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Brooklyn Poets Book Launch: Rachel Edelman with Lynne Sachs and Diane Exavier

https://brooklynpoets.org/events/all/brooklyn-poets-book-launch-edelman

Saturday, February 17, 2024
7:00 PM 9:00 PM
Brooklyn Poets, 144 Montague StreetBrooklyn, NY, 11201

Join us for the launch of poet Rachel Edelman’s new collection of poems, Dear Memphis, on Saturday, February 17, at 144 Montague St and via Zoom! Doors will open for a wine reception for in-person guests at 6 PM and readings will begin at 7 PM. Lynne Sachs and Diane Exavier will open for Edelman. Book signing to follow.

Note that by attending this event, you agree to abide by our code of conduct and COVID-19 policy below. Effective January 8, 2024, all event attendees except readers at a safe distance on stage are required to wear masks due to the current rise in cases in NYC. Our full policy can be found at the end of the event description. Brooklyn Poets reserves the right to dismiss from our programs any participant found to be in violation of these policies. Thank you for respecting our community.

About Dear Memphis

“What do I know of exile?” asks the speaker in Dear Memphis, standing inside the colliding geographies and intimate economies of the American South. Offering a direct address to the city where the poet grew up, this collection explores the displacement and belonging of a Jewish family in Memphis, Tennessee, alongside their histories of community and environment. The simultaneous richness and spareness of Edelman’s poems sing with their attention to the particular body and what it cannot carry, what it cannot put down. Through letters, visual art, city documents, and dialogue, Dear Memphis excavates ancestry, inheritance and the ecological possibility of imagining a future.

About the Author

Rachel Edelman is a Jewish poet raised in Memphis, Tennessee, who writes into diasporic living. Dear Memphis, published by River River Books, is their debut collection of poems. Her poems have appeared in Narrative, the Seventh Wave, the Threepenny Review, West Branch and many other journals. They have received material support from City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, the Academy of American Poets, Mineral School, Crosstown Arts, and Tin House, and finalist commendations from the Adrienne Rich Award, the Pink Poetry Prize, and the National Poetry Series. Edelman earned a BA in English and geology from Amherst College and an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington. She teaches language arts in the Seattle Public Schools, where embodiment and care root her personal, poetic and pedagogical practice.

About the Opening Acts

Lynne Sachs is a filmmaker and poet who grew up in Memphis and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Over the last four decades, she has created cinematic works that defy genre through the use of hybrid forms and cross-disciplinary collaboration, incorporating elements of documentary, performance, and collage. Her films and poems explore the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences, often from a personal, self-reflexive point of view. With each film, Sachs investigates the implicit connection between the body, the camera and the materiality of film itself. Her early works on celluloid offer a feminist approach to the creation of images and writing— a commitment which has grounded her vision ever since. Early in her career, Lynne returned to her hometown to make Sermons and Sacred Pictures (1989), a documentary on the life and work of Reverend L.O. Taylor, an African American minister and filmmaker from Memphis. Lynne’s films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Film Festival, and Sundance. Retrospectives of her work have been presented at the Museum of the Moving Image, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Buenos Aires International Festival, Festival International de Havana, and China Women’s Film Festival.

Diane Exavier is a writer, theatermaker and educator working at the intersection of performance and poetry. She is author of the poetry collection The Math of Saint Felix and the chapbook Teaches of Peaches. Diane concerns herself with what she recognizes as the 4 L’s: love, loss, legacy and land. Her work has been presented with the New Group, BRIC Arts, Bowery Poetry Club, Dixon Place and more. She has been commissioned for new play development by the Sloan Foundation, the New Group, and Lucille Lortel Theatre. Most recently, Diane coedited the 2023 new critical edition of Jean Toomer’s Cane. A 2021 Jerome Foundation finalist, Diane lives and works in Brooklyn.

FOUR DIRECTIONS AT THE SAME TIME: A CINEMATIC JOURNEY OF INTROSPECTION CURATED BY LYNNE SACHS / CRYPTOFICTION

still from Tiff Rekem’s *Declarations of Love*

https://www.crypto-fiction.com/on-demand

Watch a conversation with the filmmakers below.

In these four distinct experimental documentaries, each artist takes us on a journey of introspection, embracing an inventive cinematic language that sparks us into thinking about the fragility of our place on this earth. In each film, we are given a new context by which to grapple with the delicacy of the mind, the body and the image.

In “The Whelming Sea”, Sean Hanley shares a side of New York City that most of us have never seen. With tenderness and insight, he unveils the wild adventure of the horseshoe crab as it lands on the beaches of New York City, one of the largest metropolises in the United States. With our climate as overwhelmed as it is, this could be a very distressing migration story, but somehow these animals survive.

Tiff Rekem’s “Declarations of Love” witnesses the filmmaker’s father struggling in his own sardonic way to survive modern life. Hardly daunted by the encroaching fires broiling within view of his comfortable desert home, he mows the lawn, feeds his turtle and deals with the intricacies of a befuddled customer service caller. He can’t be too lonely; his daughter is there, behind the camera, giving him all
the permissions he needs to simply be himself.

Artist rebecca shapass brings us into a dystopic cosmos that is both familiar and other-worldly in her film “no more room in hell”. Inhabited by zombies rather than people or animals, this liminal nocturnal space never truly witnesses the light of day. Inside a decaying industrial cityscape, we are thrown into the spirit of a late 1960s George Romero horror film through the trajectory of a driverless car. Together, these disparate milieus propel us into thinking about our propensity to go as fast as we can toward oblivion.

In Erica Sheu’s cine-poem “Grandmother’s Scissors” we find an intimate silent conversation built around the exchange of images and lines of poetic text shared by a grand-daughter filmmaker with her seamstress grandmother. Ingeniously constructed like a filmic tapestry, Sheu’s celebration of her elder gives voice to a woman who knows that strength come to us all by way of a “strong heart” and a bold,
confident vision.

The Whelming Sea by Sean Hanley (29 mins, color, sound, 2020)

Declarations of Love by Tiff Rekem (29 min. color, sound, 2022)

no more room in hell by rebecca shapass (23 min., color, sound, 2023)

Grandma’s Scissors by Erica Sheu (6 min, Super 8, color & b/w, silent, 2021

Watch the four films here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/lynnesachscurated

Lynne Sachs’ This Side of Salina awarded NYSCA Support for Artists grant / Light Work – Urban Video Project

Lynne Sachs Awarded a New York State Council on the Arts Support for Artists Grant.

Brooklyn, NY – Lynne Sachs received a Support for Artists grant
from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) to support her creative
work. Sponsored by Urban Video Project, this award will fund This Side of Salina.
Through New York State’s continued investment in arts and culture, NYSCA has
awarded over $80 million since Spring 2023 to over 1,500 artists and organizations
across the state.

Governor Kathy Hochul said, “Research confirms what we’ve always known here in
New York: arts and culture are a powerhouse, with a staggering return on investment
for our economy and our communities. Nonprofit arts and culture organizations and their
audiences generated $151.7 billion in economic activity nationwide in 2022 and New
York’s unparalleled arts and culture sector is leading the way to benefit our residents,
our students and our visitors every day. I commend these grantees on their
achievements and look forward to their contributions in the coming year.”
NYSCA Chair Katherine Nicholls added, “Thanks to the unwavering support of
Governor Hochul and our Legislature, NYSCA is so proud to support the work of
organizations and artists from all across New York. Spanning the entire breadth of the
arts and culture sector – from world-renowned performers to after-school programs,
from long established museums to community arts collectives – these organizations and
artists together are a powerful driver of health, tourism, economy and education for our
residents and visitors. On behalf of Council and staff, congratulations to Lynne Sachs and thank you for your perseverance, your creativity and your tireless service to
New York State.”

About the New York State Council on the Arts
The mission of the New York State Council on the Arts is to foster and advance the full
breadth of New York State’s arts, culture, and creativity for all. To support the ongoing
recovery of the arts across New York State, the Council on the Arts will award $127
million in FY 2024. The Council on the Arts further advances New York’s creative
culture by convening leaders in the field and providing organizational and professional
development opportunities and informational resources. Created by Governor Nelson
Rockefeller in 1960 and continued with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the
New York State Legislature, the Council is an agency that is part of the Executive
Branch.

Lynne’s Project: This Side of Salina

Almost 200 years ago, a group of Central New York women gathered together to voice their opposition to the fact that women in the United States had no legal identity separate from their husbands, were unable to sign contracts, vote, own property, obtain access to education, or gain custody of their children after divorce. Ever since those pivotal conversations were held at the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848, women have been slowly but surely claiming their place in society in terms of their ability to make their own decisions about their own lives. This sense of progress came to an abrupt ending on June 24, 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court made a landmark decision which held that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Throughout the country, women were told that they no longer had control of their own bodies.

I come to the topic of abortion fully aware of its volatile place in our country’s story. Tensions between the role of the state and bodily freedom go back to the very earliest days of our nation’s history. Just as the 1619 Project reignited the conversation around race and the pivotal place of slavery in this country’s narrative in 2020, newly charged debates around the legality of abortion force us to recognize the precarious relationship that women in this country have to their own bodies.

With the support of Light Work through their Urban Video Project, I will create “This Side of Salina, a 15-minute film and two associated live performances which will bring people with uteruses and their allies together in an area of New York State that has long been known as a hotbed for feminist outrage and action. In collaboration with a range of organizations from Syracuse and neighboring towns, I will work with approximately 20 experienced and emerging artists as well as other interested participants. I will produce, photograph and record movements, gestures and spoken word poetry that emerge from our discussions around this disturbing and far-reaching shift in American society. Each of us will come to this moment as a witness to a problematic moment in our collective history.

My creative process for “This Side of Salina” will include connecting with organizations such as the Syracuse Community Choir and Sankofa Reproductive Health and Healing Center as well as student, art, religious, and activist groups in the area. In addition, as part of my research, I plan to reach out to Syracuse-based artists and performers, including poet and chant performance artist Amarachi Attamah, as well as Syracuse performance and conceptual artist Sayward Schoonmaker, whose recent piece “Majority Opinion (Presented from the Majority Perspective)” uses the Supreme Court’s Majority Opinion from the Dobbs case as source material for a verbatim documentary performance.

On June 24, 2023, the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision, I returned to my own hometown of Memphis, Tennessee to produce one section of a collaborative film project about abortion clinics across the country closing their doors in the wake of the overturning of Roe v Wade. In “This Side of Salina”, I will further develop the aesthetic experimentation I began in this collaborative project. I am including five images from this project in my proposal. In Syracuse, I will photograph all of the participants either from behind, out-of-focus or in silhouette, which will allow them to express their responses to the issues we are exploring in a more physical, less traditionally “dramatic” form. There will be no faces in this film. In this way, our participants – whether they are new to this kind of improvisational work or veterans from the stage or screen – will work quasi-anonymously, as performers articulating a collective yet diverse point-of-view.

During my residency in Syracuse, I will also draw from my experience as a poet and a filmmaker with years of experience working with groups in both of these art forms, most recently at the Flowchart Foundation and the Poetry Society of America (both in New York State). I will ask my performers/ participants to write short texts that we will then shape into song. By working with local choral groups, we will bring these words into the film as a whole, emphasizing the sensation of “a loud whisper” which will allow listeners to hear distinctive articulations as well as a collective, musical breath. In this context, I would very much like to bring in internationally recognized singers Pamela Z and Josephine Foster (either in person or through video conference) to help us expand our relationship to the musical potential of voice and text. I believe that the vocal nature of this work will result in an aural experience that will be extremely moving for spectators (passers-by or attentive viewers) watching the film outside the Everson Museum.

My own interdisciplinary engagement with film and live performance includes two distinct projects created in New York City. In “Your Day is My Night” (2011 -2013), I blended autobiographical monologues, intimate conversations, and staged performances to explore the lives of Chinese immigrants sharing a “shift-bed” apartment in the heart of Chinatown. Working with seven performers over two years, we presented our piece in theaters and community centers in Manhattan and Brooklyn. In “Every Fold Matters” (a live performance with film presented from 2015 -2018) and later “The Washing Society” (a 45 min. film, 2018), I explored the charged, intimate space of the neighborhood laundromat by bringing together the people who work there with professional actors. Both of these projects are included as work samples in this proposal.

The final version of “This Side of Salina” will be a film and two live performances. I will direct both the film and the live component of this project. The film itself will be exhibited over three to four months during the 2024-25 program year as part of the Urban Video Project’s on-going architectural projection program. The two performances will also occur outside the museum in conjunction with the film screening.

A few weeks ago, I shot outside a former abortion clinic in Tennessee, one of the states in the US where abortion is no longer legal for ANY reason. I’ve been making films for three decades. I do not exaggerate when I say that this was probably the riskiest, most vulnerable film shoot I have ever directed. We had sixteen participants : 12 young women of child-bearing age, one older woman and two men. Everyone knew that it was potentially dangerous to make a film about abortion outside a building where these services had once been available but now are not. I did not tell my participants where we would be shooting until two days before our production date. We had several volunteer marshals to help with security, waiting in their cars or behind windows in nearby buildings in case anything happened. As precarious as we all felt at the time, standing in the scorching summer heat in medical gowns performing before a large camera, we were all excited, nervous and absolutely committed. While the stakes are not as precarious in New York, the issues resonate just as much. In Syracuse at the Everson Museum, I will work on these same issues, recognizing the long activist history of the region but also finding new ways to address the disturbing expansion of state control on women and their bodies.

Lynne Sachs included in Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive / Online Archive of California

https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8x06fvr/?query=lynne+sachs

Collection Guide

Collection Title: Sachs (Lynne) Collection
Collection Number: PFA.MSS.017
Get Items: Contact UC Berkeley::Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Collection Overview

Description: The collection represents the work of experimental documentary filmmaker Lynne Sachs, who has worked primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City since the 1980s. Included are articles and film screening notes about Sachs and her films; essays and other writings by Sachs; correspondence with other filmmakers including Barbara Hammer and Sylvia Schedelbauer; as well as still images and artist’s statements from each of the videos included in the original donation.

Background: Lynne Sachs is a New York-based filmmaker whose work combines experimental and documentary film traditions with a strongly feminist perspective. She has produced over 40 films as well as many performances and installation works, and publishes essays and poetry as extensions of her visual arts practice. Her films have screened at prestigious institutions and festivals worldwide and won numerous awards, including the 2020 Grand Prize at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen for a film made together with fellow experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer. Sachs began making films in San Francisco while attending San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Art Institute, drawing inspiration from and collaborating with many filmmakers including Bruce Conner, George Kuchar, Gunvor Nelson, Carolee Schneemann, and Trinh T. Min-ha. Sachs has also taught filmmaking at New York University, Hunter College, and the University of California, Berkeley, among other institutions.

Extent: 2.5 cartons Generally printouts and photocopies of flyers, essays, correspondence, and press clippings.

Availability: The collection is open for research in person in the BAMPFA Film Library and Study Center. Remote access to digital files in the collection is not currently possible, pending arrangements with the donor. Please contact the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive Film Library and Study Center for details.

Screen Slate Best Movies of 2023: First Viewings & Discoveries and Individual Ballots – Andrea Torres / Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor

Each year Screen Slate invites our dozens of contributors—along with filmmakers, critics, performers, programmers, cinema workers, community organizers, and other friends—to submit their lists of favorite “First Viewings and Discoveries.”

Some of the many special guests this year include Isabelle Huppert, Wim Wenders, Illeana Douglas, Paul Schrader, Isabel Sandoval, John Wilson, Mets director John DeMarsico, Elsie Fisher, Michael Almereyda, Lila Avilés, Radu Jude, and several filmmakers whose work appears in our top 20, such as Frederick Wiseman (*Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros*), Ira Sachs (*Passages*), Claire Simon (*Our Body*), Daniel Goldhaber (*How to Blow Up a Pipeline*), and Samy Burch (screenwriter, *May December*).
Responses appear below in the format they were submitted, along with individual “Best of 2023” ballots if submitted.

For the aggregated Best of 2023 list tabulated from these responses, visit here, and see also Amy Taubin’s Top Ten, pulled from the December issue of *Artforum*.
Our annual end-of-year poll is guest edited by Nicolas Rapold. Art: Steak Mtn. Editorial assistance: Lauren Lee.

Much gratitude to our community for the responses, and look forward to seeing you at the movies in 2024!

https://www.screenslate.com/articles/best-movies-2023-first-viewings-discoveries-and-individual-ballots#torres

ANDREA TORRES / PUBLICIST, FILM FORUM

Mädchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan, 1931)
With Beauty and Sorrow (Masahiro Shinoda, 1965)
Vampyres (José Ramón Larraz, 1974)
Caged Heat (Jonathan Demme, 1974)
A Question of Love (Jerry Thorpe, 1978)
A Woman Like Eve (Nouchka van Brakel, 1979)
Simone Barbes or Virtue (Marie-Claude Treilhou, 1980)
The Mark of Lilith (Bruna Fionda, Polly Gladwin, Zach Mack-Nataf, 1986)
The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (Maria Maggenti, 1995)
MURDER and murder (Yvonne Rainer, 1996)
Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor (Lynne Sachs, 2018)

A selection of these films and more will screen at Film Forum in February 2024 as part of the two-week series, Sapph-O-Rama!, a celebration of the lesbian film canon and a survey of sapphic cinema through the last century. Programmed by Emily Greenberg and myself.

Filmform / Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor added to Swedish Film Archive

Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor

From 2015 to 2017, Lynne Sachs visited with Carolee Schneemann, Barbara Hammer and Gunvor Nelson, three multi-faceted artists who have embraced the moving image throughout their lives. From Carolee’s 18th Century house in the woods of Upstate New York to Barbara’s West Village studio to Gunvor’s childhood village in Sweden, Lynne shoots film with each woman in the place where she finds grounding and spark.

“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.

Lynne Sachs for Petro presents from Lynne Sachs on Vimeo.

Lynne Sachs in Letters as Films compiled by Garbiñe Ortega

More than 50 postcards, manuscripts, typewritten letters and even emails are presented alongside stills, drawings and storyboards to create a stunning epistolary archive many years in the making. Curator and Punto de Vista International Documentary Film Festival director Garbiñe Ortega has compiled these materials in an effort to “create echoes and reverberations between materials which, as in a film, thanks to the editing, take on another meaning beyond their specific content.”

The volume includes correspondence exchanged among filmmakers Jodie Mack, Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, Jorge Honik, Claudio Caldini, Lech Kowalski, Nicole Brenez, Marcel Hanoun, Nathaniel Dorsky, George Kuchar, Nazli Dinçel, Norman McLaren, Maya Deren, Jean Vigo, Richard Leacock, Monica Flaherty, Richard Linklater, Gabe Kingler, Robert Breer, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, Fernando Trueba, Jean-Marie Straub, Jim Jarmusch, Hanun Farocki, Robert Frank, Fred Wiseman, Margaret Tait, Ute Aurand, Terrence Malick, Lynne Sachs and Gunvor Nelson.

Published in 2021, Spanish & English

https://i-n-g-a.com/products/letters-as-films

Cartas como películas / Letters as Films

A project by Garbiñe Ortega

This book you are holding is the result of a project that, I assume, will accompany me for life. It involves a passionate investigation, one that has been underway for a number of years now, with the challenge of discovering relevant letters between filmmakers for the purpose of tracing unthought-of connections and relationships and drawing new cinematographic families and genealogies.

The year 2018 saw the publication of Correspondencia:cartas como películas (co- edited with Francisco Algadn Navarro for Punto de Vista), the first volume of a collection of letters containing names from the entire history of cinema, right from its origins, and laying the basis fr)f this second publication. On this occasion, the focus is on contemporary filmmakers, artists who are or have been active up to a relatively short time ago. This time the challenge is twofold. On the one hand, to find letters in these times in which our form of communication has changed radically, thanks to new technologies. Everything is immediate and far less developed than traditional letters. By necessity, this book includes not only letters but also emails, the new digital epistolary. On the other hand, being so close to the present, in many cases the materials in this book were very generously loaned by the filmmakers themselves, not so much by archives and institutional collections. This has conditioned the selection of the content, always for the better I think, as the filmmakers themselves are the first editors of their own material.

Right from the outset, we were aware that this book would be incomplete: ·we would inevitably leave out names, families, themes, letters. However, although we have aimed to keep it as diverse as possible, the project is not intended to be completeist, but consistent in its diversity. Accepting these limitations and freeing myself from this impossible objective of wanting to include ‘everything’, I have tried to create echoes and reverberations between materials which, as in a film, thanks to the editing, take on another meaning beyond their specific content. Thus it is a book that allows for different interpretations, from beginning to end, with a carefully thought-out order, always subjective, in which I propose relationships between letters and photos, leaps in time, inexplicit thematic sub- chapters (on how to deal with criticism or letters of admiration), small sequenced tributes (such as the one dedicated to Harun Farocki or to a generation from the American avant-garde cinema). However the book can also be read at random, allowing the reader to skip to any page desired and, l hope, to find a little jewel.

In the last chapter, entitled ‘The letters that weren’t are too’, which paraphrases a verse by the Basque poet Joseba Sarrionandia (‘The things that weren’t are too’), you will find a game that was proposed to an admired group of filmmakers who already represent the present and future of contemporary cinema. They all accepted this task of writing an imaginary letter to a filmmaker from an)’ era of the film history, whether living or dead, and V\ho they are not acquainted with. The further away from their own film genre, the better, I added to this imitation. The letters received are the result of an overwhelming creative richness and generosity. Here, letters are included from Deborah Stratman, lVIarianoLlinas, Ana Vaz, Rabih Mrouc, Luis Lopez Carrasco, and Jodie Mack.

This book would never have come into being without the work of many individuals: all the filmmakers who have contributed with letters from their m, n archives, some of which arc included herein, while we have put others aside for a forthcoming book. It would be impossible to name everyone, but you all know who you are. To all the institutions and professionals who we have worked with to obtain the materials, I would particularly express my thanks to Haden Guest, Simon Field, Lynne Sachs, Alexander Horwath, Antje Ehmann and Nicole Brenez for their unconditional support for this project. To Maria Rodriguez Abad, who has worked enthusiastically and tirelessly and who ought to write her own book on how she managed to obtain permission for each letter. To Francisco Algarin Navarro, who meticulously investigated, as only he knows how, seeking out letters and photos; to all the team from La Fabrica, and with a special mention to Miriam Querol for her great coordination work, and to Punto de Vista, who believed in the project and who are working with dedication on this infinite epistolary publication. A big thank you to Max Goldberg for his loyal support to my editorial projects which, in this case, has materialised in the form of a prologue to this book. To my dear colleagues and friends, Matias Pineiro, ldoia Zabaleta and Maria Palacios Cruz, with whom I think aloud through our ongoing correspondence. To lune, to my family, who accompany all these endless passions with lively pleasure.

To you, the reader, for immersing yourself in this small multi-dimensional journey. I hope you receive at least a little of the excitement that this project has given us.

Garbiñe Ortega

Gunvor Nelson / Lynne Sachs

Dear Lynne,

I have finally seen your film. I am very happy that l am pleased with my own

section thank you!

Quick first impressions: What a lush rural place and sweet old-fashioned house Carolee has. I notice that she still needs to show nakedness, only just a bit this time. I am surprised that Barbara moves so fast and vigorously as she walks toward the camera. Her section is the best and she is so good at presenting herself. She participates engagingly in what she says and shows. Her camera dance is a lot of fun!

I Iike my part also. The only negative is that my s-sounds sound like I have false teeth, anyway on my equipment here. Your closeups beautifully set the stage throughout the film.

I have not travelled since before Christmas, have not had the strength. Hopefully I can take the train to Stockholm in a few days in order to take care of film business, errands and to see a film-program. I will also look at electric tricycles, and maybe buy one – this because I am about to sell my car to my sister. I realize that it is best so since I have fainted a few times and with a tricycle I can take smaller roads and will be able to stop in time.

Thanks again Lynne, Gunvor

Website of Filmmaker Lynne Sachs