Lynne Sachs
Lynne Sachs (born August 10, 1961 in Memphis, Tennessee) is an American experimental filmmaker who makes films, videos, installations and web projects exploring the relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences. She is known for weaving together poetry, collage, painting, politics and layered sound design. After graduating from Brown University and majoring in history, she developed an interest in experimental documentary filmmaking while attending the 1985 Robert Flaherty Documentary Film Seminar through a scholarship. There, she was particularly inspired by the works of Bruce Conner, who would later become her mentor, and Maya Deren. That same year, Sachs moved to San Francisco to attend San Francisco State University and later the San Francisco Art Institute. It was during this time that she studied and collaborated with Trinh T. Minh-ha, George Kuchar and Gunvor Nelson. In 1989, she returned to Memphis, her hometown, to shoot Sermons and Sacred Pictures, her first long format experimental documentary. The film is a portrait of Reverend L. O. Taylor, an African-American minister and filmmaker from the 1930s and 40s.
Director
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The House of Science
The winner of numerous festival prizes, this early work by Lynne Sachs is a provocative film essay on women's perspectives on their bodies in a "man's world." It touches on everything from the female form's depiction in Renaissance art to the school of 19th century...Watch Movie -
Investigation of a Flame
On May 17, 1968 nine Vietnam War protesters led by Daniel and Philip Berrigan, walked into a Catonsville, Maryland draft board office, grabbed hundreds of selective service records and burned them with homemade napalm. INVESTIGATION OF A FLAME is an intimate, experimental...Watch Movie -
Which Way Is East
When two American sisters travel north from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, conversations with Vietnamese strangers and friends reveal to them the flip side of a shared history. Lynne and Dana Sachs' travel diary of their trip to Vietnam is a collection of tourism, city life,...Watch Movie
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A Biography of Lilith
In a lively mix of off-beat narrative, collage and memoir, A BIOGRAPHY OF LILITH updates the creation myth by telling the story of the first woman and for some, the first feminist. Lilith’s betrayal by Adam in Eden and subsequent vow of revenge is recast as a modern tale with...Watch Movie -
Atalanta: 32 Years Later
A retelling of the age-old fairy tale of the beautiful princess in search of the perfect prince. In 1974, Marlo Thomas’ hip, liberal celebrity gang created a feminist version of the children’s parable for mainstream TV’s “Free to Be You and Me”. Now in 2006, Sachs dreamed up...Watch Movie -
Drift and Bough
Lynne Sachs spends a winter morning in Central Park shooting film in the snow. Holding her Super 8mm camera, she takes note of graphic explosions of dark and light and an occasional skyscraper. The stark black lines of the trees against the whiteness create the sensation of a painter's...Watch Movie
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Georgic for a Forgotten Planet
I began reading Virgil's Georgics, a 1st Century epic agricultural poem, and knew immediately that I needed to create a visual equivalent about my own relationship to the place where I live, New York City. Culled from material I collected at Coney Island, the Lower East Side,...Watch Movie
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Photograph of Wind
My daughter's name is Maya. I've been told that the word maya means illusion in Hindu philosophy. As I watch her growing up, spinning like a top around me, I realize that her childhood is not something I can grasp but rather (like the wind) something I feel tenderly brushing...Watch Movie -
Same Stream Twice
My daughter's name is Maya. I've been told that the word maya means illusion in Hindu philosophy. As I watch her growing up, spinning like a top around me, I realize that her childhood is not something I can grasp but rather (like the wind) something I feel tenderly brushing...Watch Movie -
States of UnBelonging
The core of this haunting meditation on war, land, the Bible, and filmmaking is a portrait of Revital Ohayon, an Israeli filmmaker and mother killed near the West Bank. Director Lynne Sachs creates a film on the violence of the Middle East by exchanging letters with an Israeli...Watch Movie
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Still Life with Woman and Four Objects
A film portrait that falls somewhere between a painting and a prose poem, a look at a woman’s daily routines and thoughts via an exploration of her as a “character”. By interweaving threads of history and fiction, the film is also a tribute to a real woman, Emma Goldman.Watch Movie -
The Last Happy Day
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...Watch Movie -
The Task of the Translator
Lynne Sachs pays homage to Walter Benjamin’s essay "The Task of the Translator" through three studies of the human body. First, she listens to the musings of a wartime doctor grappling with the task of a kind-of cosmetic surgery for corpses. Second, she witnesses a group of...Watch Movie
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Tornado
A tornado is a spinning cyclone of nature. It stampedes like an angry bull through a tranquil pasture of blue violets and upright blades of grass. A tornado kills with abandon but has no will. Lynne Sachs’ TORNADO is a poetic piece shot from the perspective of Brooklyn, where much of the paper...Watch Movie -
Wind in Our Hair
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 directed by New York filmmaker Lynne Sachs about four girls discovering themselves through a fascination with the...Watch Movie -
Window Work
A woman drinks tea, washes a window, reads the paper: simple tasks that somehow suggest a kind of quiet mystery within and beyond the image. Sometimes one hears the rhythmic, pulsing symphony of crickets in a Baltimore summer night. Other times jangling toys dissolve into the roar of a jet...Watch Movie -
Your Day is My Night
At home in New York City, Lynne Sachs became intrigued with stories about the "shift bed" people of Manhattan’s Chinatown, a collective of Chinese performers and workers who live in an old apartment building on lower Manhattan’s Hester Street. With the camera magic of Sean...Watch Movie
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The Washing Society
When you drop off a bag of dirty laundry, who's doing the washing and folding? THE WASHING SOCIETY brings us into New York City laundromats and the experiences of the people who work there. Collaborating together for the first time, filmmaker Lynne Sachs and playwright Lizzie...Watch Movie
Cinematographer
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Investigation of a Flame
On May 17, 1968 nine Vietnam War protesters led by Daniel and Philip Berrigan, walked into a Catonsville, Maryland draft board office, grabbed hundreds of selective service records and burned them with homemade napalm. INVESTIGATION OF A FLAME is an intimate, experimental...Watch Movie -
Drift and Bough
Lynne Sachs spends a winter morning in Central Park shooting film in the snow. Holding her Super 8mm camera, she takes note of graphic explosions of dark and light and an occasional skyscraper. The stark black lines of the trees against the whiteness create the sensation of a painter's...Watch Movie -
States of UnBelonging
The core of this haunting meditation on war, land, the Bible, and filmmaking is a portrait of Revital Ohayon, an Israeli filmmaker and mother killed near the West Bank. Director Lynne Sachs creates a film on the violence of the Middle East by exchanging letters with an Israeli...Watch Movie
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The Last Happy Day
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...Watch Movie -
The Task of the Translator
Lynne Sachs pays homage to Walter Benjamin’s essay "The Task of the Translator" through three studies of the human body. First, she listens to the musings of a wartime doctor grappling with the task of a kind-of cosmetic surgery for corpses. Second, she witnesses a group of...Watch Movie -
Wind in Our Hair
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 directed by New York filmmaker Lynne Sachs about four girls discovering themselves through a fascination with the...Watch Movie -
Window Work
A woman drinks tea, washes a window, reads the paper: simple tasks that somehow suggest a kind of quiet mystery within and beyond the image. Sometimes one hears the rhythmic, pulsing symphony of crickets in a Baltimore summer night. Other times jangling toys dissolve into the roar of a jet...Watch Movie
Editor
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Investigation of a Flame
On May 17, 1968 nine Vietnam War protesters led by Daniel and Philip Berrigan, walked into a Catonsville, Maryland draft board office, grabbed hundreds of selective service records and burned them with homemade napalm. INVESTIGATION OF A FLAME is an intimate, experimental...Watch Movie -
The House of Science
The winner of numerous festival prizes, this early work by Lynne Sachs is a provocative film essay on women's perspectives on their bodies in a "man's world." It touches on everything from the female form's depiction in Renaissance art to the school of 19th century...Watch Movie -
States of UnBelonging
The core of this haunting meditation on war, land, the Bible, and filmmaking is a portrait of Revital Ohayon, an Israeli filmmaker and mother killed near the West Bank. Director Lynne Sachs creates a film on the violence of the Middle East by exchanging letters with an Israeli...Watch Movie -
The Last Happy Day
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...Watch Movie
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Tornado
A tornado is a spinning cyclone of nature. It stampedes like an angry bull through a tranquil pasture of blue violets and upright blades of grass. A tornado kills with abandon but has no will. Lynne Sachs’ TORNADO is a poetic piece shot from the perspective of Brooklyn, where much of the paper...Watch Movie -
Wind in Our Hair
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 directed by New York filmmaker Lynne Sachs about four girls discovering themselves through a fascination with the...Watch Movie -
Window Work
A woman drinks tea, washes a window, reads the paper: simple tasks that somehow suggest a kind of quiet mystery within and beyond the image. Sometimes one hears the rhythmic, pulsing symphony of crickets in a Baltimore summer night. Other times jangling toys dissolve into the roar of a jet...Watch Movie
Actor
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Which Way Is East
When two American sisters travel north from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, conversations with Vietnamese strangers and friends reveal to them the flip side of a shared history. Lynne and Dana Sachs' travel diary of their trip to Vietnam is a collection of tourism, city life,...Watch Movie -
The House of Science
The winner of numerous festival prizes, this early work by Lynne Sachs is a provocative film essay on women's perspectives on their bodies in a "man's world." It touches on everything from the female form's depiction in Renaissance art to the school of 19th century...Watch Movie -
Window Work
A woman drinks tea, washes a window, reads the paper: simple tasks that somehow suggest a kind of quiet mystery within and beyond the image. Sometimes one hears the rhythmic, pulsing symphony of crickets in a Baltimore summer night. Other times jangling toys dissolve into the roar of a jet...Watch Movie
Producer
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The House of Science
The winner of numerous festival prizes, this early work by Lynne Sachs is a provocative film essay on women's perspectives on their bodies in a "man's world." It touches on everything from the female form's depiction in Renaissance art to the school of 19th century...Watch Movie -
States of UnBelonging
The core of this haunting meditation on war, land, the Bible, and filmmaking is a portrait of Revital Ohayon, an Israeli filmmaker and mother killed near the West Bank. Director Lynne Sachs creates a film on the violence of the Middle East by exchanging letters with an Israeli...Watch Movie -
Your Day is My Night
At home in New York City, Lynne Sachs became intrigued with stories about the "shift bed" people of Manhattan’s Chinatown, a collective of Chinese performers and workers who live in an old apartment building on lower Manhattan’s Hester Street. With the camera magic of Sean...Watch Movie
Story
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Drift and Bough
Lynne Sachs spends a winter morning in Central Park shooting film in the snow. Holding her Super 8mm camera, she takes note of graphic explosions of dark and light and an occasional skyscraper. The stark black lines of the trees against the whiteness create the sensation of a painter's...Watch Movie
Writer
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States of UnBelonging
The core of this haunting meditation on war, land, the Bible, and filmmaking is a portrait of Revital Ohayon, an Israeli filmmaker and mother killed near the West Bank. Director Lynne Sachs creates a film on the violence of the Middle East by exchanging letters with an Israeli...Watch Movie -
The Last Happy Day
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...Watch Movie -
Tornado
A tornado is a spinning cyclone of nature. It stampedes like an angry bull through a tranquil pasture of blue violets and upright blades of grass. A tornado kills with abandon but has no will. Lynne Sachs’ TORNADO is a poetic piece shot from the perspective of Brooklyn, where much of the paper...Watch Movie
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The Washing Society
When you drop off a bag of dirty laundry, who's doing the washing and folding? THE WASHING SOCIETY brings us into New York City laundromats and the experiences of the people who work there. Collaborating together for the first time, filmmaker Lynne Sachs and playwright Lizzie...Watch Movie
Executive Producer
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States of UnBelonging
The core of this haunting meditation on war, land, the Bible, and filmmaking is a portrait of Revital Ohayon, an Israeli filmmaker and mother killed near the West Bank. Director Lynne Sachs creates a film on the violence of the Middle East by exchanging letters with an Israeli...Watch Movie

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