About Ira Sachs: Ira Sachs is an American filmmaker. His first film was the acclaimed short Lady (1993).
I got into filmmaking in order to tell very personal stories, and in this day and age, the opportunity seems all the more precious.
There's a lot of things lost in the Digital Age.
I always hope that people feel less alone when they see a movie that I make. That some part of the story played out on the big screen will resonate for individuals in the audience in a way that gives them comfort.
I always think of my films within the context of where aesthetics meet economics. That's the nature of making art - not being naive about what is possible and getting what you need to tell the story you want to tell.
As I've gotten less righteous, less pedagogic, I have become more loving of the artificiality, the art form, the imitation of life in film.
'How to Survive a Plague' is history-telling at its best. It's a film I'll show my two children, now toddlers, when they are old enough to understand. It's a movie that I cannot forget.
I think it's interesting: What is the generational effect of the experience of being a gay person in America? For my generation, it was very difficult.
I remember being a teenager and seeing Seymour Cassel across a crowded room and being incredibly star struck, and not having the courage to say, 'Hello.'
Suspense films are often based on communication problems, and that affects all of the plot points. It almost gives it kind of a fable feeling.
All history is defined by shifting modes of reality and time and how things change. That's what I love about cinema. It changes in the moment.
As a filmmaker, you realize that places have character based on their history as much as a face does or an actor does.
I grew up in the 1960s in Memphis, and my father was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union. I was born three years before Martin Luther King was killed, and I think that history of civil action was something that I had in my blood.
What I loved about 'Goodfellas' is that it's a film about bad behavior - but told with great energy and without judgment - but it doesn't actually shy away from the consequences of that behavior in the characters' lives, which I think is similar in '...
You can understand why good publicists go on to run distribution companies: because the creativity involved is complex and nuanced.
Secrets make for good drama, and revealing the hidden truths and contradictions of life is, for me, one of the most exciting aspects of making movies.
For gay people, we learned about our lives in secrecy and a lot of fear.
I think there's a fear of difference in American cinema.
I've been hiding crucial events in my life since I was 13.
As a gay person, my life has been marginalized.
Most simply but profoundly, I chose to live an honest life, which I think as a gay person is not a given.
