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10 Films:
“XY Chromosome Project” 12 min. 2007
“The Small Ones”, 3 min. video 2006
“Noa, Noa”, 8 min. 16mm, 2006
“Atalanta 32 Years Later” 5 min. video, 2006
“Tornado”, 4 min. video 2002
“Photograph of Wind” 4 min. 16mm, silent, 2001
“Window Work” 9 min. video, 2000
“Following the Object to Its Logical Beginning”, 9 min. 16mm. 1987..
“Still Life With Woman and Four Objects”, 4 min. B&W 16mm., 1986
“Drawn and Quartered”, 4 min. color 16mm., 1987
“Lynne Sachs is best known for her spirited and lyrical essay films---films defined by an unwavering woman's inflection and a commitment to pry the cracks in official history. However, throughout Sachs's career, we've been treated to a succession of short experimental works that tease out the details of the everyday with the same clarity of vision and instinct for the hand-nurtured image as her much-lauded lengthier works. These films and videotapes, whether they be mystified glimpses of childhood, reinventions of films past, or formal excursions into the poetic, surrender the wonder of a world seen by an artist with a soulful eye and a conscientious heart.”
--Steve Seid, Film-Video Curator, Pacific Film Archive
“Equal parts humanist and formalist, poet and historian, telling tales that are both timeless and political, Lynne Sachs creates film worlds in which the textures of daily domestic life are seamlessly connected to the realms of war, political activism, and our response to terrorist attacks. In one film, a grid becomes a secret map for understanding the difference between male and female. In another, an affectionate portrait of her young daughter becomes a study of whirling circular energy. For each of these ten shorts, Sachs creates a unique film language, by weaving together images, sounds, and words that evoke a particular way of viewing the world. All of these works reveal a sensibility that refuses to flatten either life or art, insisting on a multilevel reality in which the personal and the universal become doorways to a broader consciousness.”
--David Finkelstein, writer for filmthreat.com
“Sachs suspends in time a single moment of her daughter.”
-- Fred Camper, Chicago Reader
“Very gentle and evocative of foreign feelings.”
--George Kuchar, filmmaker
“Profound, the soundtrack amazing….the image of the girl with the avocado seed so hopeful.”
--Barbara Hammer, filmmkaer
“In Sachs’s theatrical, microcosmic worlds, the everyday is defamiliarized. Objects — toys, hands, a cherry pie, a miniature Empire State Building — resonate and tremble.” Bosko Blagojevic, Flavorpill.net
All films in a printable format
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XY Chromosome Project
directed by Lynne Sachs, and
USA,
Experimental,
2006,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:12:00
"Sachs and Street engage in visual and aural dialogue to explore the spaces between abstraction and representation. Street's tactile images use handpainted found footage and camera-less films like luminous pa... more info
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Small Ones, The
directed by Lynne Sachs, and
USA,
Experimental,
2007,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:03:00
During WWII, the US Army hired Sach's cousin, Dr. Sandor Lenard, to reconstruct the bones--small and large--of dead American Soldiers. This elliptical work, which resonates as an anti-war meditation, is compo... more info
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Noa, Noa
directed by Lynne Sachs, and
USA,
Experimental,
2006,
16mm,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:08:00
Lynne collaborated with her daughter Noa, from age five to eight, on this film as they criss-crossed the woods of Brooklyn with costumes and cameras in their hands. Noa's grand finale is her own rendition of ... more info
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Atalanta 32 Years Later
directed by Lynne Sachs, and
USA,
Experimental,
2006,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:05:00
In 1974, Marlo Thomas' hip, liberal celebrity gang created a feminist version of the myth of Atalanta for mainstream TV's "Free to Be You and Me". Thirty-two years later, Sachs transforms the age-old story of... more info
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Tornado
directed by David Moroski
USA,
Animation,
2000,
Color,
Optical Stereo,
00:02:00
A "Folk Art Animation" film portraying an accelerated view of a tornado's life cycle. ... more info
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Photograph of Wind
directed by Lynne Sachs, and
USA,
Experimental,
2001,
16mm,
Color,
Silent,
00:04:00
"My daughter's name is Maya. I've been told that the word maya means illusion in Hindu philosophy. As I wntch her growing up, spinning like a top around me, I realize that her childhood is not something I can... more info
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Window Work
directed by Lynne Sachs, and
USA,
Experimental,
2000,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:09:00
A woman drinks tea, washes a window and reads the paper -- simple tasks that suggest a quiet mystery within and beyond the image. She listens to a symphony of crickets, Jangling toys, the roar of a jet, and c... more info
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Following The Object to Its Logical Beginning
directed by Lynne Sachs, and
USA,
Experimental,
1987,
16mm,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:09:00
A woman observes five undramatic moments in a man's life, as if he were one of Eadweard Muybridge scientific photo experiments. A study in visual obsession and a twist on the notion of the "gaze".
... more info
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Still Life With Woman and Four Objects
directed by Lynne Sachs, and
USA,
Experimental,
1986,
16mm,
B&W,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:04:00
This film portrait falls somewhere between a painting and a prose poem. Sachs looks at a fictional woman's daily routines and thoughts. By interweaving threads of history and fiction, the film also becomes a ... more info
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Drawn and Quartered
directed by Lynne Sachs, and
USA,
Experimental,
1987,
16mm,
Color,
Silent,
00:04:00
Lynne and her friend John shot this film with a Regular 8 camera on a roof in San Francisco, literally creating a "drawn and quartered" image. Mostly, they each exist in their own private domains, separated b... more info
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This DVD has never been screened
Reviews and Other Info:
2008-02-22 Salon.com
By Andrew O’Hehir
Best known for her essayistic documentaries "Investigation of a Flame" and "Which Way Is East," Lynne Sachs has an alternate career as a creator of experimental shorts likelier to be seen in art museums than movie theaters. Ranging from 1986 to 2006, and from 3 to 12 minutes in length, the examples in "10 Short Films" are lyrical and challenging, personal but never dogmatic, often totally mysterious and just as often surpassingly beautiful.
| 2008-02-13 Curled up with a good DVD
By Eric Renshaw
It is difficult to review a collection of short films; it seems that each film in Lynne Sachs: 10 Short Films and Videos, Vol. 3 should be judged on its own merit. Each is interesting in its own way, and nearly every frame could be isolated and used as an effective still photograph.
In "Drawn and Quartered," Lynne and her friend John filmed themselves on a roof in 1987 - mostly naked, mostly isolated in their own frames, cells of film. Lynne mostly occupies the two cells on the right, John the two on the left. Pretty unremarkable activities, but the observation at such close range holds the viewer's eye. It's not only the voyeuristic element that so draws the watcher, but that each of the four cells demands observation.
"Tornado" was filmed on 12 September, 2001. Lynne sorted through debris that had wafted into a New York park from the fallen World Trade Center towers since the previous day. Some narration and text on the screen contrast the events of September 11th with the modus operandi of a tornado. The use of video in this one seems to inject a now-ness to the work. While most of us are now wired to pay special attention to any work about 9-11 and revere it, Lynne's film is remarkably well-done. Understated. It ends observing some people enjoying a day in the park. Life is fragile.
"Atalanta Thirty-Two Years Later" is a retelling twice-removed of the Greek myth of Atalanta, a re-tooling of the version used in Marlo Thomas' "Free to Be...You and Me." Lynne turns that version on its side in a very literal way: the 1974 cartoon is shown rotated sideways in a split-screen and most of the audio run backward. The story is told of Atalanta, who must choose a mate from the many men who toil over canapes and fine food for a feast in her honor. In the end, Atalanta finds her love outside of the traditional pool of suitors, arriving on a different ending than either of the previous works. I think Marlo Thomas would approve.
A beautiful collection of art here. Not every film grabbed me in the same way, but each of them had me gently by the hand.
| 2007-12-19 filmthreat.com
By David Finkelstein
Equal parts humanist and formalist, poet and historian, telling tales that are both timeless and political, Lynne Sachs creates film worlds in which the textures of daily domestic life are seamlessly connected to the realms of war, political activism, and our response to terrorist attacks. In one film, a grid becomes a secret map for understanding the difference between male and female. In another, an affectionate portrait of her young daughter becomes a study of whirling circular energy. For each of these ten shorts, Sachs creates a unique film language, by weaving together images, sounds, and words that evoke a particular way of viewing the world. All of these works reveal a sensibility that refuses to flatten either life or art, insisting on a multilevel reality in which the personal and the universal become doorways to a broader consciousness.
| 2007-12-19 Film-Video Curator, Pacific Film Archive
By Steve Seid
Lynne Sachs is best known for her spirited and lyrical essay films---films defined by an unwavering woman's inflection and a commitment to pry the cracks in official history. However, throughout Sachs's career, we've been treated to a succession of short experimental works that tease out the details of the everyday with the same clarity of vision and instinct for the hand-nurtured image as her much-lauded lengthier works. These films and videotapes, whether they be mystified glimpses of childhood, reinventions of films past, or formal excursions into the poetic, surrender the wonder of a world seen by an artist with a soulful eye and a conscientious heart.
| 0000-00-00 Chicago Reader
By Fred Camper
Sachs suspends in time a single moment of her daughter.
| 2007-06-20
By George Kuchar
Very gentle and evocative of foreign feelings.
| 2007-06-20
By Barbara Hammer
Profound, the soundtrack amazing….the image of the girl with the avocado seed so hopeful.
| 2007-06-20 Flavorpill.net
By Bosko Blagojevic
In Sachs’s theatrical, microcosmic worlds, the everyday is defamiliarized. Objects — toys, hands, a cherry pie, a miniature Empire State Building — resonate and tremble.
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