Videos by Lynne Sachs (Experimental Documentary/Narrative)

Chicago Filmmakers - Friday, 8pm
Film Studies Center - Saturday, 7pm
For twenty-five years Lynne Sachs has been making work that seek to explain the universal elements of human experience that emerge from documenting first person perspectives. History, or at least the knowledge of historical events, shapes how each of us views life, and it is this connection between past and present that remains central in her newest works. Her films acknowledge the limitations inherent in the documentary genre, and perhaps no more so than in her decade-long five-film series I AM NOT A WAR PHOTOGRAPHER. This weekend she will present the most recent installment in the series, LAST HAPPY DAYS (2009, 37 min, DVD), at Chicago Filmmakers and the Film Studies Center at University of Chicago. Sachs paints a picture of a distant relative whose life story encompasses both the best and worst qualities of life in the twentieth century. Originally a doctor in his native Hungary, Sandor Lenard fled the Nazis in 1938, first to Rome where he worked for the US Army reconstructing the bones of dead soldiers. Eventually he settled in the Brazilian Amazon and gained brief fame after translating Winnie the Pooh into Latin. Reflecting on our collective obsession with genealogy, Sachs approaches her portraiture as an essay on the horrors of war as well as the motivation behind artistic practice. To complete each evening, Chicago Filmmakers pairs this film with Sachs first narrative film, WIND IN OUR HAIR (2009, 42 min, DVD), inspired by the writings of Julio Cortazar, and the FSC pairs it with a new piece about Iraqi burial rituals translated into Latin, COSMETIC SURGERY FOR CORPSES (2010, 10 min, DVD). Lynne Sachs in person at both screenings. JH - Cine-File.info