The USC School of Cinematic Arts invites you to a special presentation by experimental documentary filmmaker Lynne Sachs.

To make a reservation, click here.

From Vietnam to Bosnia to WWII occupied Rome to the Middle East today, Sachs' experimental documentaries push the borders between abstract and reality-based imagery. In this program, she introduces visual strategies for working with these fraught and divisive themes. Often opting for a painterly rather than a photographic articulation of conflict, Sachs tries to expose the limitations of conventional documentary representation of the past and the present. Infusions of colored "brush strokes" catapult a viewer into contemporary Vietnam. Floating drinking glasses moving across a Muslim cemetery in Sarajevo evoke a wartime without water. Pulsing, geometric mattes suspended in cinematic space block news footage of a bombing in Tel Aviv. By using abstraction, Sachs is not avoiding graphic realism, but rather unpeeling the outer, more familiar layers, hoping to reveal something new about perception and engagement in cinema.

Film screenings will include States of UnBelonging, Which Way Is East, Investigation of a Flame and The Small Ones.

About Lynne Sachs

Lynne Sachs' films, videos, installations and Web projects 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 has tried 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, Sachs searches for a rigorous play between image and sound, pushing the visual and aural textures in her work with every new project. Supported by fellowships from the Rockefeller and Jerome Foundations and the New York State Council on the Arts, Sachs' films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the Pacific Film Archive, the Sundance Film Festival and, recently, in a retrospective at the Buenos Aires Film Festival. Sachs teaches experimental film and video at New York University.

To learn more, visit www.lynnesachs.com.

About Check-In and Reservations

This screening is presented free of charge and is open to all. The theater will be overbooked to ensure capacity, and the RSVP list will be honored on a first-come, first-served basis, with no reserved seating. Please bring a photo ID or print-out of your reservation confirmation, which will be automatically sent to your email account upon successfully making an RSVP through the Web site.

About Parking

The event will take place in the Ron Howard Screening Room, 111, at the Robert Zemeckis Center, located at 3131 South Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007. Street parking is available along 32nd Street or at the Shrine Auditorium. For more information about parking at the Robert Zemeckis Center, please call (213) 743-2702.

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