New Film and Media Visiting Artist Series: Lynne Sachs Conversation and Screenings February 2, 2011

The Last Happy Day (2009)
An experimental documentary portrait of Sandor Lenard, a Jewish Hungarian medical doctor and a distant cousin of filmmaker, The Last Happy Day follows Sandor’s flight from the Nazis to Italy, where he reconstructed the bones of dead American soldiers for the U.S. Army Grave Registration Service. Post-war, Sandor moved to Brazil, where he translated “Winnie the Pooh” into Latin; an eccentric task that catapulted him to brief worldwide fame.

Which Way Is East: Notebooks from Vietnam (1994)
in collaboration with Dana Sachs

When Sachs and her sister travel north from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, Vietnamese strangers and friends reveal to them the complexities of shared history. Which Way Is East starts as a road trip and flowers into political discourse, combining Vietnamese parables and history with personal memory.

Lynne Sachs has invented a unique hybrid cinema between the investigative documentary and the personal poetic film. Her work explores the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences. Sachs’ films have screened most recently at the Museum of Modern Art and the Sundance Film Festival. Women Without Men (2009)

Official Website: http://www.wellesley.edu/Film/homePage/home.html