Lynne Sachs

Lynne Sachs makes films and writes poems that explore the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences. Her work embraces hybrid form and combines memoir with experimental, documentary, and fictional modes. Between 1994 and 2006, she produced five essay films that took her to Vietnam, Bosnia, Israel, Italy, and Germany — sites affected by international war — where she looked at the space between a community’s collective memory and her own subjective perceptions. In recent years, she has expanded her practice to include live performance with moving image. Lynne was first exposed to poetry by her great aunt as a child in Memphis, Tennessee.  Soon she was frequenting workshops at the local library and getting a chance to learn from poets like Gwendolyn Brooks and Ethridge Knight. As an active member of Brown University’s undergraduate poetry community, she shared her early poems with fellow student and poet Stacy Doris. Lynne later discovered her love of filmmaking while living in San Francisco where she worked closely with artists Craig Baldwin, Bruce Conner, Barbara Hammer, Carolee Schneeman, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. 

Lynne has made thirty-five films which have screened at the New York Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Wexner Center for the Arts. The Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema, Festival International Nuevo Cine in Havana, and China Women’s Film Festival have presented retrospectives of her work. Lynne received a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship in the Creative Arts. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with filmmaker Mark Street. They have two daughters, Maya Street-Sachs and Noa Street-Sachs.

Year By Year Poems is her first book of poetry.

Year By Year Poems (2019)