‘Every Contact Leaves a Trace’ Director on Why She Hired a Detective: ‘I’m Trying to Reconstruct a Life Story’

U.S. artist and documentarian Lynne Sachs has often screened her past films at Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival, but she’s finally made it in person this year, serving on the First Lights jury, which evaluates docu debuts.

Sachs says she’s been impressed by Ji.hlava films that span the globe while showcasing the full range of filmmaking approaches and perspectives.

“There are about 24 movies to see. It’s kind of revelatory. Already I’ve seen two films here, one from Argentina and one from Congo and they really couldn’t be more different. They make you think about the documentary paradigm.”

A case in point, she says: “Positionality.” Whose perspective is an audience seeing and is the filmmaker’s role visible or even known?

It’s something Sachs has made crystal clear in her newest film, “Every Contact Leaves a Trace,” screening at Ji.hlava in its Czech premiere.

Sachs herself is clearly onscreen, investigating, making connections, doubting herself, and occasionally seeking help from a youthful niece and nephew as she goes through old business cards, some decades old, wondering at who gave them to her and what traces of lives contacting hers can still remain.

The film is a kind of detective story that eventually enlists the actual analyses of forensic investigators as Sachs follows leads to track down people whose names remain in her box of hundreds of carefully preserved business cards – a good number she admits have lost all meaning to her.

“I actually hired a detective at one point,” she confesses.

Some left burning impressions on her and she has always wondered what became of the card giver – such as an artist whose work touched her years ago or a fellow artist filmmaker who was later canceled over allegations of impropriety.

One card was from a Syrian woman whose family discouraged her from sitting for an on camera to share her experiences as a refugee – so Sachs settles for filming a tribute to the woman’s cooking skills.

Sachs says she is also uneasy about terms that have come into common use for people in docus. Rather than say “protagonists” or “characters,” she much prefers “on camera participants.” Or maybe “visible collaborators who are the people in front of the camera.”

“We’re offered the chance to tell our story by the person behind the camera. What I don’t know is, who is the person behind the camera?”

In the case of “Every Contact,” it’s clear to all who is filming and inquiring as Sachs visibly, sometimes awkwardly, tracks down people who once met her but certainly never expected her to appear again at their doorstep with a camera. It’s a role she has not always put onscreen so clearly, she says.

“I’m trying to reconstruct a life story of life experience from the interactions I’ve had with people…people who left a mark.”

Since the film came out, Sachs says, people have offered her their own collections of old business cards.

“I say, ‘Oh, no!’ This combination of cards only goes back to one person. You’re the person who had that dentist. You’re the person who met that psychoanalyst. Or potential friend on a bus.”

As Sachs investigation progressed, she says, “I was most drawn to the cards that presented the biggest obstacles.”

Some card donors may be impossible to find now. And others presented a different challenge: At times figures from your past have made lasting impressions – but that doesn’t always mean that was mutual.

The process of recounting past encounters is one fraught with traps, says Sachs, as human minds tend to re-enact them in the mind, often editing, sometimes finding specific moments deeply burned in. As Sachs enlists the help of family on her quest, one suggests that it’s not usually even up to us to choose which memories will stay with us and which we’ll lose.

Sachs discovered through her docu detective work that sometimes she did not need to fly across time zones to track down someone she once knew who might not even remember her or feel they shared an important interaction, she says.

“I don’t need to prove I did or didn’t,” says Sachs. “I need to deal with the residue.”