bittencourt Ela Bittencourt is a critic and cultural journalist, currently based in São Paulo. She writes on art, film and literature, often in the context of social issues and politics.
Jury: Lynne Sachs, Sanaz Sohrabi, and Chris Boeckmann
Best Documentary
Huahua’s Dazzling World and its Myriad Temptations by Daphne Xu
In the past decade, humans have developed completely new lives on the internet, a strange and sometimes terrifying facet of reality that cinema has struggled to evoke. Huahua’s Dazzling World and Its Myriad Temptations by Daphne Xu rises to the challenge. As it peers through the illusory filters of livestreaming apps and incisively processes its own embodied camera, this precise and peculiar film births an invigorating new language to befit the spirit of its charismatic star.
In this film, Xu gives her subject and her “star” the chance to shape her identity, to perform her own life on a screen she has created herself. Xu shows us that Huahua has found agency with her cell phone. She defines her own parameters for beauty. She makes us think about the struggles of urban life in China, while also transcending these challenges through the construction of a new, totally self-confident internet identity.
Huahua’s Dazzling World and Its Myriad Temptations offers a critical yet poetic portrayal of the rapid urban transformations in the Xiongan New Area and the socio-political economy of live-streaming through the everyday life stories, challenges, and triumphs of Huahua, the matriarch of the family. The film gently and powerfully creates a portal into the virtual, the social, and the familial notions of intimacy, domestic violence, and refusals of normative ideals of beauty and empowerment. The economic challenges of Huahua in the midst of the urban development projects in the Xiongan New Area facing the violence of infrastructural developments in her surroundings, reverberates with the revelation of domestic violence in her intimate life. Daphne Xu beautifully reveals the complexities of this entanglement throughout the film. August 2022
Best Short Documentary
Dreams
Under Confinement
By Christopher Harris
With its intricately constructed montage, Dreams Under Confinement by Christopher Harris floods the senses and echoes long past its short runtime.
The film is a condensed and powerful experience of how disjointed and disembodied the surveillance machine of the carceral state sees, others, and criminalizes Black and Brown bodies. Christopher Harris’ multi-layered and complex audiovisual editing becomes a critical catalyst to deconstruct the power structures behind the production of surveillance machinery of the police state. In order to dismantle this carceral state, one has to claim authorship of its visual regimes of surveillance and Christopher Harris does an excellent job in claiming the right to look.
Christopher Harris has created a haunting tour-de-force short film that challenges us to think about the carceral state, racial profiling, satellite surveilance, policing and our contemporary notions of public and private space. With an extraordinary editing style, the film moves quickly yet the ideas within it are so strong you won’t be able to forget anything that you saw or heard.
Emerging Artist
Declarations
of Love
By Tiff Rekem
Documentary Arts
Convergence
By Ama Gisèle
Mission Zero Prize
The Lowland By Aidin Halalzadeh and Sepideh Salarvand
