During our workshop, we will each create a character that represents a composite of our real and imaginary self. Through a series of writing prompts that will evoke a multitude of responses, each participant will write a brief diary of things he or she has experienced in the neighborhood around UnionDocs or elsewhere in NYC. For example, we will each write a confession for an emotional crime our character has committed. We will then describe the crime while the character looks out the window at the city’s landscape. After completing this pen and paper phase of the workshop, we will go outside to shoot from the perspective of our character. After shooting, we will put the material into an closed repository from which any one of us could take material.
We encourage workshop participants to bring a camera of any kind that can record a moving image. Even cell phone cameras are okay. If you don’t have a camera, we will provide a shared one for the group. In addition to the art-making side of the workshop, Lynne will also present related films and short fiction pieces.
*Following this event we are screening a series of experimental films curated by Lorenzo Gattorna and all workshop participants are welcome to attend this event free of charge.
Lynne Sachs makes films, videos, installations and web projects that explore the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences by weaving together poetry, collage, painting, politics and layered sound design. Since 1994, her five essay films have taken her to Vietnam, Bosnia, Israel and Germany — sites affected by international war–where she tries to work in the space between a community’s collective memory and her own subjective perceptions. Strongly committed to a dialogue between cinematic theory and practice, Lynne searches for a rigorous play between image and sound, pushing the visual and aural textures in her work with each and every new project. Since 2006, she has collaborated with her partner Mark Street in a series of playful, mixed-media performance collaborations they call The XY Chromosome Project. In addition to her work with the moving image, Lynne co-edited the 2009 Millennium Film Journal issue on “Experiments in Documentary”. Supported by fellowships from the Rockefeller and Jerome Foundations and the New York State Council on the Arts, Lynne’s films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival and recently in a five film survey at the Buenos Aires Film Festival. In 2010, the San Francisco Cinematheque published a monograph with four original essays in conjunction with a full retrospective of Lynne’s work. Lynne teaches experimental film and video at New York University and lives in Brooklyn.
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