Filmmaker, poet, and educator Lynne Sachs talks to host Elizabeth Howard about her work, particularly her Film About a Father Who. The documentary probes a fragmented family, both bound and roiled by a secretive father’s serial love affairs and marriages, and his children’s struggle to make sense of their lives, as well as their relationships with one another. Sachs’s films blend many forms — essay, collage, performance, and documentary. Film About a Father Who is streaming as part of the Directed by Lynne Sachs series on the Criterion Channel.
Episode Notes
Lynne Sachsis a Memphis born, Brooklyn based filmmaker. Since the 1980s, Sachs has created cinematic works that defy genre through the use of hybrid forms and collaboration, incorporating elements of the essay film, collage, performance, documentary and poetry. Her films explore the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences. With each project, she investigates the implicit connection between the body, the camera, and the materiality of film itself.
Over her career, Sachs has been awarded support from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NYFA, and Jerome Foundation. Sachs has made 40 films (including Tip of My Tongue, Your Day is My Night, Investigation of a Flame, and Which Way is East). Her films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art, Wexner Center, the Walker, the Getty, New York Film Festival, and Sundance. In 2021, Edison Film Festival and Prismatic Ground Film Festival at Maysles Documentary Center awarded Sachs for her body of work.
Sachs is also deeply engaged with poetry. In 2019, Tender Buttons Press published her first book Year by Year Poems. In 2020 and 2021, she taught film and poetry workshops at Beyond Baroque, Flowchart Foundation, San Francisco Public Library, and Hunter.
STEPHEN VITIELLO (MUSIC): Electronic musician and sound artist Stephen Vitiello transforms incidental atmospheric noises into mesmerizing soundscapes that alter our perception of the surrounding environment. He has composed music for independent films, experimental video projects and art installations, collaborating with such artists as Nam June Paik, Tony Oursler and Dara Birnbaum. Solo and group exhibitions include MASS MoCA, The High Line, NYC, and Museum of Modern Art.
Elizabeth Howardhas never had boundaries between her life, work, art, and writing. Experience, sense of place, and exploration define the choices she makes, seeking collaboration, flexibility, and spontaneity. She is an author, journalist, and creative director. Elizabeth has organized programming around the arts and social issues for organizations in the United States and internationally.
Alex Waters is a media producer and editor for the Short Fuse Podcast, a music producer, and a Berklee College of Music student. He has written and produced music for podcasts such as The Faith and Chai Podcast and Con Confianza. He produces his own music, as well as writing and recording for independent artists such as The Living. Alex lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two cats and enjoys creating and writing music. You can reach him with inquiries by emailing alexwatersmusic12@gmail.com.
The Short Fuse Podcast is produced by the Arts Fuse.
Directors Sarah Kunstler and Emily Kunstler’s new documentary “Who We Are: A Chronicle Of Racism In America” shows why the GOP should be stopped from promoting educational cover-ups of America’s shameful racist history. ACLU attorney Jeffery Robinson’s titular Juneteenth 2018 talk exposes the unfortunately deep roots racism has in American society…and the obligations people of conscience have to help this nation leave its racist legacy behind. Particularly disturbing will be the hidden racist history of some iconic American places.
***
Experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs’ newest short “Maya at 24” can be called simultaneously intimate and enigmatic. Certainly, the film evokes feelings similar to watching Michael Apted’s beloved “Up” series. Yet Sachs’ short film maintains some emotional remove from its central subject.
The titular Maya happens to be Sachs’ daughter Maya Street-Sachs. The film captures its subject at three distinct ages: 6, 16, and 24. In this dialogue-free film, the girl’s/young woman’s three ages get linked via 16mm film footage capturing Maya’s running around her mother clockwise.
Yet “Maya At 24” offers more than an obvious visual metaphor of time passing for her film subject. A silhouette of an older Maya filled out by footage of a running Maya at 6 provides a nice metaphor for the spiritual continuity between child and older person.
Without the medium of words, the viewer must rely on the facial expressions Maya displays at each age to have emotional glimpses of the person depicted. Yet it could be reasonably argued that the visual results prove too enigmatic to create a realistic emotional picture of its subject. The single-mindedness on the face of age 6 Maya treats the apparent frivolity of running in a circle as something still worth giving her all for. The face of age 16 Maya uses her younger self’s single-mindedness as a mask for safely regarding the world. There’s her awareness of being the object of unseen viewers’ gazes, but that awareness of gaze and viewers’ judgment is protected by her visible expressionlessness.
By age 24, Maya’s face displays an amused lack of self-consciousness regarding the camera’s gaze. Rather than being intimidated by the unblinking eye of the camera lens (and by implication her mother, although that might be projection), the filmmaker’s daughter shows in her face a combination of relaxation and an awareness of her ability to control how much she will reveal of herself before the camera.
The drawn animated microscopic images allude to the fact that the age 24 footage was shot in the midst of coronavirus lockdown. Yet Maya’s face displays neither fear of COVID-19 nor grief at seeing friends or loved ones succumb to the disease. The run that Maya does at this age would, in this context, be a metaphorical act of defiance at both fear of contracting the disease or even the idea that COVID-19 requires life to completely come to a halt.
“Maya At 24” can ultimately be called a celebration of life…but without the sticky sentiment usually associated with that well-worn phrase.
***
LIfe in a drug cartel-dominated area has provided grist for plenty of films and television series. But Teodora Ana Mihai’s drama “La Civil” delivers something different. It doesn’t go for glorifying either action-movie vengeance or the power of the drug cartels. Instead, it slowly sucks the viewer into a moral quandry whose resolution feels as preordained as the bleakest Greek tragedy.
In an unnamed town in Northern Mexico, Cielo (Arcelia Ramirez) lives a passable existence with her teenage daughter Laura. The mother’s life gets thrown into disarray when the smug teenage thug El Puma informs her that Laura’s being held for ransom. Despite Cielo enlisting the grudging help of her estranged husband Gustavo, Laura is not returned. When the usual government outlets prove unable to help the determined mother, she starts conducting her own search for her missing daughter. But what happens to Cielo when she begins accepting more morally dubious tactics to obtain her answers?
In a nice bit of irony, Cielo (Spanish for “sky”) lives an incredibly constricted life at the film’s start. Her estranged bullying husband Gustavo has her so browbeaten that she just goes along with whatever he says. She even declines to get the financial support she deserves from Gustavo despite his leaving her and Laura for the younger and hotter Rosy. The intimidating power of the local drug cartels also limits Cielo’s actions. But until Laura’s disappearance, the mother is unaware of the shape of that social constriction on her and other civilians in the town.
One of the great ironies teased out by Habacuc Antonio de Rosario’s script is seeing how Cielo’s growing awareness of the grip of the local drug cartels liberates her from passivity to more actively participating in her life. She even goes from fearing Gustavo to finding him a loudmouthed afterthought. However, her increased self-confidence doesn’t translate to adopting Gustavo’s role of humiliating those weaker than himself.
Two critical moments provide key changes to the dynamic between Cielo and Gustavo. One is the second ransom sequence. Cielo wants proof of life from El Puma before handing over a peso; Gustavo doesn’t pause for a second to give up the money. The other is the differing attitudes of Laura’s parents as the days pass. Gustavo is probably right that Laura is dead at this point. But that suspicion becomes an excuse for him to emotionally sweep things under the rug. Cielo by contrast is driven to get as definitive an answer as she can regarding Laura’s fate.
That drive is not aided by a society that seems incapable of dealing with the local narco scourge. The cops seem to engage in triage on what narco-related crimes they will investigate. The civilian status quo involves either giving the narcos what they want or otherwise staying off their radar. The military patrols resemble security theater exercises rather than an actual deterrent presence.
Mihai’s film embraces the ambivalence of Cielo’s accepting Lieutenant Lamarque’s extra-judicial methods of combating the narcos. Her gathering intelligence on Commandante Inez’ gang may have been intended to spur official action. But it’s not clear the cops would have been willing to act off the data Cielo gathered. Certainly Cielo’s neighbors are notably absent when some narcos pay her a violent evening visit. At least Lieutenant Lamarque proves willing to act on the desperate mother’s accumulated information.
Yet being a witness to beatings and shootouts that Lieutenant Lamarque and his troops engage in raises questions about Cielo’s moral complicity for the soldiers’ actions. On one hand, the current status quo of basically unchecked criminality is definitely undesirable. On the other hand, having the likes of Lieutenant Lamarque exercise unchecked power against the cartels can’t be called an ultimately necessary societal good.
“La Civil”’s satisfying refusal to offer neat solutions or resolutions will of course spark viewer debate. That approach may explain why the film garnered a Courage Prize at the recent Cannes Film Festival. Yet one could also wish for a more riveting treatment than what is presented here.
***
Why has it taken over 55 years to finally get a documentary feature film on The Velvet Underground? Even though the legendary avant-garde rock band existed for five years and left a small handful of recordings, they would influence such legends as David Bowie and Jonathan Richman. Yet taking the bog standard documentary filmmaking approach of talking heads, archival clips, and period media presented straight would be a disservice to the band’s very unconventional legacy.
On the other hand, it could also be argued that making a film about the Velvet Underground would have been commercial suicide. The band’s musical output never became gold or even multi-platinum sellers. Their music celebrated drug culture in a way that would have ensured whoever broadcast any such film could count on lots of hairy eyeballs from sponsors of various stripes. Props should be offered to David Blackman of Universal Music Group for starting the rolling of this cinematic ball.
Congratulations are thus in order for filmmaker Todd Haynes for taking the plunge and making the first ever documentary about Andy Warhol’s Factory house band “The Velvet Underground.” Haynes’ well-made feature documentary debut strikes the right balance between sharing the basic facts about the band’s history and telling their story in a visually inventive manner. Then again, this is the director who used Barbie dolls in a Karen Carpenter biography (“Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story”) and did a picture about Bob Dylan which had Cate Blanchett as one version of the famed singer/songwriter (“I’m Not There”).
Viewers who have never heard of The Velvet Underground will be introduced to the band’s significant moments ranging from Lou Reed and John Cale discovering a mutual love of rock music and sonic experimentation to the band’s unceremonious break-up at Max’s Kansas City. Yes, later band addition Doug Yule gets some short shrift in Haynes’ film. But it can be argued that Yule’s later attempts to revive the band couldn’t even lick the soles of “Venus In Furs”’ boots.
Haynes’ film stands out because he doesn’t treat his subject as things to be scrutinized in isolation under a microscope. Instead, he creates a fascinating cinematic terrarium which shows the band’s significance by depicting both the cultural milieus it reacted against and the avant garde world it epitomized. Footage of Levittown and other icons of late 1950s-early 1960s consumerist safety and conformity deliver a good sense of the mind-numbing banality of that era’s mainstream culture. A moment where the screen is split into a dozen tiny images captures a sense of the creative ferment that the Velvet Underground became a part of.
“The Velvet Underground” constantly surprises with its visual storytelling. Warhol’s cinematic studies of the band’s members get juxtaposed with interviews filling in intriguing personal details such as Reed’s sister commenting on her brother’s mental health. Samples of an Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia event suggest how ahead of its time Warhol’s show turned out to be. Valerie Solanas’ attempted murder of Warhol is presented in a way that conveys what happened without sliding into melodrama.
And of course the Velvet Underground songs heard on the soundtrack demonstrate their durability with both their lyrics and the sounds used to bring them to life. “Heroin” and “Waiting For The Man” suggest what might have happened if Jean Genet had turned to rock music rather than the stage. The Mamas and the Papas’ “Monday Monday” may have been a bigger popular hit than anything Lou Reed and crew put out. But it’s Reed et al.’s more experimental songs that still retain the energy of Now.
Haynes shows how the strengths of the band also contained the seeds of its eventual destruction. Reed may have shared Cale’s interest in sonic experimentation, but he ultimately wanted to be a successful rock star. Nico brought iconic beauty and singing talent to the band, but she had little interest in making her work with the group a long term gig. Warhol did a great job guiding The Velvet Underground into the rock world, but his presence overshadowed popular attention that might have gone to Reed.
Of the main members of the Velvet Underground seen on screen. Yule comes off the most colorless thanks to a hunger for rock stardom not matched by commensurate talent. Cale’s able to look back on his period with the band without rancor, even given the shameful way he was booted from the group. Drummer Moe Tucker obviously brought a quietly grounded presence to the Velvet Underground.
It is, of course, Reed who displays the most emotionally complex personality. He turned his encounters with the seamier side of life aka the wild side into the stuff of unforgettable poetry. His determination to be the Hubert Selby/William Burroughs of the rock world is definitely admirable. However, Haynes makes clear that Reed’s ambition would ultimately undermine the Velvet Underground’s long term existence. “The Velvet Underground” doesn’t quite show that Reed would never achieve his dream of rock superstardom.
Reed’s failure, though, might be attributed to the shortcomings of the period’s audiences. Then as now, rock superstardom and reverence for distinct individual artistic rock voices frequently don’t intersect. Tours by the Velvet Underground outside New York led to a standing joke among the band members that a good touring show was one where only half the audience walked out.
Rock celebrity appearances in Haynes’ film are a mixed bag. Jonathan Richman justifiably treats the Velvet Underground’s Sterling Morrison as a mentor, but his admiration ultimately comes off a little too fanboyish. Rock tastemaker Danny Fields brings a nice balance of admiration and innocence. But late Bay Area music impresario Bill Graham has the best moment with his pre-show encouragement to the Velvet Underground of “I hope you guys f**king bomb.”
Haynes has performed a valuable cultural public service by making “The Velvet Underground.” Not only has he introduced their music to new audiences, but he shows to older audiences that the brevity of the band’s existence is outweighed by the fact that they were even able to come together at all. If the viewer watching Haynes’ documentary streaming on Apple TV Plus doesn’t skip over the end credits, they will be treated to a performance of a classic Velvet Underground song that’s only hinted at earlier in the film.
(“Maya at 24” screens as part of the “There She Goes Again” shorts block. Both that shorts block and “La Civil” are available for online streaming at mvff.com until October 17, 2021.
“Who We Are: A Chronicle Of Racism In America” screens in-theater at 12:00 PM on October 16, 2021 at the Smith Rafael Film Theater (1118 4th Street, San Rafael, CA).
“The Velvet Underground” debuts on Apple TV Plus on October 15, 2021. It also screens in-theater at 12:00 PM on October 17, 2021 at the Smith Rafael Film Theater (1118 4th Street, San Rafael, CA).
Tickets for all the films reviewed are available at mvff.com.)
On November 9, 10 and 11, 2021, the Art House Zinema in BilbaoArte will host ARCHIVOS VIVOS, a conference on contemporary documentary film based on domestic archives. The purpose is to outline what kind of autobiographical gaze emerges within a digital culture where personal memories acquire a multi-format kaleidoscopic materiality. The authors gathered here subvert the domestic archive with the intention of repairing the family history, building a space of autonomy for women, reflecting on the ephemeral nature of our digital identities or speculating on other possible futures.
Tuesday, November 9, 2021. 6:00 p.m.
FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO Lynne Sachs, United States, 2020, 74 ‘, VOSE Premiere in Spain.
Virtual Discussion with the Director
Over a period of 35 years, director Lynne Sachs recorded tapes and digital images of her father, Ira Sachs Sr, a ‘bon vivant’ and pioneering entrepreneur from Park City, Utah. This documentary is her attempt to understand the network that connects a girl with her father and a sister with her peers.
SHORTS PROGRAM. Wednesday 10 November 2021. 6:00 p.m.
A COMUÑÓN DA MIÑA PRIMA ANDREA Brandán Cerviño, Spain, 2021, 13 ‘. Andrea has made her first communion. However, the ceremony lacks glamor. For Andrea, things without glitter are not things. The only problem is: Does this God exist?
9.32 Ignacio Losada, Argentina, 2019, 13 ‘. The cell phone is an extension of our life experience. The images that appear on our screens represent the future of our existence. Algorithms shelter us in a sea of images and news that construct us as subjects. Reflection in the face of what is presented to us is a political decision. What we see and how we build our own identity.
LA VEDA Paco Chavinet, Spain, 2018, 30 min. Halfway between the film essay and the video-souvenir, this story about family ties is framed. Using the images recorded on a cruise ship made by his parents, the author invokes a dystopian society where the problems of collective coexistence are solved by an algorithm and in which the prohibition of abortion is compensated by a law that allows parents to prosecute their children if at the age of 30 they have not met the expectations placed on them.
Thursday 11 November 2021.18: 00 hs
VIDEO BLUES Emma Tusell, Spain, 2019, 74 min.
+ In-person discussion with the director
Suggestive and mysterious images recorded with a domestic camera at the end of the 80s. Two voices, one female and the other male, discuss their meaning and do not seem to agree. Emma reviews her family history to try to piece together lives that are still a mystery to her. In this review you will face the ghosts of your past and make the viewer a voyeur accomplice of your privacy. But … who is that voice that confronts you and why will it end up being so important in this story?
Distributor Neon has announced its release plans for Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria: Playing only in theaters, Memoria will be “moving from city to city, theater to theater, week by week, playing in front of only one solitary audience at any given time.”
Tilda Swinton and George Mackay will be starring in the next film by Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence). Titled The End, the film has been described as a “a Golden Age musical about the last human family.”
Co-programmed by James Hansen & Eric Souther, Light Matter Festival is a new “moving-image art festival dedicated to experimental film and media arts.” Taking place in Alfred, New York, the festival will be screening films by Simon Liu, Mary Helena Clark, Lynne Sachs, and more.
Sylvester Stallone’s director’s cut of Rocky IV (1985) will be playing in theaters in the United States for one night only on November 11. The new cut includes 40 minutes of never-before-seen footage, and will be available on demand the following day, on the 12th.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
A24’s official trailer for Sean Baker’s Red Rocket, which arrives in theaters this December. Simon Rex stars as a washed up former porn star who returns to his Texas hometown. Its delicious poster was illustrated by Steven Chorney and designed by GrandSon. Read Leonardo Goi’s review of the film here
The official trailer for Radu Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, which won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlinale. Read our review of the film by Ela Bittencourt here.
Zia Anger has directed a new music video for Mitski’s latest single, “Working for the Knife.” With cinematography by Ashley Conner, the video follows Mitski as she performs inside The Egg at the Empire State Plaza in Albany.
Ahead of the release of Shin Ultraman, a teaser has been released for Hideaki Anno’s Shin Kamen Rider. The film is a reboot of the 1971 Kamen Rider series, which tells the story of a young motorcyclist who is transformed into a cyborg by a terrorist organization.
RECOMMENDED READING
“Miami Vice seems to do everything wrong by genre standards, and yet manages to captivate us in a way that few others can.” Bilge Ebiri reappraises Michael Mann’s Miami Vice (which turns 15 this year), from its tender intimacy to its digital video cinematography.
For Reverse Shot, critic Michael Koresky investigates Gaspar Noé’s Vortex, and whether cinema is an apt enough art form for representing the effects of dementia.
In a conversation with Nick Newman for the Film Stage, Kiyoshi Kurosawa discussesWife of a Spy, being a fan of Clint Eastwood as an actor, and the Japanese studio system. Another excellent interview can be found at Asian Movie Pulse, where Kurosawa considers the divide between film and reality, piracy, and the new generation of Japanese filmmakers.
Carol Kane discusses the rerelease of Joan Micklin Silver’s feature debut Hester Street (1975), which starred Kane at the age of 23, and pushing away fame at a young age.
“The emphasis is on diversity and pluralism, not past and present sins. Call it a museum of good intentions.” Manohla Dargis of the New York Timesreflects on the opening of the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
“Pino rides through these tunnels on his motorcycle as he’s leaving this plane of reality and entering forever into the history of art…” Walter Fasano introduces his film Pino, which is showing exclusively on MUBI in many countries.
In a foreword to Yevgenia Belorusets’s new book, Modern Animal, the British director Peter Greenaway offers 19 stories about animals big and small.
From NYFF, correspondent Peter Kim George reports on two new films: Joel Coen’s solo directed, dread-filled adaptation The Tragedy of Macbeth, and Gaspar Noé’s split-screened Vortex.
Lillian Crawford reflects on two documentaries, a new one by Charlotte Gainsbourg and a 1988 one by Agnès Varda, which explore the subject of the singer and actress Jane Birkin.
In his review of Julia Ducournau’s Palme d’Or winning Titane, Anthony Hawley considers the ways in which the film challenges the viewer to consider the path ahead, about “the future of our species.”
In an interview with Kelley Dong, Payal Kapadia discusses the making of her debut feature A Night of Knowing Nothing and the relationship between politics, love, and cinema.
Kelley Dong reports back from Toronto, which presented a weak, pared down pandemic-era edition that nevertheless had some highlights, including the latest by Terence Davies and Masaaki Yuasa.
Rachel Michelle Fernandes locates One Shot that encapsulates Claire Denis in her film U.S. Go Home.
To mark the arrival of Iván Zulueta’s Arrebato in America 4o years after its release, Elizabeth Horkley examines and uncovers the dark and banal truths at the heart of the film.
And THE HOUR OF LATERAL THINKING ON CANDY| October 10/11, midnight-1 am
CAT RADIO CAFÉ: FILMMAKERS LYNNE SACHS AND LIZZIE OLESKER ON THE WASHING \SOCIETY
On tonight’s show, we’ll be joined by filmmaker Lynne Sachs and theater and performance maker and labor organizer Lizzie Olesker to discuss their 2018 film, The Washing Society, and to celebrate the debut of eight of Lynne Sachs’s films on the prestigious list of Criterion Classics. The Criterion series relates to feminism, complicated parent-child relationships, female adolescence, Vietnam, the Holocaust and historic labor movements. Both The Washing Society and last year’s remarkable Film About a Father Who are among them.
Lynne Sachs’s cinematic works defy genre through the use of the essay film, collage, performance, documentary and poetry. Her films explore the intricate connection between personal observations and broader historical experiences. She has made 40 films which have screened at the Museum of Modern Art, Wexner Center, the Walker, the Getty, New York Film Festival and Sundance. In 2021, Edison Film Festival and Prismatic Ground Film Festival at Maysles Documentary Center awarded Sachs for her body of work. Her first book of poetry, “Year by Year Poems, was published by Tender Buttons Press in 2019. In 2020 and 2021, she taught film and poetry workshops at Beyond Baroque, Flowchart Foundation and Hunter.
Lizzie Olesker has been making theater and performances in New York City for several decades, reflecting on the politics and poetry of everyday experience. She’s created a series of solo pieces and plays around different aspects of domestic work, recently Infinite Miniatures (a solo piece with objects at a kitchen table) and Five Stages of Grief (a play starring a home care attendant and a ghost). Olesker’s first film, The Washing Society, which she co-directed with Lynne Sachs, grew out of their site-specific performance piece in New York City laundromats, Every Fold Matters. She teaches documentary theater at the New School and playwriting at NYU. She is also an organizer and adjunct representative with UAW Local 7902, and part of its movement to organize higher education and other professional workers.
Kristine Leschper, leader of the one-time Band To Watch Mothers, is striking out under her own name. Today, she’s releasing a solo single, “Figure And I,” a beguiling and smooth introduction to Leschper’s new venture. “For the first time, I used my hands to clap out a rhythm that spoke to me,” Leschper said in a statement, continuing:
I don’t have much experience with percussion, so I was thrilled by the ease and accessibility of using hands as an instrument. It’s such a long-standing and fundamental way of making sound in folk traditions around the world, and to use it makes me feel rooted in a deeper sense of time. As a poet, too, I hold an enthusiasm for the symbolism of hands, as a symbol of work, of community or offering, of holding and being held.
Watch a video for the song directed by Lynne Sachs below.
Singer/songwriter Kristine Leschper led Mothers for eight years (their most recent LP was 2018’s Render Another Ugly Method), but she’s now retired the moniker and shared her first single under her own name, “Figure And I,” via ANTI-. “For the first time, I used my hands to clap out a rhythm that spoke to me,” she says. “I don’t have much experience with percussion, so I was thrilled by the ease and accessibility of using hands as an instrument. It’s such a long-standing and fundamental way of making sound in folk traditions around the world, and to use it makes me feel rooted in a deeper sense of time. As a poet, too, I hold an enthusiasm for the symbolism of hands, as a symbol of work, of community or offering, or holding and being held.”
Lynne Sachs directed the accompanying video, which you can watch below. “Kristine Leschper wrote to me with a very intriguing proposition: create a short film in response to her song ‘Figure and I,'” Lynne says. “I knew that this deeply rhythmic two-minute song needed some kind of somatic imagery. I needed to move with my body and my camera as I was shooting it. A few days later, I went to ‘The New Woman Behind the Camera’ exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In this show, I saw two photos by two women photographers from the 1920s whose work I had never seen before. These images guided me to a way of interpreting the physicality and the intimacy of Kristine’s song. Soon afterward, I invited my friend Kim Wilberforce to be in my film and to interpret the song herself, through her vibrant wardrobe and her precise, ecstatic clapping gestures.”
Kristine Leschper shares a video for her new single “Figure And I.” Having retired the moniker Mothers after eight years of performing and releasing music under it, “Figure And I” marks Leschper’s first release under her given name, and first for ANTI- Records.
Though both Mothers and her solo work are guided by Leschper’s idiosyncratic approach to songwriting, they couldn’t sound more different. While Mothers drew inspiration from the stark, skeletal sounds of post-punk and contemporary folk, Leschper’s new work is practically baroque, integrating an array of synthesizers, strings, woodwinds, and over a dozen percussive instruments.
“For the first time, I used my hands to clap out a rhythm that spoke to me. I don’t have much experience with percussion, so I was thrilled by the ease and accessibility of using hands as an instrument,” Leschper said in a statement. “It’s such a long-standing and fundamental way of making sound in folk traditions around the world, and to use it makes me feel rooted in a deeper sense of time. As a poet, too, I hold an enthusiasm for the symbolism of hands, as a symbol of work, of community or offering, or holding and being held.”
Singer-songwriter Kristine Leschper wrote to me with a very intriguing proposition: create a short film in response to her song “Figure and I”. I knew that this deeply rhythmic two-minute song called for some kind of somatic imagery. I needed to move with my body and my camera as I was shooting it. A few days later, I went to “The New Woman Behind the Camera” exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In this show, I saw two photos by two women photographers from the 1920s whose work I had never seen before. These images guided me to a way of interpreting the physicality and the intimacy of Kristine’s song. Soon afterward, I invited my friend Kim Wilberforce to be in my film and to interpret the song herself, through her vibrant wardrobe and her precise, ecstatic clapping gestures.
Singer/songwriter Kristine Leschper led Mothers for eight years (their most recent LP was 2018’s Render Another Ugly Method), but she’s now retired the moniker and shared her first single under her own name, “Figure And I,” via ANTI-. “For the first time, I used my hands to clap out a rhythm that spoke to me,” she says. “I don’t have much experience with percussion, so I was thrilled by the ease and accessibility of using hands as an instrument. It’s such a long-standing and fundamental way of making sound in folk traditions around the world, and to use it makes me feel rooted in a deeper sense of time. As a poet, too, I hold an enthusiasm for the symbolism of hands, as a symbol of work, of community or offering, or holding and being held.”
Screenings: National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), Camera Lucida (Ecuador).
SYNOPSIS In E-pis-to-lar-y: letter to Jean Vigo, Lynne Sachs reflects on the delicate resonances between the 1933 classic Zero for Conduct in which a group of schoolchildren wage an anarchist rebellion against their authoritarian teachers.
Thinking about the insurrection of January 6, 2021 in the United States Capitol by right-wing protesters, Lynne Sachs wonders how innocent play or calculated protest can so quickly turn into chaos and violence?
DIRECTOR’S NOTE Every film I make is a reflection of ideas that infiltrate my mind, intertwined with my daily reality. I’m fascinated with the urge to disobey, with anarchic desires, and continually wondering how best to confront authority. It is in this deep ambivalence that I decide to make E-pis-to-lar-y: letter to Jean Vigo, a correspondence through cinema with Vigo, director of the exquisite Zero for Conduct, in a nod to irreverent and bad children behaviors. Making this movie gave me the opportunity to fight the horrors of January 6, 2021.
BIO Lynne Sachs (United States, Memphis, 1961) Filmmaker and poet living in NY. His work explores an intricate relationship between his personal observations and the extensive historical experience plotting together text, collage, painting, politics. Strongly engaged in a feminist dialogue between film theory and practice, she seeks a rigorous play between image and sound, reinforcing the aura and visual texture of her work in each project.
MANIFEST # 17FESTIFREAK
The world of the future bears little resemblance to our dystopian nightmares. There are fewer helpful automata than submissive humans. And it seems that hyperconnection dwarfed the world instead of enlarging it. The contact became a link.
The inner adventure of a year ago became normal. And doing the things that we liked was reduced to a memory. It took us a long time to get back to the theaters, but we did. This year, FestiFreak returns to common spaces, to the joint habitability of the place that always sheltered us and where the best fantasies are possible.
Although with the necessary public restrictions in the framework of the pandemic, FestiFreak will have functions at the INCAA Cine Select and Cine EcoSelect Spaces in La Plata, and also at the En Eso Somos Cultural Center. There we will find ourselves reversing the inertia of isolation and apathy that the virus brought. Taking care of the disease and enjoying the company of others, the unpredictable coexistence with other people, other looks and other worlds.
And we will continue in virtuality. The hybridization that began last year showed us that there is a wide audience out there that values the curatorship of the festival and the search for new ways of making films. That he is greedy and curious, like those of us who do FestiFreak, for films that leave the convention, that they exceed and that they experiment. They are more than we thought and they are far away. For them, and for those who cannot enter the room due to sanitary limits, our online programming will be available.
We will also expand into Europe again. This time with a special program co-produced with Filmhuis Cavia (Amsterdam) in direct connection with Argentina.
# 17FestiFreak will be held between October 1 and 17, 2021. It will have its national competitions, its international exhibition, its training space dedicated to audiovisual preservation, its expanded version and new ways of intervening and interacting with the cinematographic image in different formats. Whether in a room, virtually, with a projector or a magnetic tape as mediators, we were always on the screens. That was our place. As in a loop that has never stopped,
