Thinking about Richard Fung’s “Sea in the Blood” By Lynne Sachs Two men swimming, the flow of skin against the skin, and there below the surface of the water is a camera. Richard Fung’s lens is an activated observation machine, the eye gazing at the self. His memory becomes an animal in the pool – […]
Visit to New Orleans Grey afternoon everything carved away gaunt woman in once-tight jeans zig-zags patterns, boulevard desolate. Archeological trash pile not for garbage collector. Everything carved away. Dogs no longer here. Old kitten dangling thread, teasing between splinters from a screen door stretching blissful open and shut by the arm of the wind. Woman […]
STATES OF UNBELONGING a film by LYNNE SACHS in collaboration with NIR ZATS 63 minutes Hebrew spoken by children “When I am big and someone dies, I am going to go to the funeral.” “You can put a doll on the grave, just like in the story.’ Dear Lynne, I patiently wait for the sand […]
From California to Florida to New York to Maryland to Tennessee, I’ve been making and teaching avant-garde film for 20 years. In my experience, there is only one film, of the many works to which I expose my college students, that consistently creates a passionate, call it vitriolic, reaction: Stan Brakhage’s “Window, Water, Baby, Moving”(1959, 12 min.).
A Grapevine to the Sky: A Meditation on Life in Brooklyn by Lynne Sachs Jack must have started his infamous climb to the sky from a backyard in Brooklyn. While not the eponymous beanstalk with which most of us are familiar, the seventy-five foot high Concord grape vine in my backyard reaches so daringly up […]
MAKING AND BEING “DRAWN & QUARTERED” BY LYNNE SACHS My great Uncle Charlie was a prominent Memphis businessman who took a giddy pleasure in shooting some of the most elegant, compassionate photographs I’ve ever seen. I remember his close-up portrait taken in the late 1950’s of a wizened black man looking into the lens. I […]
Seven on Ice by Lynne Sachs After two weeks of persistent pleading, a young girl with wispy brown hair and long fingers convinced her parents that she had not only memorized the way through the woods but that she could be trusted to stay strictly on the well-trodden path. This was her first time to […]
It’s taken me seventeen years to realize what an inspiration Gunvor Nelson is for me as a filmmaker, a teacher and a mother who allowed her work as an artist to grow and change as a result of her decision to become a parent. Aspects of the life she led in the Bay Area during […]
Lilith Speaks to Adam Just when I am on my way to becoming, My eyes open and you are there. Is Eden large enough for the two of us? Wherever I turn, there are branches pulling at my hair, Earth between my toes and under my tongue. I slither and sometimes I use my wings. […]
Rudy Burckhardt’s Life and Work: How Wide is Sixth Avenue by Phillip Lopate Reviewed by Lynne Sachs For over twenty years, writer Philip Lopate was lucky enough to call artist Rudy Burckhardt (1914-1999) a friend. An afternoon visit to Burckhardts Chelsea loft would usually include a cup of tea or a bottle of beer and […]