LA Film Forum Logo

Lynne Sachs: Two Los Angeles Premieres

Lynne Sachs: Two Los Angeles Premieres

Lynne Sachs in person!

Filmforum is delighted to welcome back New York filmmaker Lynne Sachs with the Los Angeles premieres of two of her unique works.  Moving regularly through the different possibilities of documentary and narrative approaches, Sachs finds the simple beauties and underlying social tensions of people trying to form their places in the world.  Quietly empathetic with people often overlooked, and easily conversant with all the tools of filmmaking, each work from Sachs offers up a new way of looking at people and a new way of thinking about film.

For more event information: www.lafilmforum.org, or 323-377-7238

Tickets: $10 general, $6 students/seniors; free for Filmforum members.  Available by credit card in advance from Brown Paper Tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/544375 or at the door.

Screening organized in collaboration with REDCAT

A different screening with Lynne Sachs will be held at REDCAT on Monday January 20th, 8:30 pm, with the Los Angeles premiere of Your Day is My Night (2013, 64 min., HD)

See http://www.redcat.org for information

Lynne Sachs makes films, videos, installations and web projects that explore the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences by weaving together poetry, collage, painting, politics and layered sound design. Since 1994, her five essay films have taken her to Vietnam, Bosnia, Israel and Germany - sites affected by international war-where she tries to work in the space between a community's collective memory and her own subjective perceptions. Strongly committed to a dialogue between cinematic theory and practice, Sachs searches for a rigorous play between image and sound, pushing the visual and aural textures in her work with each and every new project. Since 2006, she has collaborated with her partner Mark Street in a series of playful, mixed-media performance collaborations they call The XY Chromosome Project. In addition to her work with the moving image, Sachs co-edited the Millennium Film Journal issue on "Experiments in Documentary".

Supported by fellowships from the Rockefeller and Jerome Foundations and the New York State Council on the Arts, her films have screened at the New York Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival and Toronto's Images Festival as well as a five-film survey at the Buenos Aires Film Festival. The San Francisco Cinematheque recently published a monograph with four original essays in conjunction with a full retrospective of her work.  Lynne Sachs teaches experimental film and video at New York University and The New School and lives in Brooklyn.  More at www.lynnesachs.com

---------------
This program is supported by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles; and the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. Additional support generously provided by American Cinematheque. We also depend on our members, ticket buyers, and individual donors.

Los Angeles Filmforum is the city's longest-running organization screening experimental and avant-garde film and video art, documentaries, and experimental animation.  2014 is our 39th year.

Coming Soon to Los Angeles Filmforum:

Sun Jan 26 – Brigid McCaffrey

Memberships available, $70 single, $115 dual, or $50 single student

Contact us at lafilmforum@yahoo.com.

Find us online at http://lafilmforum.org.

Become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @LosAngFilmforum!

Last Happy Day 1

The Last Happy Day

The Last Happy Day

(2009, 38 min., digital video)

Directed by Lynne Sachs

Los Angeles premiere!

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

WindinHairSachsnoa and city 2

Wind in Our Hair (Con viento en el pelo)

Wind in Our Hair (Con viento en el pelo)

(2010, digital video 42 min) (Spanish & English with English subtitles)

Directed by Lynne Sachs

Los Angeles premiere!

Inspired by the stories of Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, yet blended with the realities of contemporary Argentina, Wind in Our Hair is an experimental narrative about four girls discovering themselves through a fascination with the trains that pass by their house. A story of early-teen anticipation and disappointment, Wind in Our Hair is circumscribed by a period of profound Argentine political and social unrest. Shot with 16mm, Super 8mm, Regular 8mm film and video, the film follows the girls to the train tracks, into kitchens, on sidewalks, in costume stores, and into backyards in the heart of Buenos Aires as well as the outskirts of town. Sachs and her Argentine collaborators move about Buenos Aires with their cameras, witnessing the four playful girls as they wander a city embroiled in a debate about the role of agribusiness, food resources and taxes. Using an intricately constructed Spanish-English “bilingual” soundtrack, Sachs and her co-editor, Puerto Rican filmmaker Sofia Gallisá, articulate this atmosphere of urban turmoil spinning about the young girls’ lives.   Wind in Our Hair also includes the daring, ethereal music of Argentine singer Juana Molina.

“The film moves from childhood's earthbound, cloistered spaces into the skittering beyond of adolescence, exploding with anticipation and possibility.” -- Todd Lillethun, Program Director,  Chicago Filmmakers

“… Lynne Sachs creates an experimental narrative about a group of girls on the verge of adolescence. While their lives are blissful and full of play, the political and social unrest of contemporary Argentina begins to invade their idyllic existence. Sachs’ brilliant mixture of film formats complements the shifts in mood from innocent amusement to protest. “ -- Dean Otto, Film and Video Curator, Walker Art Center