About Ira Sachs: Ira Sachs is an American filmmaker. His first film was the acclaimed short Lady (1993).
A lot of what I think I do as a director is try to give everything over to the actor. So I disappear.
I don't think I'd ever start making a film until I had both the intimacy with the subject and the distance to make it live in a certain way.
New York grabbed me too hard, as did adulthood.
Without community events like NewFest, I don't think we'd have a queer cinema in America.
My films might have been queer - because I was - but they were not gay.
I've been close to two or three couples, gay and straight, who have been together for 45 years.
Why do people stay in relationships that are tough from almost the very beginning?
I find the stuff that is exciting to me are the films coming out of Taiwan and Iran and France. So I have the feeling I'm not making the films that American distributors want to make.
One of the biggest things that happens to many people when they have kids is that you suddenly realize that you're not going to last forever. You know there is another generation who are the heroes of their own stories, and that is humbling.
I conveniently was not accepted to film school, which I applied to in 1987, and so I decided I would become a filmmaker instead of a student.
When you live with people you know them better than you care to.
You can be aware of the passing of time without being nostalgic.
I don't rehearse with my actors... the first rehearsal is the first time we turn the camera on... Sydney Pollack never rehearsed his actors, and I found out that's allowed... so you film reactions; you don't create them.
Every time you make a film, you create a world. You make decisions about sets and costumes, and you create a universe connected to reality, but not reality itself.
My father moved out to Park City in in the mid-'70s and lived in a Winnebago behind a hippie joint called Utah Coal & Lumber that was one of only two or three restaurants at that time. Park City was a sleepy little mining town, with not a condo in si...
I've made four films about the destructive nature of relationships, of secrets and lies, and I think I'm no longer interested in that subject - which is a wonderful relief.
I realize I have strength as an artist and professional by embracing my difference instead of what makes me the same.
Music Box has proven itself in a few short years to be a cutting edge distributor with a sophisticated understanding of both the market and cinema.
Capturing intimacy is pretty much the only thing I'm interested in. That's what excites me and what I find beautiful in movies personally - that almost obscene sense that we shouldn't be this close to these people. I find that very inviting and meani...
I came to N.Y.C. in 1988 and got very involved with Act Up. I also started making movies, including two very gay shorts, 'Vaudeville' and 'Lady.' It was the height of the AIDS epidemic, and New York City was both dying and very alive at the same time...
I started making movies in the early '90s, a few years after I discovered 'the cinema' during a three month stay in Paris during which I watched 100s of films.
