Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, NY, presents Looking for Love. The Films of Ira Sachs on August 25–September 4, 2012.
Looking for Love: The Films of Ira Sachs, is the first comprehensive New York retrospective of Sachs’s work that includes all of his feature films and a selection of short films, each followed by a Pinewood Dialogue with Sachs in person. The series culminates, with a preview screening of his latest feature Keep the Lights On.
Having moved to New York from his hometown of Memphis in the 1980s, Sachs became a driving force in the New York film world, as the founder and co-curator of the monthly series Queer/Art/Film and as a teacher at New York University. With his feature debut The Delta being accepted to the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, Sachs immediately broke in to the independent cinema scene. Though he would not make his second feature for another nine years, Sachs returned to the Sundance Film Festival in 2005 with Forty Shades of Blue, this time winning the Grand Jury prize. Both of Sachs’s early romantic dramas capture the physical intimacy and emotional distance between lovers struggling to accept their quietly tragic circumstances.
In his third feature, Sachs collaborated with Oren Moverman to adapt John Bingham’s 1953 novel Five Roundabouts to Heaven into a major motion picture. With an all-star cast including Pierce Brosnan, Patricia Clarkson, Chris Cooper, and Rachel McAdams, Sachs’s Married Life is rich in artifice and dark humor reminiscent of Hitchcock’s wry comedic mysteries.
Keep the Lights On is Sachs’s most revealing personal film yet. His fourth feature chronicles a decade-long relationship among the changing landscape of New York City around the turn of the 21st century. This special preview screening is courtesy of Music Box Films, and will open theatrically on September 7.
A complete schedule for Looking for Love: The Films of Ira Sachs is included below. With the exception of the preview screening of Keep the Lights On, tickets for screenings are free with Museum admission ($12 adults, $9 senior citizens and college students, $6 children 3–17) and free for Museum members. For information about becoming a member, visit http://movingimage.us/support/membership/