Category: events

LYNNE SACHS’ EVERY CONTACT LEAVES A TRACE

Since 1990, filmmaker Lynne Sachs (in person tonight!) has collected 600 business cards—from a hairdresser, a therapist, a textile artist… Together they form an archive of encounters. The title of this imaginative essay film, Every Contact Leaves a Trace, is a basic principle of forensic science…and any trace can link a person to a place, another person, or an object. If that’s true, Sachs wonders, might every personal encounter not also leave a trace on your being? To find out, she tracks down some of the people behind the business cards. The thread connecting these hundreds of cards is Sachs herself, so the filmmaker naturally becomes the center of the film. Yet the focus is not on her; she merely provides the perspective—the point of departure. With her warm, contemplative voice-over and playful visual invention, Sachs weaves countless faces and voices into a patchwork of connections. These encounters—whether forgotten or remembered, faint or vivid—have become part of her being. $15

Have a Story You Can’t Wait to Tell?

This workshop will help storytellers develop tools to transform personal experience or a topic they are passionate about into a story with structure. Participants will gain a sharpened story concept.

Ready for the next steps beyond “Intro To Nonfiction Storytelling”?

Check out Alka’s 4-Week Documentary Writing Intensive, an in-person development lab designed to help you transform raw material into narrative clarity. Over four focused weeks, you will move from idea to articulation — shaping a documentary concept with structure, voice, stakes, and ethical intention. More info and class registration: https://www.junoon.pictures/junoonlabs

Alka Raghuram is an award-winning filmmaker and a multidisciplinary artist. She has made several fiction, experimental, and documentary films. She was awarded the L’Oreal Woman of Worth Filmmaker Award for her script The Conqueror at Tribeca All Access. Her script Ayna was a finalist at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Alka frequently collaborates with other artists to create narrative performances and installations. Some of her collaborations include “Yatra” with Kathak and Flamenco dancers Pandit Chitresh Das and Antonio Hidalgo Paz; “Agni” with choreographer Charlotte Moraga and musician Alam Khan, and a photo, video and art installation Inspired by Burqa Boxers at the Locarno Film Festival. She recently received Creative Work Fund for a multimedia project called “Invoking The River” about the river Yamuna’s mythological significance and its environmental degradation, in collaboration with Chitresh Das Institute of dance.

WINNER – Locarno Film Festival, co-production market top prize: Grant Open Doors