Anthology Film Archives

SLEEPWALKING: THE FILMS OF SARA DRIVER

March 23 – April 1

One of the most talented members of the wave of independent narrative filmmakers that emerged in New York in the 1980s and 90s, Sara Driver has been largely overlooked for the past decade or so. But this has begun to change, thanks to the near-miraculous rediscovery and New York Film Festival showcasing of her masterful debut film, YOU ARE NOT I (feared lost until recently), and to further screenings of this and her other films at festivals in Iceland and Greece. Nevertheless, a comprehensive retrospective here in NYC, her home for more than three decades, is long overdue.

Though she has made, to date, only two features, one medium-length work, and one short (as well as producing PERMANENT VACATION and STRANGER THAN PARADISE, by her longtime partner Jim Jarmusch), her body of work is at once impressively varied and fully cohesive – each of her four films is remarkable for revealing a different facet of her sensibility, and yet they are all suffused with her interest in the uncanny and the fantastic, in the blurring of reality and dream states, and with her predilection for mood and texture over plot.

We are overjoyed to welcome Sara Driver to Anthology for this complete retrospective. In addition to screening all her own films, we have asked Driver to choose a small selection of movies that influenced her work, display affinities with specific films, or are simply longtime favorites of hers.

“[Driver’s] films exist in the boundaries of myth, between realism and fantasy, between a solid narrative and the freedom of a poem. They appear to move to the rhythm of a musical piece, between the conscious and the subliminal. More than a filmed version of ‘reality’, they seem like a tangible representation of a spiritual state, a fissure with a view to a world on the borderline of fantasy and real life. Precisely like the city of New York, which constitutes the canvas for her films and is a ‘fabricated’ world, built on the lives of vivid people, strange stories, and urban myths, her films are defined by a crooked line of emotions and sensations.” –Dimitri Eipides, THESSALONIKI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Sara Driver will be here in person to present the screenings of SLEEPWALK and YOU ARE NOT I on Friday, March 23; WHEN PIGS FLY on Sunday, March 25; and YOU ARE NOT I on Monday, March 26.

On that opening Friday, she will be joined by Suzanne Fletcher, the star of both YOU ARE NOT I and SLEEPWALK, who will also be here for the screenings of YOU ARE NOT I on Saturday, Sunday & Monday, March 24-26.

In addition, archivist Francis Poole, who discovered the long-lost print of YOU ARE NOT I, will be here for the Friday, March 23 screening of the film.

And finally, playwright and screenwriter Ray Dobbins will join Sara Driver for the screening of WHEN PIGS FLY on Sunday, March 25.

Very special thanks to Sara Driver, and to Tom Jarmusch, Dimitri Eipides & Lilly Papagianni (Thessaloniki International Film Festival), Brian Belovarac (Janus), Marty DeGrazia (RHI Films), May Haduong (Academy Film Archive), Susan Lazarus, Francis Poole, Todd Wiener & Steven Hill (UCLA), and Marilee Womack (WB).

SLEEPWALK will also be featured at Lincoln Center’s “Film Comment Selects” series in February; visit www.filmlinc.com for more details.

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