Earlier this month, I attended the Traverse City Film Festival in beautiful Traverse City, Michigan. I spent three days seeing films and taking boat rides on the lake. I also had a bad case of laryngitis so spent the closing festival gala milling around, smiling on occasion, and searching for a cup of tea. Lo […]
On July 15th, Lynne and I trekked to Boston, sisters and s.o.’s in tow, to screen Your Day is My Night in my old stomping grounds; Cambridge, MA. The film showed as part of The DocYard’s summer series at the Brattle Theater, an independent and repertory house where I saw many career-affirming flicks like Andrew […]
Sachs calls the film a “hybrid documentary,” with real-life stories told by middle-aged and elderly, Chinese immigrants presented in a honed, often theatrical, style rather than as verité oral histories.
Combining scripted performance with improvisation, Your Day is My Night becomes immediately difficult to classify. Is it a documentary?
Lynne Sachs’ latest film fuses techniques of oral history and performance to achieve an impressionistic portrait of seven characters…
“Your Day is My Night” is a fascinating and innovative portrait of Chinese immigrant life in New York by Lynne Sachs. Sachs made the film through a lengthy series of workshops with Chinatown residents who became the film’s authors and performers. Most of the actors are retired people who have had some experience performing in amateur dance and theater productions, so they are comfortable as performers, without being overly polished.
When director Lynne Sachs first got the idea to make a film about shift-bed houses, she googled “hot-bed house” and got X-rated results.
“All great fiction films tend toward documentary, just as all great documentaries tend toward fiction.”
Queens Poet Laureate Paolo Javier attended both our premier at MoMA and our screening at the Brecht Forum. From the first moment that he saw our film, he noted an artistic connection to Chinatown poet Frances Chung’s book Crazy Melon and Chinese Apple. I have now read the book and it absolutely amazing. I am […]