Film Categories: Childhood

  • Waiting (انتظار)

    A young woman journeys to visit her grandmother. What transpires between the unsaid and silence propels into a prolonged moment of tension and desires of connection. Image description: A young woman and her grandmother sit next to each other on a couch. They both look straight ahead with stony-faced expressions, not talking.

  • ghosts

    Ghosts is an experimental video that uses illustration and digitized 8mm film to explore concepts of childhood, sexuality, chrononormativity, indoctrination, and (metaphorical) death. The video disrupts the boundaries of past/present/future, birth/life/death, and humans/ghosts/monsters and encourages a dynamic engagement with such spaces. Ghosts is based on the novel, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, that many children in Canada read in school. The novel centres on a post-apocalyptic future where people, animals and other living forms that present physical differences are ousted to ‘the fringes’ by a strict Christian society. Within that society, a group of children develops a telepathic ability, a…

  • Learning to Eat Soup

    Last summer, during a family vacation in the countryside, my daughter mistook the flowers for butterflies, expecting them to fly away. When we returned this year, she seemed to have forgotten that confusion and understood the difference quite well. So, I tried to use my camera to see things how she had once seen them. But, of course, the more I used my camera to see things differently, the further removed I became from childhood, nature, and all things romantic. The title comes from an essay by Edward Hoagland.

  • Wash Day

    As they get ready for the day, three young Black women discuss the public perception of their Blackness in relation to their cultivation of a strong sense of self. Wash Day is an intimate exploration into how private, domestic acts such as washing your hair or putting on makeup become a significant re-acquaintance with the body, before and after navigating the politics of one’s outwardly appearance. Image description: A Black woman’s hands cradle long dark braids as water washes over them.

  • I Must Be Going

    A young finger puppet retrieves a letter left behind by her recently deceased brother.

  • Damaged

    “A retrospective based on an introspective vision, this stream of still pictures, unfolding to the rhythm of the voice-over (delivered by Steve Reinke), portrays a man who visually exposes his psychological “faults.” Recounting eighteen decisive moments in his life, and dissecting both his genetic and cultural heritage, the work delimits a transitory space in which each image crystallizes one of these indistinct marking points. Bringing together a number of collectively shared experiences, Damaged presents a series of significant events — some pleasant, others less so — evincing the complexity of the stages of life and offering models of childhood, sexuality…

  • Glimmer

    Looking within the forms of my daily life — homeschooling routines, my daughter’s face, shifting refractions of a hanging crystal — I seek to reimagine time not as a flowing river that carries us away, but a quiet lake in which we swim, circling back to moments that reverberate into the infinite. “Heaven would indeed be heaven if lovers were there permitted as much enjoyment as they had experienced on earth.” (Boccaccio) Completed during COVID lockdown for the Greetings From Isolation Project. Music by Colin Fisher.

  • Photograph of Wind

    My daughter’s name is Maya.  I’ve been told that the word maya means illusion in Hindu philosophy.  As I watch her growing up, spinning like a top around me, I realize that her childhood is not something I can grasp but rather  – like the wind – something I feel tenderly brushing across my cheek. “Sachs suspends in time a single moment of her daughter.”  Fred Camper, Chicago Reader San Francisco Film Festival, Onion City Film Festival

  • Noa, Noa

    Over the course of three years, Sachs collaborated with her daughter Noa (from 5 to 8 years old), criss-crossing the wooded landscapes of Brooklyn with camera and costumes in hand. Noa’s grand finale is her own rendition of the bluegrass classic “Crawdad Song”. Screening: Anthology Film Archive, New York, May 2006

  • Same Stream Twice

    My daughter’s name is Maya. I’ve been told that the word maya means illusion in Hindu philosophy. In 2001, I photographed her at six years old, spinning like a top around me. Even then, I realized that her childhood was not something I could grasp but rather – like the wind – something I could feel tenderly brushing across my cheek.  Eleven years later, I pull out my 16mm Bolex camera once again and she allows me to film her – different but somehow the same. Director’s Citation, Black Maria Film Festival, 2013.