Tag Archives: events

Lynne Sachs at MassArt Ciné Culture (MACC) Screening Series

Thursday, November 9, 2023 5pm

https://blogs.massart.edu/macc/past-screenings-fall-2023/

Each semester, the MassArt Ciné Culture (MACC) Screening Series brings to campus a diverse group of filmmakers and moving image artists for screenings, panel discussions, master classes, and performances.

Most Ciné Culture cinematheque screenings are held in MassArt’s Design and Media (DMC) Center Lecture Hall on Thursday evenings. Cinematheque screenings are now open to the MassArt community and the larger public, and are generally followed by discussions / Q+A sessions with the visiting filmmakers, in person or via Zoom livestream in the Lecture Hall.

The Fall 2023 installment of the Ciné Culture series is programmed and moderated by MassArt Film/Video Professor and Department Chair Tammy Dudman. For information, contact cine-culture@massart.edu.

The Ciné Culture series was established in 2018 by filmmaker and former MassArt Film/Video department professor Soon-Mi Yoo, and is made possible witht the support of MassArt’s Office of Academic Affairs.

A Note from Lynne

The only moment I have felt any hope since the intense conflict in Palestine/ Israel reignited in October whatsoever was during the screening of my film “States of UnBelonging” at the Ciné Culture screening at Mass College of Art on the exact day that the national Free Palestine student walk-out was called. The day felt both charged and appropriate, a day in which many people were apprehensive about coming together to talk about the violence and despair we were in and continue to witness in the Middle East. Yes, we were nervous but we decided to go forward in showing “States of UnBelonging”, a 2005 film that still sadly speaks to the incredible tensions in that part of the world.

To my, and I think our, surprise and relief, the conversation was deeply felt by what seemed like all 25 (I am guessing the number) of the students, faculty and members of the public. Here are a few reasons that I think things worked out so well:

I think that having invited and encouraged the Muslim students in the class to vocalize their own thoughts and experiences in a formal way gave them acknowledgement and stature from the very beginning.

Asking everyone to speak in an ordered and thoughtful way meant that people listened carefully and knew when they would be speaking based on the configuration of the seating. Once we did that, no one needed to speak up to be heard, and everyone added their own nuanced feelings.

In this way, those students who have not yet begun to engage with the current global turmoil seemed to feel more curious, more engaged, and more prone to carving out their own opinions and feelings in the future.

There was a sense that every thought mattered, whether you were an expert or a newcomer to the discussion.

I felt nourished by the experience of spending that evening in the Mass Art community. The students are so lucky to have the amazing faculty and staff support, caring about them in a profound and deeply meaningful way. As one of the Muslim students said that evening, he felt heard, and that is simply because people on that campus are listening and encouraging others to do the same.

Theater Münster / Resistance, Faith, Law – Investigation of a Flame

Theater Munster / Cinema & Kurbelkiste Film Screening and Discussion
November 11 at 3:15 p.m.
Cinema crank box
https://www.theater-muenster.com/produktionen/widerstand-glaube-recht-investigation-of-a-flame-514.html

Climate stickers, blockades, demonstrations and spray attacks. Is this law or crime? Does democracy need civil disobedience? “Investigation of a Flame” by Lynne Sachs documents an anti-war action by Catholic activists, the Catonsville Nine, against the Vietnam War – and interviews those involved about it thirty years after their action. The Frankfurt lawyer Samira Akarbian has just published her award-winning doctoral thesis on “Civil Disobedience as a Constitutional Interpretation”. We watch the film with her in the *Kurbelkiste* cinema and discuss civil disobedience today. Afterwards there will be Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass” at the Münster Theater, which was inspired, among other things, by the action of the Catonsville Nine. Audience discussion following the performance.

This is the third event in *Heaven, Hell, Happy End* , the new series that accompanies musical theater productions. The deputy chairwoman of QueerBw, Lieutenant Colonel iG Anastasia Biefang, was a guest at the first event. At the second appointment we already had a conversation with the director Lynne Sachs about her film *Investigation of a Flame.*

Upstate Films / Film About a Father Who with director Lynne Sachs in person

Upstate Films – Starr Rhinebeck
Closeup Filmmaker Program
Wednesday, November 1 at 7:30pm

https://www.upstatefilms.org/close-up-film-about-a-father-who-with-director-lynne-sachs

Over a period of 35 years between 1984 and 2019, Lynne Sachs filmed her father, Ira Sachs Sr., a bon vivant and pioneering businessman from Park City, Utah. Film About a Father Who is her raw and eye-opening attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings. Sachs’ cinematic exploration of her father offers simultaneous, sometimes contradictory, views of one seemingly unknowable man. As the startling facts mount, she discovers more about her father than she had ever hoped to reveal.

“[A] brisk, prismatic and richly psychodramatic family portrait.” – Ben Kenigsberg, New York Times

Filmmaker Michael Gitlin will moderate a conversation with Lynne Sachs, after the film.

Purchase tickets here.

YBCA / San Francisco Cinematheque: Contemporary Views from the Bay Area

https://ybca.org/event/san-francisco-cinematheque-contemporary-views-from-the-bay-area/?mibextid=Zxz2cZ

In partnership with San Francisco Cinematheque | October 21, 2023, 3–5 PM

Join us for nine works by ten contemporary Bay Area filmmakers, a cross-section of the Bay Area’s ever-vibrant multi-generational community curated by Steve Polta, artistic director of San Francisco Cinematheque. These works present a compelling mix of contemplative landscape study, critiques of consumerism and media representation, poetic considerations of solitude and connection, and an abiding love for the physical and chemical charms of the filmic medium itself. Full program details, program notes, and artist bios available at sfcinematheque.org →

Curated by BAN9 Curatorial Counsel member Gina Basso, the ongoing BAN9 Film series will span the entirety of the exhibition, featuring acclaimed Bay Area filmmakers, collectives, and new media artists. Offerings will vary monthly, reflecting BAN9’s curatorial themes and diving into the breadth and depth of the Bay Area’s vibrant film scene by highlighting the local organizations and individuals who contribute to the shape and form of the region’s rich cinematic landscape.

Films

(sans)(image) (arc and Sophia Wang, 7 min, 2023, 16mm, black and white, sound)

Light Signal (Emily Chao, 11 min, 2022, 16mm screened as digital video, color, sound)

Caracole (for Mac) (Nathaniel Dorsky, 7 min, 2022, 16mm, color, silent)

The Canyon (Zachary Epcar, 15 min, 2020, 16mm, color, sound)

Locus Suspectus (J.M. Mártinez, 8 min, 2020, digital video, color, silent)

water, clock (Zack Parinella, 9 min, 2021, 16mm, black and white, sound)

The Pendulum (Linda Scobie, 3 min, 2021, 16mm, color, sound)

Girl is Presence (Lynne Sachs and Anne Lesley Selcer, 4 min, 2020, digital video, color, sound)

Tropicollage (Astria Suparak, 1 min, 2021, digital video, silent, color)

“Oberhausen meets Paderborn” / The 14th Short Film Night

NOA, NOA and A MONTH OF SINGLE FRAMES screen at The 14th Short Film Night, Paderborn University

https://www.uni-paderborn.de/en/event-item/oberhausen-trifft-paderborn-die-14-kurzfilmnacht-praesentiert-internationale-meisterwerke

The city of Paderborn is ready to celebrate the highlights of international short film art when “Oberhausen meets Paderborn” opens its doors for an unforgettable short film night. The event will take place on Wednesday, 18 October at 8pm at Pollux by Cineplex (Westernstraße 34, 33098 Paderborn). Tickets are available online from Cineplex or directly at the box office.

The Short Film Night offers the opportunity to discover emerging talents and renowned filmmakers from all over the world. The programme includes new works by filmmakers such as Lynne Sachs from the USA and artists from Colombia as well as German and Austrian productions. The diverse selection reflects the global range of cinematic art and invites the audience to explore new perspectives and stories.

A special highlight of the event is the presentation of short films carefully selected by students of Paderborn University. Within a seminar, the students were able to experience the “69th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen” and have then put together a programme. These films are the result of passionate work and creative inspiration, covering a wide range of genres and narrative styles.

The 14th “Oberhausen meets Paderborn” Short Film Night is not only an opportunity to enjoy art and culture, but also a platform for filmmakers and the audience to exchange ideas and network. Film enthusiasts in particular will have the opportunity to see short films that are otherwise rarely seen on the internet or even on the big screen.

About “Oberhausen meets Paderborn

“Oberhausen meets Paderborn” is an annual short film night that presents the best short films from around the world. The event provides a platform for emerging filmmakers and established artists to present their work to a wide audience and celebrate the magic of short film.

Cinema & Kurbelkiste / Investigation of a Flame

Investigation of A Flame in cooperation with Theater Münster
Film discussion with filmmaker Lynne Sachs
Sun October 15, 2023 • 6:00 p.m.
https://www.cinema-muenster.de/index.php?id=8025

https://www.cineplex.de/film/investigation-of-a-flame/396485/muenster/

Heaven, Hell, Happy Ending #2

In May 1968, the Catonsville Nine, a group of Catholic priests and laypeople who wanted to stop the Vietnam War, burned draft records. They used homemade napalm. They had previously stolen the files from a district military replacement office in broad daylight. For some it was a crime, for others it was civil disobedience. For the composer Leonard Bernstein, this action, which caused a lot of attention in the public and also in the Catholic Church, was an important impulse for his musical theater piece Mass. He was friends with Father Daniel Berrigan, who was sentenced to prison for this action.

The feminist filmmaker Lynne Sachs made a film about this action in 2001 and allowed the activists, but also employees of the authority, jurors and the public prosecutor to have their say: How do they see the action in retrospect?

She comes to Münster for the premiere of the film (with German subtitles) and speaks to Professor Dr. Oliver Tolmein after the screening about the film and the meaning and consequences of civil disobedience.

This is the second event in “Heaven, Hell, Happy Ending”, the new series that accompanies musical theater productions.

Lynne Sachs If Tomorrow were Peace from Lynne Sachs on Vimeo.

Photos from Münster

PETROPRESENTS / Lynne Sachs: Making Films Personally and Politically

PETROPRESENTS at Petrohradská 13 Screening and Workshop in Prague, Czech Republic
Tuesday October 10 and Thursday October 12

https://www.kinopetrohradska.cz/klient-3684/kino-547/stranka-17030/film-652442

https://www.facebook.com/events/2283738891833693/2283747248499524/?event_time_id=2283747248499524

For the final PETROPRESENTS at Petrohradská 13, we have invited American poet and filmmaker Lynne Sachs for two evenings of hand-picked short film screenings and one workshop, which are free for the public. Curated by Christopher Small and Daniela Hanusová.

TUESDAY 10
19:30 Program 1: Film is a Collaborative Art (90 mins)

THURSDAY 12
18:00 Lynne Sachs: Making Films Personally and Politically (Workshop, 60 mins)
19:30 Program 2: Feminism as Filmmaking (90 mins)

Lynne Sachs will be present for two nights of screenings, on Tuesday 10th and Thursday 12th October. Before the second program on the 12th, Lynne will give a special workshop to the students of Film Studies at Charles University, which is also open to the public, at Petrohradská kolektiv in Prague, Czech Republic.

Admission to the screenings and the workshop are free of charge, but the capacity of the workshop is limited, so please register if you wish to take part.

Lynne Sachs’s work — both cinematic and poetic — and theoretical thinking teeter on multiple edges; somewhere between the deeply personal and the general, the corporeal and the abstract, the introspective yet always relatable. Kino Petrohradská will screen two blocks of her short documentaries: one exploring feminism as a method of filmmaking, the other Sachs’ frequent tendency to make films collaboratively and communally – whether with her family or with other filmmakers (as in her collaboration with queer cinema pioneer Barbara Hammer on A Month of Single Frames).

In her talk, Sachs will combine film and feminist theory with labour history, focusing on the concepts of reproductive labour, performativity and somatic cinema. The lecture will be based on her forthcoming collaborative publication (with contributions from, for example, the prominent feminist theorist Silvia Federici). The book analyses the process of making her film The Washing Society, exploring the milieu of New York’s laundries and the intersections of immigration, race and capitalism. The talk will be followed by a discussion.

DRAWN & QUARTERED (3 min., 1987)
Recently read Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”.
Male gaze challenged.
Talk about French feminist theorists Helene Cixous, Luce Irigeray and Julia Kristeva.

WINDOW WORK (9 min, 2000)
I was performer, cameraperson, and director – one woman band so to speak.
Talk about domestic work, being a mother, Silvia Federici (who came into my life much later), “Wages for House Work” and her theories of Reproductive Labor. Talk about Chantal Ackerman’s “The Bed”.

ATALANTA: 32 YEARS LATER (5 min., 2006)
Revision of mythic story of the princess Atlanta whose father, the King, wanted her to marry a prince. She refused, unless he organized a competition of princes around the kingdom who would race to see who was the fastest. The fastest could marry her. I rewrite this, “queer” it, feminize it as we might say today.
Dedicated to Barbara Hammer.

AND THEN WE MARCHED (3 min. 2017)
How do we as artists participate in the swirl of mainstream politics. Can we change thinking? How does our witness make a difference?

CONTRACTIONS (10 min. 2024)
Working collectively to speak out for reproductive justice. Just the act of coming together can make a difference at least amongst ourselves. Talk about Fred Moten’s concept of “hesitant sociology”. Talk about Meredith Monk’s “Elis Island.”

THE JITTERS (3 min. 2023)
Coming full circle with Drawn and Quarted almost 40 years later. Talk about Carolee Schneeman’s “Fuses”.

Interactive Section – how do we move a concern, concept or conundrum from just being an idea to being a visual or oral experience of very short duration?

Listen to topics from our volunteers and brainstorm on a film they really could make with their cell phone and a computer editing program they probably already have.