They are living right here on the Lower East Side but most of us are oblivious to the existence, let alone the daily travails, of New York’s “shift-bed” residents. A hybrid documentary/live performance, “Your Day is My Night,” coming to University Settlement next month offers a rare glimpse into their hidden world.
Of the innovative production based on the lives of Chinese immigrants compelled to rent beds in 12-hour increments, Director Lynn Sachs says: “This shared domestic space becomes a… canvas on which lives are recounted and revealed.” Referring to her “new friends,” she explains, “We are making something together that we believe in, that expresses something about living in New York that perhaps has not been revealed before.”
Alison Fleminger, curator of University Settlement’s Performance Project was immediately drawn to the production. “Our aim is to encourage greater participation in the live arts and to help cultivate diverse creative communities on the Lower East Side.” All of the performers are artists who have some kind of background in dance or tai chi or qigong. They are, she notes, “artists who are conscious of the multi-layered communities that co-exist in New York City.”
A still from “Your Day is My Night.” Photo courtesy of Lynne Sachs.
One of the most compelling characters is a man named Yun Xiu Huang. He is a popular Fujianese wedding singer, “with a powerhouse operatic voice” says Sachs. He arrived in New York around 1990 to fulfill the American Dream, or at least leave behind the difficulties in his homeland. He has grown children in China who he hasn’t seen in years and who he may not see for many more. When asked if he’d try to bring his family to the U.S., he answered, “look at us. We’re adults living in shift beds. Our children wouldn’t want to come here.”
Sean Hanley, cinematographer and editor, observes, “the pain they experienced in China and the difficulty they’ve had living in the U.S., is something they never have a chance to talk about because everyone they know has been through it.” The project artfully weaves a visual and oral history of lives you never knew existed. And now it’s opening up new possibilities for creative expression. In conjunction with the production, The Tenement Museum is working on a Chinese immigration exhibition and the Museum of Chinese in America is planning to present a special focus on Yun Xiu Huang.
Performances run Thursday, Nov. 1st through Saturday, Nov. 3rd at 7:30 p.m. at University Settlement. Go here for tickets.
Back in 2004, I proposed to my husband Mark Street that I start a Torah study group for our half-Jewish-half-secular-humanist (the only unofficial faith or –ism he would embrace) 9 and 7 year-old daughters Maya and Noa Street-Sachs. He agreed reluctantly and skeptically, convinced that this passing fancy of mine for constructing a homemade form of religious learning would certainly go the way of Pilates or learning to cook. Having grown up as a Reform Jewish teenager in Memphis, Tennessee in the 1970s, I’d been introduced to the tenets of my family’s religion through a long, dreary series of Sunday school classes that successfully squashed any latent curiosity I might have had about our faith. It wasn’t until I passed the embarrassingly easy requirements for Confirmation at age 16 that I was given the choice to abandon my own spiritual edification or to continue in the lone, post-confirmation class for teens taught by a famously erudite local lawyer who conducted his class like a college literature seminar with a tinge of politics, European history and philosophy thrown in for good measure. Confident that this would be my absolute last chance to find even a thread of appreciation for Judaism, I signed up for Leo Bearman’s course and groggily drove my way to our synagogue every Sunday morning throughout my senior year of high school. To my surprise, the class was everything a learning experience could be – provocative, passionate, and rigorous.
And so with this profound moment in my young life still somehow resonating in my memory, I decided it would be possible to create a monthly study group for my own children here in Brooklyn in conjunction with our visits to Kolot Chayeinu for holidays, children’s events and the occasional Saturday service.
For the first few years of our de facto Havurah, we joined forces with another family with an eleven-year-old daughter. At each meeting, we would tackle a particularly dramatic and no-doubt famous story from the Torah. Quaint as it might sound, we called the group Bible Study and frankly that was what it was. Despite our unanimous opposition to the Old Testament as a significant doctrine of faith, we each believed that it was an intriguing, influential tome that would help our daughters better appreciate everything from the Sistine Chapel, to Creationism to 20th Century poetry. The Bible’s presence in our culture is pervasive and we wanted our children to understand its power, influence and resonance. Using The Children’s Illustrated Bible, we moved our way from the Garden of Eden, to Sarah’s pregnancy, to Joseph’s Coat, to Jacob’s dream, until after two years we completed the Old Testament chapters of the book. Because none of the children felt pressured to learn anything from one month to the next, they relished the humor and the drama in the stories, engaging in deep cross-generational discussions around such things as ethics, betrayal, commitment and sacrifice. Of course every one-hour Bible Study meeting finished off with a good meal, so the sensorial rewards were always within grasp.
Eventually our first collaborative family decided to move on, and so I was faced with the challenge of finding another family who was willing to commit one day a month to our old-fashioned endeavor. The second family who joined forces with us had an 11-year-old boy. Of course our children’s preteen enthusiasms waxed and waned but nevertheless we followed another two-year journey, this time referring to our monthly gathering in a more specifically Jewish way, Torah Study. Now with a more mature group of three students to teach, I met with Rabbi Lippmann for some guidance before embarking on Phase II. She suggested we acknowledge the sophistication of our own children by using W. G. Plaut’s renowned The Torah: A Modern Commentary as our primary text. Clearly the children were now ready to take the helm as teachers and Biblical provocateurs. As Jews do every fall, we started all over again with Genesis in September of 2008 with monthly readings and analyses of such stories as: Cain and Abel, The Flood, Babel, and Sodom and Gomorah. In our second year, we even began delving into Exodus. By this time, however, our children were no longer satisfied by a purest engagement with the literature. They demanded intense discussions around the meaning and existence of God, poignant debates about Palestinians and Jews in the Middle East and frank reflections on the role of women as depicted in this hallowed text.
In 2010, we embarked on Phase III of our study. It was a unanimous decision to put the bible to the side for a while and to engage with Judaism in a more creative and personal way. Together with our daughters (now 13 and 15) and a family with two boys ages 9 and 12, we created Rabbis of the Roundtable (named for the shape of our dining room tables). Each month we engage with some sort of reading that sparks a conversation. Our list of texts has included: “A Yom Kippor Scandel” by Sholem Aleeichem, “The Jewbird” Bernard Malamud; Maus by Art Speigelman, “The Boy in the Bubble” song by Paul Simon, “Conversion of the Jews” by Phllip Roth, “New York Filmmaker” by Ken Jacobs, “Address Unkown” by Katherine Kressman Taylor, “ Long to See My Mother in the Doorway” by Grace Paley, “The Plagues” byMoacyr Scliear, “King of the Jews” a film by Jay Rosenblatt, “World of our Fathers” by Irving Howe, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne, “Bontsha the Silent” by I.L. Peretz. Last month my daughter Maya was Rabbi so she decided that she wanted to take us out of the house to visit the permanent collection of Judaica at the Jewish Museum. Honestly, she had never even seen this collection before, so she researched some of the themes (both theoretical and religious) that had inspired the curators in order to lead us through the exhibit with issues to contemplate. As we gazed at the vitrines full of mazuzahs and menorahs as well as the more contemporary canvases on the walls, she asked us to ponder the artists’ intentions and the relationship of the objects to our sense of the visual in Jewish culture. Surrounded by these art works and artifacts, four adults and three children stood listening to Maya explore her own relationship to Judaism. I thought about the years we have spent in conversation about our shared culture and faith. It is not the answers we have found together that are so important but rather the questions we continue to confront.
New Day filmmakers live all over the United States, although many are concentrated on the East and West Coasts. In the following interviews, New Day filmmakers from the Midwest reveal how living there has impacted their personal – and filmmaking – choices.
Why did you make Kansas vs. Darwin at the time and place you did?
As I watched the school board hearings in Topeka taking shape in May, 2005, I knew it was going to be a documentary, with a cast of characters and a story arc.
Is this just a Kansas issue?
This was part of the debate for which Kansas was already synonymous. I was under the impression that this controversy mainly took place in rural states like mine, but I learned that it happens to a large extent in all 50 states.
Where did the idea for the film come from?
I got the idea for the film the day before my father died. I was reading a newspaper article that talked about the hearings to test the validity of evolution, and it was almost like a hand was on my shoulder and someone or something was whispering in my ear: “This is the film you should make” so later on when people asked me, “What are you doing?” I responded “We are on a mission from God!” It was kind of like the Blues Brothers, if you know what I mean (laughs).
What kinds of challenges pushed the film in directions that you might not have expected?
There were many challenges every step of the way. People on both sides refused to talk to me. I told the crew that we would never tell people what we believed, and so I had resistance on both sides of the issue.
Were you considered a threat?
One school board member made me drive seven hours just to convince her I would not be a threat to her. One of the principle figures on the pro-evolution side would not talk to me either because he thought I was against evolution since I would never directly claim my own position.
Then what kind of “voice” do you express in your marketing for the film?
My film is about provoking the audience and encouraging discussion. When the audience walks away, they are often upset, they want to talk and talk and talk. Whoever you are and whatever you think, this film is going to bring you face to face with people who think just the opposite.
Will teaching evolution end as an issue?
When I market the film, I try to remind people that this controversy over teaching evolution isn’t going away anytime soon. I want to connect with people who are struggling to teach evolution or to understand the political situation around the topic.
What are the challenges to being a filmmaker in Kansas?
There is less infrastructure here in terms of funding and fewer local networking opportunities, though we do have a large production community of technicians, bigger than you would think in a metro area of 2 million.
How do you actually make your life as a filmmaker?
For money, I make corporate films. On a personal level, the people I find community with here are not always filmmakers but writers, actors, musicians, arts administrators.
Has New Day (ND) changed your life?
It has totally transformed my life as a filmmaker. There is a huge community aspect to ND that is easily accessible through media and I see ND people when I travel to festivals and conferences. I also represented ND on a panel called “Film Distribution from A to Z with a Capital E for Education.”
Have you found kindred spirits in ND or films that share issues with your movie?
Yes, Greta Schiller, (dir. No Dinosaurs in Heaven) and I have spoken frequently about our shared topic and audience, which has led to our collaboration on a rather large science-education initiative involving a distinguished group of academics.
What impact has New Day had on your distribution?
Developing outreach partners who have a vested interest in a topic – such as science teacher organizations. Together, we develop programs using the film at state and local conferences. This is a very smart type of partnership that’s indispensable in today’s marketplace.
What have you brought from Kansas to New Day?
Common sense (laughs). I deal every day with a lot of different kinds of people, maybe it’s easier for me to have empathy with some of our viewers.
Director Susanne Mason works with Editor Karen Skloss to select images for “Writ Writer.”
Did Austin Texas spark your work as a filmmaker?
In The University of Texas’s graduate school I made a film about women convicted of murdering their alleged abusers.
Was that easy to do?
I had a hard time getting permission from the prison system to interview the incarcerated women that I wanted to include in the film. In the process of jumping hoops and seeking permission, I was inadvertently introduced to the Texas prison system’s history and became fascinated by it.
Did that change your film plans?
In the end I obtained permission to interview five women, but the real fruit of that graduate thesis film was that it inspired me to study the Texas prison system’s transformation as a result of the Civil Rights Movement.
How did Writ Writer happen?
When I learned about the story of Fred Arispe Cruz, I thought it could be a remarkable biographical and historical documentary about a prisoner and a southern state prison system.
Do prisoners have rights?
Fred Cruz, who came into the system in the early 1960s and began studying law in order to fight his own conviction, eventually focused his legal attention on unconstitutional conditions of confinement. Writ Writer tells his story within the story of the emerging prisoners’ rights movement of the 1960s and 70s.
Could you have made your film anywhere?
Had I not lived in Texas I don’t think I ever would have told that story. It was my ability to hop in my car and drive to little towns all over Texas to interview former prison officials and prisoners that allowed me to piece together the history in a cinematic way.
How has Austin served you?
When I committed to making Writ Writer, I was lucky that one of Austin’s most famous filmmakers, Richard Linklater (dir. Slacker), had created the non- profit Austin Film Society. AFS became the fiscal sponsor for Writ Writer, and I received my first grant from the Texas Filmmakers Production Fund, a thrilling confirmation of what for me was an incredibly ambitious project.
Was Writ Writer your first feature documentary film experience?
I had been an Associate Producer of three hour-long documentaries for PBS, but I had never single-handedly produced a feature documentary. Writ Writer was a long shot, because it relates an obscure history about people who weren’t famous and hadn’t been filmed much. It was difficult to pitch. But AFS believed in me and the story.
Did you ever want to give up on your film?
I sought funding from the traditional sources, including the Independent Television Service. I was rejected by ITVS eight times before I was finally awarded finishing funds. I don’t like thinking about those years. I had invested so much sweat and tears, and had no idea if I’d ever be able to finish it. My confidence was shot. Having a community of film friends in Austin was absolutely crucial. People close to me saw the progress we were making and that encouraged me.
How has New Day helped you?
New Day Films is a community of filmmakers, many of whom have had similar experiences making films that would otherwise never be produced or released were it not for an independent spirit. Having new friends and colleagues who are willing to go out on a limb for a story that can shed light on a difficult history or social circumstance gives me hope.
Has New Day helped your distribution plans?
Being part of a distribution company with a national reputation for releasing high quality educational films has helped me to get Writ Writer into librarians’ and professors’ hands much more easily than if I had done it by myself in Texas.
Are other New Day filmmakers dealing with prison and criminal justice issues?
Yes. Goro Toshima (dir. A Hard Straight), Tony Heriza and Cindy Burstein (dirs. Concrete, Steel & Paint), Kelly Anderson and Tami Gold (dir. Every Mother’s Son), Lexi Leban and Lidia Szajko (dirs. Girl Trouble), among many others. It’s a terrifically inspiring group of dedicated documentary filmmakers.
Has New Day led you to new filmmaking plans?
New Day has made it possible to meet veteran filmmakers from all over the country whom I never would have had the opportunity to meet otherwise. I have the camaraderie of a league of excellent filmmakers. This is very empowering, and has encouraged me to embark on a new film about prisoner re-entry and reintegration into society, an issue that became a concern of mine while producing Writ Writer.
Was living in Chicago significant when you made Immigrant Nation! The Battle for the Dream
There was a national law called HR4437 that criminalized everyone who was undocumented. On March 19, 2006, half a million people came out to march against the bill here in Chicago. That day, I saw that the mainstream media was mostly covering the anti-immigration group.
Did that motivate you?
I wanted to reveal how large the immigrant movement actually was, to show that this march was a lot bigger than what people were seeing on television. You see, this is currently the biggest civil rights movement in the US, but the media will never recognize that.
Was there something or someone who started you on the film?
I decided to follow my main character, Elvira Arellano, in order to show her as a symbol of the undocumented. She had been fighting her own deportation for a long time here in Chicago, and so she had a history of activism. When she received a deportation order, she refused and sought sanctuary in a church. This was just the right moment for me to begin following her journey.
What has happened to the cause your film champions?
If a community unites, there is no one that can stop them. Justice will be served. And as we can see today, the federal government is finally challenging those state laws.
What makes your film timely today?
When the Arizona anti-immigrant law came out, my film, Immigrant Nation received much more attention. I discovered a new momentum for the film’s distribution. It became a clear media response to similar anti-immigrant bills across the country.
How do you make ends meet as a filmmaker?
I work in a local PBS station here in Chicago. I edit, shoot and sometimes produce, which helps me develop skills for my own productions. I wish I could just do my own work but here in Chicago it is very difficult to get enough work to make a living in media.
What about funding your film?
I applied for an Independent Television Service grant and wrote on my application that I worked for a local station. This disqualified me immediately! Everyone knows it is so hard to make a living as a filmmaker without a regular job. So I made an argument in my own defense and ITVS finally changed their rules based on my complaints. I still did not get the funding, but that is another story.
Has New Day helped you distribute your movie?
My best decision was getting into New Day. The sales from my distribution are helping me to pay the debt for the film. It is now being used as an educational tool for one of the biggest movements in American history.
How do artists deal with the ups and downs of making films outside the mainstream?
Let me tell you a happy series of events: The Sundance Film Festival had just rejected my film but then right after that Latino public broadcasting offered funding. I told my pregnant wife “Let’s go celebrate!” and she responded, “I don’t think so, I am having contractions.” Such unforgettable moments are what make this journey so worthwhile.
Chris Marker Makes a Special Guillaume cat cartoon for Maya & Noa Street-Sachs
Some Thoughts on my friend Chris Marker
In San Francisco in the mid-1980s, I saw Chris Marker’s “Sans Soleil”. I witnessed his mode of daring, wandering filmmaking with a camera. Alone, he traveled to Japan, Sweden and West Africa where he pondered revolution, shopping, family, and the gaze in a sweeping but intimate film essay that shook the thinking of more filmmakers than any film I know. Marker’s essay film blended an intense empathy with a global picaresque. Simultaneously playful and engaged, the film presented me with the possibility of merging my interests in cultural theory, politics, history and poetry — all aspects of my life I did not yet know how to bring together – into one artistic expression. In graduate school at that time, I wrote an analysis of the film and then boldly, perhaps naively, sent it to Marker. In a last minute note, I also asked him if he would like an assistant in his editing studio.
Several months later, his letter from Paris arrived with a slew of cat drawings along the margins. In response to my request for a job, Marker cleverly explained that, unlike in the United States, French filmmakers could not afford assistants. And, in response to my semiotic interpretation of his movie, he explained that his friend (and my hero) Roland Barthes would not have interpreted his film the way that I had. Marker suggested that we continue this conversation in person, in San Francisco. Not long afterward, I found myself driving Chris from his hotel in Berkeley, California to Cafe Trieste, one of the most famous cafes in North Beach. There we slowly sipped our coffees in the last relic of 1960s hippy culture, talking about his films, his travels, and my dream to be filmmaker. As the afternoon came to a close, I politely pulled out my camera and asked him if I could take his picture. “No, no, I never allow that.” And then he turned and walked away, leaving me glum, embarrassed and convinced that my new friendship with Marker was now over.
Over the next two decades, Chris and I spoke on the phone periodically and I attended several of his rare public presentations. In 2007, Jon Miller, president of our mutual distributor Icarus Films, contacted me to see if I would be willing to assist Chris in the making of a new English version of his 1972 film “Viva la Baleine”, a passionate, collage-based essay film on the plight of the whales. Of course, I was honored and immediately said yes. For one whole year, Chris and I corresponded weekly as we re-wrote and updated the narration and I searched for a male and a female voice-over actor to read the two parts. He renamed the new 2007 version of his film “Three Cheers for the Whale”. It is distributed with other “bestiary” films he has made including “The Case of the Grinning Cat”.
After we had completed the film, I traveled to Paris with my daughters to talk with Chris about a wide range of things — our collaboration, Stokely Carmichael (a Black activist in the American civil rights movement), Russian documentary, cats and tea. Just before we left his home, he showed me a scrapbook he’d been collecting for several years. Chris had accumulated hundreds of pictures and articles on a young African-American politician who had just embarked on a campaign to become the next president of the United States. Chris was convinced that this virtually unknown candidate could stand up to a historically racist United States of America and win. I was doubtful.” (Lynne Sachs)
More recently, he sent me this letter which I feel I can now share:
Chris Marker's Guillaume in Arles
Hi Lynne. Please don’t mention dates, it’s so depressing… Let’s say we met -some time ago. And a little earlier I had lunch with Robert Flaherty in Germany. Such are the dots along the strange line they call a life. A life that becomes more and more filled with daily tasks as time goes, which explains why I can’t consider any participation to any project, mines being already enough to keep me breathless. Tell that to your friend, with my warmest wishes.
I had recently a large exhibition in Arles, where Peter Blum, my New York galerist, acted as emcee. And guess who was there.. Show it to the girls, whom Guillaume and me fondly salute.
And here is another owl images he sent me recently.
The program of moving image shorts curated by Mary Magsamen of the Aurora Picture Show was presented by AMOA-Arthouse and Fusebox Festival on April 29, 2012.
If the folk tale ranges over generations first orally and then beginning in the 17th c. with the advent of the fairy tale as a literary genre, key to its very being is its contingency upon each “author” and that teller’s positioning in place and time (or history). In devising innovative forms by which to tell tales, both familiar and novel, the titles included in Aurora Picture Show’s program Big Bad Wolf invoke this centuries-old performative spirit so imbued with a sense of the need to create in order to re-create.
This the curators could know in advance of the event. While they also could know to some extent the screening’s setting (i.e., outdoors on the lush estate of Laguna Gloria in a leafy Austin neighborhood, part of Fusebox, etc.), only until experiencing the evening in the process of its unfolding could they fully grasp—in consort with the invited audience—their presentation in its context-specificity. Their gander that the confluence of night, site and moving image program would be dynamic did not disappoint.
Who could have scripted that peacocks’ cries (from next door at Mayfield Park) would add an otherworldly layer to the evening’s soundtrack, or that a family of swans would glide by just beyond the screen on the Colorado River shortly before the sun sank and the program began? Seemingly glowing in their stark whiteness against the darkening water, the scene foreshadowed the black-and-whiteness of the first film, Hansel and Gretel (1955)1 by Lotte Reiniger. While the director places black on top of white in her silhouette animation and the inverse relation of light to dark is witnessed in the swan scene, their chance juxtaposition results in an exciting formal interplay between the known of the film and the unknown of the event site.
Although the viewer is awed by Reiniger’s dexterity with making shape and motion by cutting and arranging paper as well as by the experimental ethos necessary to arrive at such a signature style, there is a nagging feeling that the cinema pioneer is somehow restrained by narrative. Just as Hansel and Gretel seek refuge from the witch (who we hear to say in a deliciously scary voice, “little mouse who crawled away, come you back with me to stay”2), why shouldn’t the filmmaker straddle her broomstick and grant herself a joy ride from the onus of moving the plot forward? For Reiniger’s animation magic to be fully realized it must break free of the need to be a constant stream of information. This sense of formal enterprise being usurped by narrative gives potency to the screening’s extra-filmic composition (sky, river, breeze, animals), amidst which it is curious to note that Hansel and Gretel find their home again but—joined by the squirrel, goose and deer—are wilder than before.
Beyond Reiniger, I found the two works humblest in production terms the most gratifying formally and conceptually. Putting Situationist teachings—Debord’s theory of détournement—to practice in Cinderella +++ (2002), Eileen Maxson disrupts the hegemony of the Disney classic through uncanny sound and image recombinations. The stunning cel (hand-drawn) animation of first Cinderella and then Lady and the Tramp is given afterlife by the voices of love interests (gone sour) appropriated from the soundtracks of the TV series 90210 and “Jack Nicholson in the film Carnal Knowledge”3 (left unidentified in the program notes). While the Disney images convey a (false) sense of security—the world’s the way it ought to be—the re-purposed dialog underscores how the unknown is all around us.
In Atalanta: 32 Years Later (2006) Lynne Sachs4 takes as source material the 1974 TV show Free To Be You and Me—already an update on the classic tale of the “beautiful princess in search of the perfect prince”5—and re-edits it. She turns the image sideways, pairs different parts of the original through the use of split-screen, and plays both image and sound in reverse—providing “subtitles” for the resulting garbled voices. “The maiden from across the forest cut her hair, put on a mustache….” and the lesbian union strides onto the stage of collective imagination (and commands its role in history). Reading at the film’s tail, “for Barbara Hammer,” this retelling became all the more alive for me. In ways too manifold to express here, Hammer, legendary “pioneer of queer cinema,”6 has—like a fairy tale protagonist—found her way home time and again through many a tangled path.
Caroline Koebel is a filmmaker and writer in Austin.
XY Chromosome Project
(Mark Street and Lynne Sachs)
presents
“A Shot in the Dark: New & Old Single-Image Films”
May 29, 2012 8 and 10 pm
Spectacle Cinema
124 South 3rd Street
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY
The XY Chromosome Project (Mark Street and Lynne Sachs) presents an
evening of eight single image films of no more than five minutes to be
premiered at the Spectacle Cinema along with the screening of two
classics of the same ilk, both avant-garde and political. Special
guest filmmaker Larry Gottheim will join us for the screening of his 1970
avant- garde tour de force.
Artists presenting new work include: Gregg Biermann, Su Friedrich,
Cary Kehayan, Kathrin McInnis, Meerkat Media, John Mhiripiri, Amos
Poe, Uzi Sabah, Kelly Spivey
with
“Fog Line” by Larry Gottheim (Gottheim will be present for the screening)
11 min. 1970 16mm (screened on film)
“It is a small but perfect film.” – Jonas Mekas
“The metaphor in FOG LINE is so delicately positioned that I find
myself receding in many directions to discover its source: The Raw and
the Cooked? Analytic vs. Synthetic? Town & Country? Ridiculous and
Sublime? One line is scarcely adequate to the bounty which hangs from
fog & line conjoined.” – Tony Conrad
and
Selective Service System by Warren Hack
13 min.1970
Since 1956, the United States had been involved in a ground war in
Asia. The American commitment had led to an ever increasing
involvement in that area of the world – despite growing
dissatisfaction here at home. To implement this country’s
mobilization, the draft system had been stepped up. This system made
virtually no exemptions for those who felt this war was immoral and
unjust. These young men either had to serve in a war in which they did
not believe, or face the bleak alternatives to service. Some chose
prison. Some sought refuge in other countries. This film documents
another alternative. There was no attempt to alter the proceedings
that took place.
Location | AC Budapest | Corvinus University | Salt House Building |
Fővám tér 13-15.
The 2009 film by Lynne Sachs is a portrait of a doctor who saw the
worst of society and ran. The Last Happy Day is an experimental
documentary portrait of Sandor (Alexander) Lenard, a Hungarian medical
doctor and a distant cousin of filmmaker Lynne Sachs. In 1938 Lenard,
a writer with a Jewish background, fled the Nazis to a safe haven in
Rome. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Army Graves Registration Service
hired Lenard to reconstruct the bones — small and large — of dead
American soldiers. Eventually he found himself in remotest Brazil
where he embarked on the translation of “Winnie the Pooh” into Latin,
an eccentric task that catapulted him to brief world-wide fame. Sachs’
essay film uses personal letters, abstracted war imagery, home movies,
interviews, and a children’s performance to create an intimate
meditation on the destructive power of war.
“A fascinating, unconventional approach to a Holocaust-related story …
a frequently charming work that makes no effort to disguise an
underlying melancholy.” George Robinson, The Jewish Week
“Exquisite…Sachs reclaims (Lenard’s) dignity and purpose using
letters, newsreel footage, and recreations of his environment as if to
channel him back from the past.” Todd Lillethun – Program Director,
Chicago Filmmakers
Premiere: New York Film Festival, 2009
This month, the Proteus Migration Film & Video Series will host a unique cinema-performance event enacted throughout our various project spaces. Brooklyn-based filmmaker, Lynne Sachs, will bring us a specially designed evening of film and integrated movement pieces based on her recent work with a group of Chinese and Puerto Rican performers. The Your Day is My Night Collective will explore “shiftbeds” through verité conversations, character-driven fictions, and multi-format film loops. A shift-bed is shared by people who are neither in the same family nor in a relationship. Inspired by theater visionaries Augusto Boal and the Wooster Group, the collective has worked for the last year on a series of performance workshops centered around such a bed – experienced, remembered, and imagined from profoundly different viewpoints. The audience will be encouraged to engage with the characters while walking through the gallery as a “shift-bed” house, witnessing their stories of life before and after immigration to the United States.
Film loops excerpted from the upcoming feature-length film, “Your Day is My Night.”
Performers: Yi Chun Cao, Linda Hwa Chan, Che Chang-Qing, Yun Xiu Huang, Ellen Ho, Sheut Hing Lee, Veraalba Santa Torres and Pedro Sanchez Tormes
Directed by Lynne Sachs Images by Sean Hanley and Ethan Mass Writing by Rojo Robles and Lynne Sachs Translations by Catherine Ng, Jenifer Lee and Bryan Chan Co-editing and co-producing by Sean Hanley Production Assistance by Madeline Youngberg, Amanda Katz & Jeff Sisson
“The Last Happy Day” by Lynne Sachs
Wed., April 18 8:15 to 9:15
1618 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd.
New Orleans, LA 70113-1311
(504) 352-1150
http://www.zeitgeistinc.net/
The Last Happy Dayby visiting New York Filmmaker Lynne Sachs. A portrait of a doctor who saw the worst of society and ran. The Last Happy Day is an experimental documentary portrait of Sandor (Alexander) Lenard, a Hungarian medical doctor and a distant cousin of filmmaker Lynne Sachs. In 1938 Lenard, a writer with a Jewish background, fled the Nazis to a safe haven in Rome. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Army Graves Registration Service hired Lenard to reconstruct the bones — small and large — of dead American soldiers. Eventually he found himself in remotest Brazil where he embarked on the translation of “Winnie the Pooh” into Latin, an eccentric task that catapulted him to brief world-wide fame. Sachs’ essay film uses personal letters, abstracted war imagery, home movies, interviews, and a children’s performance to create an intimate meditation on the destructive power of war.
As you may know, the production of my film Your Day is My Night has turned into a series of three live performances in New York, each one designed for a specific location. You are invited to our two final Spring 2012 events on April 21 at the Chinatown Library and on May 1 at Proteus Gowanus in Brooklyn. You’ll find all of the information below. We hope you can join us at one of our shows.
“Your Day is My Night” performance, screening and conversation Saturday, April 21, 2012 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. (free) Chatham Square Public Library in Chinatown 33 East Broadway, New York A reception to follow the performance.
A collective of Chinese performers living in New York City explores “shiftbeds” through verité conversations, character-driven fictions and an integrated movement piece. A shift-bed is shared by people who are neither in the same family nor in a relationship. Inspired by theater visionaries Augusto Boal and the Wooster Group, the collective has worked for the last year on a series of performance workshops centered around such a bed – experienced, remembered, and imagined from profoundly different viewpoints. Including a 20 minute excerpt of the feature length film.
Performers: Yi Chun Cao, Yueh (Linda) Hwa Chan, Che Chang-Qing, Yun Xiu Huang, Ellen Ho, Sheut Hing Lee, Veraalba Santa Torres and Pedro Sanchez Tormes
Directed by Lynne Sachs
Images by Sean Hanley and Ethan Mass
Writing by Rojo Robles and Lynne Sachs
Translations by Catherine Ng, Jenifer Lee and Bryan Chan
Co-editing and co-producing by Sean Hanley
Production Assistance by Madeline Youngberg, Amanda Katz & Jeff Sisson
A still from “Your Day is My Night.” Photo courtesy of Lynne Sachs.
