Lynne Sachs

I really wanted to attend Lynne Sachs' presentation this evening, but due to the fact that I am drowning in assignments (ah, the life of a film major) I'll have to miss out. It's quite disappointing, especially because after reading her Wikipedia page and her interview with Karen Rester, as well as watching several of her short films, she seems like a very intriguing person to converse with. I'm definitely excited to interact with her in class tomorrow.

Her interview with Karen Rester gave me a pretty good sense of the kind of person she is - very articulate, with a strong sense of self and a lot of passion. In my very first blog entry, I mentioned that I'm the kind of person who often finds it difficult to glean deeper meaning from things I encounter in my scholarly exploits. Lynne Sachs is definitely not one of these people. Everything has meaning to her, and this extends to the things she observes in her own content. Her comment about how her film Your Day is My Night got its name is a prime example of this. It's all one big circle; everything relates back to each other, like in nature. I wish I could think that way.

My favorite film of the many I watched was Drift and Bough (2014), which is filled with long takes of snowy banks and winter scenery. I will admit I cried an embarrassing amount watching it.

The first day of class we discussed how some experimental film can exist for the purpose of conveying a feeling. I feel that Drift and Bough is one of these films. It touched me on a very personal level as someone who fell in love with the cold, snowy climate of the mountains only to be dragged back to this swampy hellhole. I don't know exactly what mood Sachs hoped to convey with this film, but for me it was melancholy. Not because of her portrayal of the weather itself, but because of my desperate, nostalgic longing for the cold; those snowy banks that, for me, only exist in another place, another time, to which I feel as though I can never return.



EDIT: After writing this post I continued to watch more of Sachs' films and discovered Wind In Our Hair, which was filmed in Argentina and involves adaptations of some of Julio Cortázar's short stories. I'm incredibly excited to ask her about her experience filming this, as I spent a month in Buenos Aires this past May and fell madly in love with Argentina. I can't wait to hear her thoughts.