Film

The Delta

Directed by Ira Sachs

With Shayne Gray, Thang Chan

(1996) 85min, 16mm

The listless humidity of a Memphis summer simmers on screen in Ira Sachs’ (Keep the Lights On) enigmatic feature debut—a languid, unsettling portrait of unfulfilled desire and alienation. When not playing straight with his drunk, stoned friends, Lincoln, a closeted, affluent white teenager, haunts the city’s gay cruising spots and meets Minh, the immigrant son of a poor Vietnamese woman and a black G.I. The pair engage in a brief, doomed romance that culminates in a boat ride down the Mississippi River.

Sleepy Haven

Directed by Matthias Müller

(1993) 14min, 16mm

"Sleepy Haven materializes fantasies of an erotic daydream; the film is a cocktail that merges Müller's own shots and found footage like a love act. Nude bodies of sailors are flaring up in flickering solarization effects; they are given an ardent aura of physical desire by this tattooing of the film emulsion. Müller only gradually changes his material metaphors to metaphors of love."—Peter Tscherkassky