Contractions
Directed by Lynne Sachs
US
In 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States ended a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion. This film takes us to Memphis, Tennessee where we contemplate the discontinuation of abortion services at a women’s health clinic. We listen to an obstetrician and a reproductive rights activist. We watch 14 women who witness and perform with their backs to the camera. In a place where a woman can no longer make decisions about her own body, they speak with the full force of their collective presence.
Lynne Sachs is an experimental filmmaker and poet living in Brooklyn, New York. Over the last four decades, she has created cinematic works that defy genre through the use of hybrid forms and cross-disciplinary collaboration, incorporating elements of the essay film, documentary, performance, and collage.
Her films and poems explore the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences. Working from a feminist perspective, she investigates connections between the body, the camera, and the materiality of film itself. Sachs uses letters, archives, diaries, poetry and music, to take us on a critical journey through reality and memory.
Retrospectives of her work have been presented at Museum of the Moving Image, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Cork Film Festival, China Women’s Film Festival, Costa Rica IFF, and Ambulante Festival of Documentary Film (Mexico). Tender Buttons Press published Lynne’s book Year by Year Poems.