Urban Video Project Presents ‘This Side of Salina’

Light Work’s Urban Video Project (UVP) is pleased to present the exhibition of “This Side of Salina” by
filmmaker Lynne Sachs, exploring reproductive justice from Oct. 12 to Dec. 21 at UVP’s architectural projection venue on the Everson Museum facade in downtown Syracuse.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Sachs will be joined by members of the feminist filmmaking
group The Abortion Clinic Film Collective and local reproductive justice advocates for
“Communities of Care: Documenting Reproductive Justice in a Post-Roe Country,” a film
screening and panel talk at Light Work (316 Waverly Ave., on the SU campus) on Thursday,
Oct. 17 at 5:30 p.m.

About “This Side of Salina”

Four Black women from Syracuse, New York, reflect on sexuality, youthful regret, emotional vulnerability, raising a daughter and working in reproductive health services. In a series of their own choreographed vignettes, each woman thoughtfully engages with the neighborhoods she’s known all of her life. Two performers flip through classic 1960s titles by Black authors in a bookstore. Others sit in a hat store finding time to pour into each other, as mentors and confidantes. These are businesses that are owned by local Black women, and they know it. In Brady Market, a community grocery, they playfully shop and chat with ease and confidence. They dance to their own rhythms in the outdoor plaza of the Everson Museum of Art. Together they look down at the city from its highest point and ponder how to battle the inequities of the place that they call home.

Sachs is an American experimental filmmaker and poet based in Brooklyn, New York.
Working from a feminist perspective, she has created cinematic works that defy genre through
the use of hybrid forms, incorporating elements of documentary, performance and collage into
self-reflexive explorations of broader historical experience. Her films have screened at the
Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, Wexner Center for the Arts, and festivals such as New
York Film Festival, Oberhausen Int’l Short Film Festival, Punto de Vista, Sundance, Viennale
and Doclisboa. Retrospectives of her work have been presented at Museum of the Moving
Image, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Cork Film Festival, Havana Film Festival, among others. In 2021,
both Edison Film Festival and Prismatic Ground Film Festival at the Maysles Documentary
Center gave her awards for her lifetime achievements in the experimental and documentary
fields. In 2014, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Creative Arts. In 2019, Tender
Buttons Press published her first book of poetry, “Year by Year Poems.”

Related Programming

All programs are free and open to the public.

“Living to Tell: Using Filmmaking as a Tool for Reproductive Justice”
Wednesday, Oct. 16 at 5:30 p.m.
Salt City Market Community Room, 484 S. Salina St.
484 S. Salina St.
Free, RSVP is required

“Communities of Care: Documenting Reproductive Justice in a Post-Roe Country”
Thursday, Oct. 17,  5:30 p.m.
Light Work, Watson Theater, 316 Waverly Ave.

Communities of Care is sponsored by the Syracuse University Humanities Center as part of
Syracuse Symposium 2024-25: Community and by the Lender Center for Social Justice.
at Syracuse University. This program is also partnered with the Department of Women’s and
Gender Studies and the CODE^SHIFT lab in the Newhouse School, both at Syracuse
University.

Living to Tell is co-presented with Engaged Humanities Network, an engaged scholarship
initiative of Syracuse University.