L.Sachs LYNNE SACHS Moving Image Maker 273 Carroll Street
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L.Sachs 1 LYNNE SACHS Moving image maker 273 Carroll Street, Brooklyn, New York 11231 Tel: 718.522.5856 [email protected] website: www.lynnesachs.com EDUCATION San Francisco Art Institute, M.F.A. Film, 1989. San Francisco State University, M.A. Cinema, 1989. Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, B.A. History, 1983. University of Paris (Sorbonne), History, 1981-82. TEACHING EXPERIENCE Lecturer, Dep’t of Art, Princeton University, 2016. Adjunct Professor, Dep’t of Undergraduate Film & TV, New York University, 2002 – present Adjunct Professor, The New School, Media Studies, 1996 – 97; 2013. Assistant Professor (visiting) Dep’t of Film & Media , Hunter College, 2001-03; Instructor, Maryland Institute College of Art, video program 2000; Visiting Assistant Professor, Temple University, Dep't of Film & Media, Philadelphia, 1998-99; UC Berkeley 1992; California College of the Arts, 1990 – 92. Selected Courses: Time and Media; Aural Histories; Experimental Film Production Workshop; Documentary Film Production; How to Be a Producer; Media Mavericks; Introduction to Media Studies; Film and Video Graduate Seminar; Beginning & Advanced Film Production; Beginning Video; Developing the Documentary; Lecture on Avant Garde Film History; Microcinemas and Alternative Media GRANTS, SCHOLARSHIPS & AWARDS Brooklyn Arts Council Grant, 2017. Women in the Arts & Media Coalition, Collaboration Award with Lizzie Olesker, 2015. Fandor.com Film Initiative Award, 2015. Guggenheim Fellowship, Film-Video, 2014. New York State Council for the Arts Grant for Electronic Media finishing funds, 2012, 2014. MacDowell Colony Artist Residency, Selected as Elodie Osborn Fellow 2006-07, 2012 Experimental Television Center, finishing funds,1997; residency, 1999; finishing funds 2008. New York University Adjunct Faculty Grant, 2005,2007, 2008. 2011. New York Public Library Artist Commission, 2006. National Video Resource, Technical Assistance Award, 2005,2006. New York State Council on the Arts, grant for film, 2003 Jerome Foundation, grant for film, 2004. Rockefeller Foundation, media arts fellowship, 2001; Service award 2004. Trust for Mutual Understanding, media grant, 2001. Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Grant, 2000. School 33 Public Art Space, juried invitational show of installation work, Fall, 2000, Baltimore. Puffin Foundation artist grant for Catonsville Nine Project, 2000. Maryland State Arts Council Mini-Grant, with the Catonsville Historical Society, 1999. San Francisco Bay Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery Award, 1993. Western States Regional Media Arts Fellowship, Supported by the NEA, 1993 Southeast Regional Media Arts Fellowship, NEA, 1990. Robert Flaherty Documentary Film Seminar, Scholarship, 1990. Film Arts Foundation Development Grant, San Francisco, 1987. Pioneer Fund for Emerging Filmmakers, San Francisco, 1987. Downtown Community Television Artist in Residence, New York, 1985. SELECTED FILMS, VIDEOS, WEB PROJECTS AND INSTALLATIONS 1 L.Sachs 2 “Still Life With Woman and Four Objects” (4 min. B&W, sound 16mm, 1986)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, 1986 . “Drawn and Quartered” (4 min. color 16mm, 1986) Optically printed images of a man and a woman fragmented by a film frame that is divided into four distinct sections. An experiment in form/content relationships that are peculiar to the medium. San Francisco Film Festival, Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal. “Following the Object to Its Logical Beginning” (9 min. color 16mm. 1987) Like an animal in one of Eadweard Muybridge’s scientific photo experiments, five undramatic moments in a man’s life are observed by a woman. A study in visual obsession and a twist on the notion of the “gaze”. Presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s “American Century”, 2000. "Sermons and Sacred Pictures: the life and work of Reverend L.O. Taylor" (29 minutes, 16mm, 1989) An experimental documentary on Reverend L.O. Taylor, a Black Baptist minister from Memphis who was also an inspired filmmaker with an overwhelming interest in preserving the social and cultural fabric of his own community in the 1930' s and ‘40’ s. Museum of Modern Art, New York; "Best Short Documentary" Athens (Ohio) Film Festival; Margaret Mead Film Festival; Robert Flaherty Film Seminar. Supported by a Pioneer Fund Grant for Emerging Filmmakers and a Film Arts Foundation Development Grant "The House of Science: a museum of false facts" (30 min., 16mm 1991) “Offering a new feminized film form, this piece explores both art and science’s representation of women, combining home movies, personal remembrances, staged scenes and found footage into an intricate visual and aural college. A girl’s sometimes difficult coming of age rituals are recast into a potent web for affirmation and growth.”(SF Cinematheque) Charlotte Film Festival, First Prize Experimental; Atlanta Film Festival, Experimental Prize; Black Maria Film Fest, Juror’s Award; Humboldt Film Festival, Teffen Filter Award; Museum of Modern Art, Cineprobe; Portland Museum of Art, “Icons, Rebels and Visionaries”; Athens Film Festival, Experimental Prize; Oberhausen Short Film Fest, Germany; Utah Film Festival, First Prize Short Film. Supported by a NEA Regional Arts Fellowship "Which Way Is East: Notebooks from Vietnam" (33 min., 16mm, 1994) "A frog that sits at the bottom of a well thinks that the whole sky is only as big as the lid of a pot." 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. “The film has a combination of qualities: compassion, acute observational skills, an understanding of history's scope, and a critical ability to discern what's missing from the textbooks and TV news.” (Independent Film & Video Monthly). Sundance Film Festival; Atlanta Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize; New York Film Expo, Best Documentary; Black Maria Film Fest, Director's Citation; Museum of Modern Art, New York; "Arsenal" Film Festival, Latvia; San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival; Big Muddy Film Fest, Prize; Whitney Museum of American Art, “The American Century: Art & Culture 1900-2000”. NEA Regional Fellowship "A Biography of Lilith" (35 min., 16mm, 1997) In a lively mix of off-beat narrative, collage and memoir, this film 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 present- day Lilith musing on a life that has included giving up a baby for adoption and work as a bar dancer. Interweaving mystical texts from Jewish folklore with interviews, music and poetry, Sachs reclaims this cabalistic parable to frame her own role as a mother. Charlotte Film Fest (prize) NJ Film Fest Best Experimental Prize; Madcat Women's Film Festival Complete Retrospective ; NY Film Expo Best Experimental; Black Maria Film Fest Prize. Supported by Experimental TV Center, NYSCA. “Horror Vacui: Nature Abhors a Vacuum” (three image video installation, 2000 ) Horror Vacui ... fear of emptiness, or a compulsion to fill. Witnessing a relic of a human presence, a state of unbelonging in which 2 L.Sachs 3 the mind moves between here and there without ever truly inhabiting anywhere. “Horror Vacui makes us ponder why we seek constantly to fill our minds with words, music, clatter, stuff.” (The Baltimore Sun) Supported by a School 33 Artist Residency and a Experimental TV Center Residency. Exhibited also as single channel “Window Work”. Delaware Art Museum Biennial; European Media Arts Festival, Osnabruck, Germany; Moscow Film Festival; Tate Modern Museum of Art, London “Reinvestigating the Frame” “Window Work” (9 min. video, 2000) 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 overhead, or children tremble at the sound of thunder. These disparate sounds dislocate the space temporally and physically from the restrictions of reality. The small home-movie boxes within the larger screen are gestural forms of memory, clues to childhood, mnemonic devices that expand on the sense of immediacy in her “drama.” These miniature image-objects represent snippets of an even earlier media technology — film. In contrast to the real time video image, they feel fleeting, ephemeral, imprecise. Dallas Video Festival; Delaware Art Museum Biennial; Athens Film Fest; European Media Arts Festival, Osnabruck, Germany; New York Film Expo; Black Maria Director’s Citation; Moscow Film Festival; Tate Modern, London “Investigation of a Flame” (16mm, 45 min. 2001) An intimate, experimental portrait of the Catonsville Nine, a disparate band of Vietnam War peace activists who chose to break the law in a defiant, poetic act of civil disobedience. Produced with Daniel and Philip Berrigan and other members of the Catonsville 9. Nominated for Best Documentary in Village Voice (‘01) and Film Comment (‘02) ; National TV Broadcast Sundance Channel DocDay Premier; Maryland Film Festival “Opening Night” Premier; Museum of Modern Art, Documentary Fortnight “Opening