As a rule, I’m pretty into/at the very least curious about anything “inspired by the works of Julio Cortazar.” and this looks amazing!
7:30 pm with post-screening reception
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. (@2nd St.) NYC www.anthologyfilmarchives.org
“Working since the mid-1980s, variously on lyrical shorts and long-form experimental documentary, Lynne Sachs has explored the relationships between individual memory and experience in the context of large historical forces. Foregrounding personal history and autobiography, Sachs exalts the intimate gesture as perhaps the most heroic of poetic and political acts. With a keen grasp on cultural theory and media history, Sachs’ films celebrate life and mindful political engagement, presenting complex pictures of the world with lyrical grace and even joy.”
–Steve Polta, Artistic Director, San Francisco Cinematheque
WIND IN OUR HAIR / CON VIENTO EN EL PELO 2010, 41 min.
-Carolyn Tennant, Media Curator, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center
“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
“While (the girls’) 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
THE LAST HAPPY DAY 2009, 38 min.
An experimental documentary portrait of Sandor (Alexander) Lenard, a Hungarian medical doctor and a distant cousin of 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 of dead American soldiers. Eventually he found himself in remotest Brazil where he embarked on a translation of WINNIE THE POOH into Latin, an eccentric task that catapulted him to brief worldwide fame. Sachs’s 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. (Premiere, New York Film Fest, 2009)
“A stunningly beautiful essay film in which (Sachs) uses the remarkable story of her distant cousin … as a lens for her meditations on trauma, survival, history, and healing.” See entire review at www.filmthreat.com/reviews/24395
-David Finkelstein, Filmthreat.com
“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
THE TASK OF THE TRANSLATOR 2010, 10 min. Sachs pays homage to Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Task of the Translator” through three studies of the human body.
Total running time: 90 minutes.
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