Co-directed by Lynne Sachs and Anne Lesley Selcer

For GIRL IS PRESENCE, Lynne Sachs has made images as a form of reading and listening in response to disquieting words from Anne Lesley Selcer's poem "Sun Cycle". A girl arranges and rearranges objects, sensorily reflecting the tense and disharmonious list of words voiced by Selcer in the film. As the language builds in tension, the scene becomes occult, ritualistic, and alchemical. Against the uncertain and anxious pandemic atmosphere, performer Noa Street-Sachs, Lynne's daughter, creates and unmakes systems with the collection of small, mysterious things. Selcer's poem emerges from Sun Cycle, the eponymous book which deals with image, gender and power. This poem reworks a George Bataille essay to undo and recast its rhythms.

Commissioned by Small Press Traffic.

Production format: HD Video

Screenings: Crossroads Film Festival, San Francisco Cinemathèque, August 2020; 2020 Film and Video Poetry Symposium; Oberhausen Festival of Short Film, Germany 2021; Experiments in Cinema International Film Festival, 2021; Athens Film and Video Festival, 2021; Moscow International Experimental Film Festival 2021; Dobra Festival International de Cinema Experimental, Rio de Janeiro; Cork International Film Festival, Ireland Artist Focus presented by Artist and Experimental Moving Image.