Lynne Sachs had been painting and writing poetry for years when, in 1983, she began to make films, in particular documentaries, often with an unconventional, experimental approach. As she explains, her films "explore the intricate relationship between personal memories and broader, historical experiences." She has made nineteen films and videos over the last twenty-five years and is at work on a new documentary today.

Sachs has described her provocative filmmaking style as follows: "In my art work, I try to expose the limitations of verbal language by complementing it with complex emotional and visual imagery. My experimental documentary films push the borders between genres, discourses, radicalized identities, psychic states and nations."

"I begin my films by immersing myself in a community, asking questions and listening. With SERMONS AND SACRED PICTURES (1989), I returned to my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee in order to piece together a portrait of a person whose historic identity seemed to be tumbling into oblivion. I listened to eleven people as they explored their almost forgotten pool of memories of Reverend L.O. Taylor, an African-American minister who made films in the 1930's and '40s."

"In 2001, I completed INVESTIGATION OF A FLAME, an experimental documentary portrait of the Catonsville Nine, a disparate band of Vietnam War protesters who chose to break the law in a defiant, poetic act of civil disobedience."

Icarus Films is proud to distribute 5 of Lynne Sachs' films:

• Investigation of a Flame - An intimate look at the Catonsville Nine who on May 17, 1968 walked into a Catonsville, Maryland draft board office, grabbed hundreds of selective service records and incinerated them with homemade napalm.