It’s far from a straightforward documentary, but much of what makes it so experimental actually happened off-screen; in 2011, after first learning about “hot bed houses” from a family member, Sachs decided to collaborate with her cast rather than merely film them recounting their stories.
I have found several of Lynne Sachs’s films unusually disarming.
Asian American Life’s Minnie Roh brings us to Chinatown, to a community of undocumented immigrants hidden from view who live in a form of housing known as “shiftbeds.” Featuring excerpts form Your Day is My Night with a special focus on our beloved wedding singer Yun Xiu Huang. An interview with director Lynne Sachs is also […]
Lynne Sachs has spent 25 years of her young life making films, installations and documentaries from Vietnam to Bosnia and all corners of the world. She is a master of the art and a gifted collector of the tiny moments of the human comedy and tragedy.
“We Landed/I Was Born/Passing By: New York’s Chinatown on Screen” is a wonderfully eclectic series that runs at Anthology Film Archives from January 24-26. New York’s Chinatown is one of the most iconic neighborhoods in New York, with a long, rich history, one which embodies how immigrants have transformed America’s urban landscapes.
Filmmaker Lynne Sachs and poet Paolo Javier on the dialogues between documentary and poetry, and politics and personal history.
Everything here is aesthetically interesting: the music, the color, the camera variation, the mishmash of things, the pacing, the intimacy between the economically constituted family of the small apartment.
Canyon filmmaker Lynne Sachs. Sight & Sound has ranked her experimental documentary Your Day is My Night among the best films of the year, and the BBC has already declared it to be one of eight films to watch in 2014. Now is a great time to return to the Canyon catalog to […]
“It’s one of the most mysterious and magical evocations of the migrant city in many a year.”
Eight films to watch in 2014
Published online on January 3rd, 2014 BBC Culture
By Tom Brook
“Director Lynne Sachs’ Your Day is My Night shines a light on a little documented sub-culture in New York’s Chinatown, chronicling immigrants who live communally in buildings where there’s a shift-bed system. One person returns from a stint of overnight work to sleep in a bed just vacated by another person off to their day job. The form of this documentary is as compelling as its content. It is a beautiful collage of different media and music intricately edited together with the often emotional testimony of the immigrants.”
