About Ira Sachs: Ira Sachs is an American filmmaker. His first film was the acclaimed short Lady (1993).
What's interesting to me is the distinction between my old life and my present life.
You can only begin to share life well when you think well of yourself.
I like a film that makes the audience feel like they are in the middle of life as it is moving, and in a way, they are catching up. They are thrown into things.
Working on the Obama campaign was a life-changer for me. I realized during that campaign that structure is the name of the game, and so, soon after the election, filmmaker Adam Baran and I started Queer/Art/Film, a monthly series at the IFC Film Cent...
All of my films have been autobiographical - it's all I've got to go on.
I'm not interested in a film about deceit anymore. I think I was always invested in deceit on some level. But it no longer compels me the way it did for so many years.
Being an artist is in part an act of rupture.
Intimacy is something to be cherished, and intimacy is not something to be afraid of.
It's easy to make a film, but it's hard to make a career of being a filmmaker.
For me, every film is actually a form of documentary.
Everything encourages you not to tell stories of gay lives. There is no economy yet for that kind of cinema.
I could not - and I still cannot - see a sustainable career as a filmmaker in which I focus fully on our gay stories.
Everyone wants to belong, and everyone needs to belong in order to make a career on some level.
By 15, I was lucky enough to find the theater.
By 1988, I was living in New York myself.
Seeing the road show of 'A Chorus Line' in 1977 at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Memphis was a life-changing event for me: there were gay people, on the stage, and they all lived in New York.
Fighting bitterness can be a full-time job.
I've always been interested in how the individual comes to know and accept him or herself, which I think has been hard for me.
I grew up thinking there was something called 'independent film,' which I wouldn't necessarily have had access to if there wasn't Sundance.
Every film is hard to fund.
I have been very influenced by the director Maurice Pialat, who I continue to be in conversation and conflict with and get inspiration from.
