GROUND GLASS AWARD 2021
The following programs of Lynne Sachs's films were originally curated by filmmaker Craig Baldwin as "Sidebars" to accompany a run of Film About a Father Who at The Roxie cinema in San Francisco. They appear here courtesy of Baldwin and Canyon Cinema. Sachs also recently received a career retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image, curated by Edo Choi.
Lynne Sachs
Prismatic Ground honors filmmaker Lynne Sachs with the inaugural Ground Glass Award for outstanding contribution to the field of experimental media. Two film programs curated by Craig Baldwin available through the fest + a conversation with canyon cinema executive director Brett Kashmere on Saturday, April 10th at 4pm Eastern Daylight Time. [Watch the Recording]
PROGRAM 1
INQUIRIES INTO SELF AND OTHER
"‘89 Sermons offers an early glimmer of her sensitivity to both marginalized communities and their archives, as she gracefully threads ultra-rare ‘30s & ’40s footage from Rev. LO Taylor into a tapestry of visibility and respect for Memphis’ Black community. Her facility for celluloid extrapolation is demonstrated in even more creative ways in House of Science, a personal essay on female identity, told through found footage, poetic text, and playful experimental technique. Which Way is East raises its eyes to engagements in international waters, and to insightful exchanges with her expat sister Dana, towards new understandings of and in the oh-so-historically charged Republic of Vietnam. Opening is Lynne’s first ever 16mm, Still Life.” – Craig Baldwin
PROGRAM 2
PROFILES IN COURAGE
"Characteristically, Sachs speaks in first person to cultural difference and dissent, here particularly valorizing acts of resistance and struggles for justice. Her collaboration with the recently deceased lesbian maker Barbara Hammer keynotes this ‘Solidarity’ set, with Lynne literally framing/finishing her mentor’s last project. Younger allies are also acknowledged in Sachs’ inspiring 2017 celebration of women’s political power on contested Washington, DC turf. The 2001 Investigation is a tribute to the courage and conscience of the epochal Berrigan-led burning of Baltimore draft records, made while Sachs was teaching in that town. And the local debut of The Washing Society, produced with playwright Lizzie Olesker, stakes their support of NYC’s low-paid laundry workers—mostly women of color—in even another radiant illumination of the little-seen truths of contemporary race/class inequity.” – Craig Baldwin
