FILM
Ira Sachs, Sr.’s Turbulent Life
Documentary focuses on father of out gay director
BY STEVE ERICKSON
Lynne Sachs’ documentary
“Film About a Father
Who” circles around
a hole. Her father Ira is
now 84, and she’s old enough to
be the mother of an adult daughter.
But one can tell that she still
doesn’t fully understand him.
That’s the reason why she made
this fi lm, which follows the messiness
of a man whose idea of freedom
consisted of running from one
short-term fl ing to the next with no
regard for the fact that he kept fathering
children.
“Film About a Father Who” incorporates
footage newly shot by
Sachs for the documentary, as
well as home movies dating back
as early as 1965 and material shot
by her father and her brother, the
accomplished, out gay director Ira
Sachs, Jr. Almost every possible
video format is credited, as well
as 8mm and 16mm fi lm. The result
is a hodgepodge of textures
and styles. To add to the mélange,
Sachs often plays audio of people
whose voices we can’t place on
top of unrelated images. While
the fi lm begins with promotional
video made by Ira Sr. in Park City,
Utah in 1992, it spans his entire
adult life. Ira, Jr. fi ctionalized
aspects of his father’s life in his
2005 fi lm “Forty Shades of Blue.”
Lynne nursed this project for 30
years, then decided to complete it
by recording a voice-over in January
2019.
Sachs refuses to pass judgment
on a man who was neglectful and
selfi sh. The fi lm’s spectators probably
won’t be so reluctant. Ira,
Sr. never should’ve had children
or agreed to participate in a monogamous
relationship, although
his lifestyle as “the Hugh Hefner
of Park City” probably made the
former inevitable. (Without using
the word “vasectomy,” his mother
tells him he should get one.) But
while his appearances on screen
don’t lead to any epiphanies about
the sources of his behavior, Sachs
is equally interested in the experiences
of her siblings, who are
“Film About a Father Who” digs into the past of Ira Sachs, Sr.
Lynne Sachs doesn’t fully understand her father — but she tried to do that in this fi lm.
better equipped to explain their
lives.
She brings the whole family together
to fi lm a discussion on this
subject. The class and racial differences
of her siblings are apparent.
While she’s white and Jewish,
some of her siblings are of different
races. In the end, he fathered
nine children by six women, but
concealed two because his mother
threatened to cut him out of her
CINEMA GUILD
CINEMA GUILD
will if he kept having kids. One
woman contrasts her life of hunger
and poverty with the middle class
lives of Lynne and Ira, Jr.
While she doesn’t emphasize
this part of her father’s personality
or her own work, she’s best
known for the anti-war fi lms she
made in the 2000s. She may have
been infl uenced by Ira, Sr.’s “lifelong
interest in doing good in the
world,” as she describes it in the
press kit. Very early on, “Film
About A Father Who” describes
him as a “hippie businessman,
using other people’s money to develop
hotels named after fl owers,”
and mentions his resistance to defi
ning himself by his job. But Ira,
Sr. remains bound to a ‘60s idea
of masculinity – he even looks like
David Crosby today – that viewed
women and children as impediments
to his freedom.
Sachs is also receiving a fi veprogram
retrospective at the Museum
of the Moving Image starting
Jan. 13th. It’s not complete,
focusing on her family-themed
work rather than her more political
fare. But obviously that makes
a fi tting context for “Film About a
Father Who.” She fi lms children
with a tenderness that seems to
have been lacking from her own
youth. She’s made three shorts
reworking the same images of her
daughter, Maya, as well as a depiction
of her niece and nephew in
the 2015 “Viva and Felix Growing
Up.”
In Sachs’ most recent fi lm,
the four-minute short “Maya at
24,” she edits together fi lm of her
daughter at 6, 16, and 24. “Maya
at 24” suggests that change is the
only constant in life. It’s based
around the image of Maya running
in a clockwise circle as
Sachs pans the camera to keep up
with her. “Maya at 24” also uses
superimposition to place earlier
versions of the woman inside her
head. While not exactly a subtle
fi lm, it suggests something real
about the way we carry our pasts
inside us as we race towards an
uncertain future. “Film About a
Woman Who” expands that notion
on a grander scale, with a nagging
sense that Sachs is searching for
emotions she never received as a
child and her entire family wants
answers from Ira Sr. while he’s
still alive. They don’t seem likely
to be forthcoming.
FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO
Directed by Lynne Sachs | The
Cinema Guild | Starts streaming
through the Museum of the Moving
Image Jan. 15
January 14 - January 27, 2 26 021 | GayCityNews.com
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