U.S. artist and documentarian Lynne Sachs has often screened her past films at Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival, but she’s finally made it in person this year, serving on the First Lights jury, which evaluates docu debuts. Sachs says she’s been impressed by Ji.hlava films that span the globe while showcasing the full range of filmmaking approaches and perspectives. Already I’ve seen two films here, one from Argentina and one from Congo and they really couldn’t be more different.
They make you think about the documentary paradigm.” A case in point, she says: “Positionality.” Whose perspective is an audience seeing and is the filmmaker’s role visible or even known? It’s something Sachs has made crystal clear in her newest film, “Every Contact Leaves a Trace,” screening at Ji.hlava in its Czech premiere. Sachs herself is clearly onscreen, investigating, making connections, doubting herself, and occasionally seeking help from a youthful niece and nephew as she goes through old business cards, some decades old, wondering at who gave them to her and what traces of lives contacting hers can still remain.
The film is a kind of detective story that eventually enlists the actual analyses of forensic investigators as Sachs follows leads to track down people whose names remain in her box of hundreds of carefully preserved business cards – a good number she admits have lost all meaning to her. Some left burning impressions on her and she has always wondered what became of the card giver – such as an artist whose work touched her years ago or a fellow artist filmmaker who was later canceled over allegations of impropriety. One card was from a Syrian woman whose family discouraged her from sitting for an on camera to share her experiences as a refugee – so Sachs settles for filming a tribute to the woman’s cooking skills.
Sachs says she is also uneasy about terms that have come into common use for people in docus. Rather than say “protagonists” or “characters,” she much prefers “on camera participants.” Or maybe “visible collaborators who are the people in front of the camera.” “We’re offered the chance to tell our story by the person behind the camera. What I don’t know is, who is the person behind the camera?” In the case of “Every Contact,” it’s clear to all who is filming and inquiring as Sachs visibly, sometimes awkwardly, tracks down people who once met her but certainly never expected her to appear again at their doorstep with a camera.
It’s a role she has not always put onscreen so clearly, she says. You’re the person who had that dentist. You’re the person who met that psychoanalyst.
Or potential friend on a bus.” As Sachs investigation progressed, she says, “I was most drawn to the cards that presented the biggest obstacles.” Some card donors may be impossible to find now. And others presented a different challenge: At times figures from your past have made lasting impressions – but that doesn’t always mean that was mutual. The process of recounting past encounters is one fraught with traps, says Sachs, as human minds tend to re-enact them in the mind, often editing, sometimes finding specific moments deeply burned in.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
