Drawn and Quartered

Drawn and Quartered

16mm, color, silent, 4 min
Optically printed images of a man and a woman fragmented by a film frame that is divided into four distinct sections. An experiment in form/content relationships that are peculiar to the medium.  . ...
Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
Available for sale: Digital file, DVD NTSC

Stills

About

Optically printed images of a man and a woman fragmented by a film frame that is divided into four distinct sections. An experiment in form/content relationships that are peculiar to the medium.  

Images of a male form (on the left) and a female form (right) exist in their own private domains, separated by a barrier. Only for a moment does the one intrude upon the pictorial space of the other." - Albert Kilchesty, LA Filmforum

Screenings: San Francisco Film Festival, Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal.

MAKING AND BEING “DRAWN & QUARTERED”
BY LYNNE SACHS

My great Uncle Charlie was a prominent Memphis businessman who took a giddy pleasure in shooting some of the most elegant, compassionate photographs I’ve ever seen.  I remember his close-up portrait taken in the late 1950’s of a wizened black man looking into the lens.  I would sneak into the back hall of his house to look at this image, as if those large eyes revealed to me all the horrors of a segregated South that was beginning, thank god, to disappear.  The face still haunts me.

None of Uncle Charlie’s children or even grandchildren took much interest in photography.  My teenage obsession with the camera thus became the reason we developed such a long-lasting relationship.  He and I would spend hours together looking at the photographs we’d both taken.  These were the first rigorous, aesthetic dialogues around image-making I’d ever had.

One afternoon in 1984,  when were sitting side-by-side in Uncle Charlie’s study pouring over some travel slides, I announced that I wanted to be a filmmaker.  I was 22 years old. Uncle Charlie’s response was immediate and silent. He got up abruptly, pulled an object from a bureau drawer, and handed me a heavy, brown camera that looked and felt like an army hand grenade. This was the first time I had ever seen a Regular 8 Filmo camera.  He carefully explained to me how a 50 foot reel fit into the casing, that I needed to shoot half the reel one way, then open the camera, flip the reel and camera and shoot the rest.  “Beware,” he warned me, “if you forget to shoot the second half with the camera right-side up the world will appear topsy-turvy. After you shoot all three minutes, send the film to a lab to have it processed and split down the middle.”

“SPLIT IT DOWN THE MIDDLE?” I thought to myself,  “How violent, how intriguing, how corporeal.” Strangely enough, I didn’t actually use the camera until three years later.  It was the fall of 1987, and I was a new graduate student at the San Francisco Art Institute.  By this time, I’d aligned myself with the film avant-garde.  Every normal way of doing anything with a camera was anathema.  My little Filmo cine hand grenade still had an aura I couldn’t resist.  It finally beckoned me to be used.  On one of those rare, warm San Francisco afternoons I convinced my new boyfriend John to follow me to the roof of the Art Institute to make the first movie I would ever shoot in Regular 8mm.  Despite having no experience whatsoever with the camera, I’d meticulously planned every shot we would make together.  Perhaps I’d been inspired by the organized fluidity of Maya Deren’s “Choreography for the Camera”.  Just as significant, I believe, were the mechanical properties of that Filmo.  What would happen if I didn’t rip apart the spinal chord of the film itself?

Once we reached the roof, I surprised John by informing him that we would both have to take off our clothes.  I then explained that I would shoot images of him for the first 1 1/2 minutes of film and that he would shoot the second half of me.  He wasn’t happy with the rules, but he accepted them for the three hours it took.   That must have been the year I first encountered Laura Mulvey’s theory of the “male gaze”, seen Carolee Schneeman’s “Fuses”, pondered Yvonne Rainer’s “Lives of Performers”.  The artistic practice of being a feminist in the late 1980’s was whirly wildly in my mind. 

When I took the roll to the lab, I begged them NOT to split the film as they normally would, to leave it all in tact after the processing.  The resulting 8mm footage was simultaneously thrilling (artistically) and humiliating (personally).  There were our two nude bodies on the same screen but also divided by four equilateral frames.  I looked at John (fine…); John looked at me (yikes!).  Within the parameters of the image gestalt, we are dancing together without ever touching.  Our two bodies remain totally distinct and apart.

My immediate reaction took me directly to the editing room where I cut out all the frames of my face.  I wanted to erase myself from the film.  I held these “out takes” in my hand, breathing a sigh of relief at knowing that my nude body could never be identified.  Then I felt strangely ashamed at my own un-hip cowardice.  A few days later, I returned to the splicer and “reconstituted” my body by replacing my face, owning up to what I’d made, and, in a way, accepting my own body with all its flab and flaws.  This was years before the time of “nondestructive” (digital) editing, so if you were to look closely at the finished film print now on 16mm you would see those cuts (SCARS!!).  You would see the mark making that reveals so much about my apprehension in those days.

At that moment, the technological limitations of Uncle Charlie’s hallowed regular 8mm Filmo movie camera lead me to a know place as an artist.  Scared and anxious but also aware of a burgeoning excitement, I named my little movie “Drawn and Quartered”.  Months later, I screened the silent movie to a packed audience at San Francisco’s Red Vic Theatre on Haight Street.  Within those few painful minutes, the crowd went from absolute silence, to raucous laughter and back to an exquisite quiet.  I was shaking.

 

Films

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    Still Life With Woman and Four Objects
    Experimental

    Still Life With Woman and Four Objects
    Lynne Sachs

    16mm, black and white, sound, 4 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • Arts / Artists
    • Personal / Diary / Journal
    • Structural
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    Following the Object to Its Logical Beginning
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    Following the Object to Its Logical Beginning
    Lynne Sachs

    16mm, color, sound, 9 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • Arts / Artists
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    Sermons & Sacred Pictures: the life and work of Reverend L.O. Taylor
    Documentary
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    Sermons & Sacred Pictures: the life and work of Reverend L.O. Taylor
    Lynne Sachs

    16mm, color and b/w, sound, 29 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • History
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    • Biography / Autobiography
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    The House of Science: A Museum of False Facts
    Experimental

    The House of Science: A Museum of False Facts
    Lynne Sachs

    16mm, color, sound, 30 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file, DVD NTSC
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    Which Way Is East
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    Which Way Is East
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    DVD, color, sound, 33 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • Political / Social Activism
    • Personal / Diary / Journal
    • Ethnographic
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    A Biography of Lilith
    Documentary
    Experimental
    Narrative

    A Biography of Lilith
    Lynne Sachs

    16mm, color and b/w, sound, 35 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • Body
    • Philosophical
    • Biography / Autobiography
    • Personal / Diary / Journal
    • Spiritual / Mystical
    • Family
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    Window Work
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    Window Work
    Lynne Sachs

    video, color, sound, 9 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • Body
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    Photograph of Wind
    Experimental

    Photograph of Wind
    Lynne Sachs

    16mm, color and b/w, sound, 4 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • Body
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    • Children / Youth
    • Family
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    Investigation of a Flame
    Documentary
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    Investigation of a Flame
    Lynne Sachs

    color, sound, 45 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • History
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    Tornado
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    Tornado
    Lynne Sachs

    video, color, sound, 4 min
    Rental format: Digital file
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    First Steps in a Terra Incognita
    Experimental

    First Steps in a Terra Incognita
    Lynne Sachs

    video, color, sound, 4 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • Personal / Diary / Journal
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    A Collection of Films on DVD Exploring Women, Culture, Science & Myth by Lynne Sachs Vol. 1
    Experimental

    A Collection of Films on DVD Exploring Women, Culture, Science & Myth by Lynne Sachs Vol. 1
    Lynne Sachs

    DVD, color and b/w, sound, 65 min
    Rental format: DVD NTSC
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    States of UnBelonging
    Documentary
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    States of UnBelonging
    Lynne Sachs

    color, sound, 63 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • History
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    Noa, Noa
    Documentary
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    Noa, Noa
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    16mm , color and b/w, sound, 8 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • Personal / Diary / Journal
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    Atalanta: 32 Years Later
    Animation
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    Atalanta: 32 Years Later
    Lynne Sachs

    16mm, color, sound, 5 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • Found Footage
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    Lynne Sachs: 10 Short Films Vol.3
    Documentary
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    Lynne Sachs: 10 Short Films Vol.3
    Lynne Sachs

    color, sound, 62 min
    Rental format: DVD NTSC
    • Body
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    The Small Ones
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    The Small Ones
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    Digital, color, sound, 3 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • History
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    Georgic for a Forgotten Planet
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    Georgic for a Forgotten Planet
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    color, sound, 8 min
    Rental format: DVD NTSC
    • Landscape / Architecture
    • Environment / Nature
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    The Last Happy Day
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    The Last Happy Day
    Lynne Sachs

    color, sound, 38 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • History
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    Cuadro por Cuadro/ Frame by Frame
    Documentary
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    Cuadro por Cuadro/ Frame by Frame
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    color, sound, 8 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • Films About Film
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    • Hand-Processed
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    The Task of the Translator
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    The Task of the Translator
    Lynne Sachs

    color, sound, 10 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • History
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    Wind in Our Hair (Con viento en el pelo)
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    Wind in Our Hair (Con viento en el pelo)
    Lynne Sachs

    color, sound, 42 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
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    Sound of a Shadow
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    Sound of a Shadow
    Lynne Sachs

    color, sound, 10 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • Landscape / Architecture
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    Same Stream Twice
    Documentary
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    Same Stream Twice
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    16mm, color and b/w, silent, 4 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • Body
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    Your Day is My Night
    Documentary
    Experimental

    Your Day is My Night
    Lynne Sachs

    color, sound, 65 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • History
    • Landscape / Architecture
    • Music
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    • Hand-Processed
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    Drift and Bough
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    Drift and Bough
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    black and white, sound, 6 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC, super8
    • Landscape / Architecture
    • Environment / Nature
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    Starfish Aorta Colossus
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    Starfish Aorta Colossus
    Lynne Sachs

    color, sound, 5 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • Landscape / Architecture
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    • Personal / Diary / Journal
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    Viva and Felix Growing Up
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    Viva and Felix Growing Up
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    black and white, sound, 10 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • Personal / Diary / Journal
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    Day Residue
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    Day Residue
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    Super 8mm , color, silent, 3 min
    Rental format: Digital file
    • Biography / Autobiography
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    And Then We Marched
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    And Then We Marched
    Lynne Sachs

    16mm and Super 8mm , color, silent, 3 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • History
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    Tip of My Tongue
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    Tip of My Tongue
    Lynne Sachs

    HD Video, color, sound, 80 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • History
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    A Year in Notes and Numbers
    Documentary
    Experimental

    A Year in Notes and Numbers
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    digital file, color, silent, 4 min
    Rental format: Digital file
    • Biography / Autobiography
    • Personal / Diary / Journal
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    The Washing Society
    Documentary
    Experimental

    The Washing Society
    Lynne Sachs

    HD Video, color, sound, 44 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • History
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    • Economics
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    Carolee, Barbara and Gunvor
    Documentary
    Experimental

    Carolee, Barbara and Gunvor
    Lynne Sachs

    digital file , color, sound, 9 min
    Rental formats: Digital file, DVD NTSC
    • Body
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    • Cameraless / Handmade
    • Biography / Autobiography
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    A Month of Single Frames
    Documentary
    Experimental

    A Month of Single Frames
    Lynne Sachs

    digital file, color, sound, 14 min
    Rental format: Digital file
    • Environment / Nature
    • Films About Film
    • Arts / Artists
    • Biography / Autobiography
    • Personal / Diary / Journal
    • LGBT / Queer
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    Orange Glow
    Experimental

    Orange Glow
    Lynne Sachs

    digital file, color, sound, 1.26 min
    Rental format: Digital file
    • Arts / Artists
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    Visit to Bernadette Mayer’s Childhood Home
    Experimental

    Visit to Bernadette Mayer’s Childhood Home
    Lynne Sachs

    digital file, black and white, sound, 3 min
    Rental format: Digital file
    • Arts / Artists
    • Biography / Autobiography
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    Girl is Presence
    Experimental

    Girl is Presence
    Lynne Sachs

    digital file, color, sound, 4 min
    Rental format: Digital file
    • Arts / Artists
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    E•pis•to•lar•y: letter to Jean Vigo
    Experimental

    E•pis•to•lar•y: letter to Jean Vigo
    Lynne Sachs

    digital file, black and white, sound, 5 min
    Rental format: Digital file
    • History
    • Political / Social Activism
    • Films About Film
    • Arts / Artists
    • Personal / Diary / Journal
    • Found Footage
    • Minimal / Conceptual
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    Maya at 24
    Experimental

    Maya at 24
    Lynne Sachs

    digital file, color, sound, 4 min
    Rental format: Digital file
    • Body
    • Arts / Artists
    • Personal / Diary / Journal
    • Children / Youth
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     Figure and I

    Figure and I
    Lynne Sachs

    Digital, color, silent, 4 min
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    Swerve
    Experimental

    Swerve
    Lynne Sachs

    digital and S8mm, color, sound, 8 min
    Rental format: Digital file
    • Philosophical
    • Political / Social Activism
    • Arts / Artists
    • Personal / Diary / Journal
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    She Carries the Holiday in Her Eyes

    She Carries the Holiday in Her Eyes
    Lynne Sachs

    Digital, color, silent, 4 min
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    The Jitters

    The Jitters
    Lynne Sachs

    16mm, black and white, sound, 3 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file
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    Contractions

    Contractions
    Lynne Sachs

    Digital, color, sound, 12 min