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Contractions

Director

Lynne Sachs

Producers

Emily Berisso, Laura Goodman

Editor

Anthony Svatek

Cinematographer

Sean Hanley

In 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States ended a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion. Contractions takes us to Memphis, Tennessee where we contemplate the discontinuation of abortion services at a women’s health clinic. We hear from an obstetrician-gynecologist and a reproductive justice activist. We watch 14 women who witness and perform abortions with their backs to the camera. In a place where a woman can no longer make decisions about her own body, they speak with the full force of their collective presence.

Film followed by a special audio piece: WE CONTINUE TO SPEAK (Lynne Sachs, 4 min. 33 Sec., audio,  2024 ). Filmmaker Lynne Sachs records the participants and producers of her film Contractions as they vocalize their reactions to the reduction of women’s bodily autonomy in the United States.

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Lynne Sachs

Director, Every Contact Leaves a Trace

Lynne Sachs is a filmmaker and poet based in Brooklyn, New York. She has produced over 50 short and feature-length films, creating cinematic works that defy genre through hybrid forms and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Drawing on elements of essay film, collage, performance, documentary, and poetry, her work explores the intricate relationship between personal experience and broader historical realities, as well as the connection between the body, the camera, and the materiality of film itself.

Sachs began her filmmaking practice while living and studying in San Francisco, where she created early experimental works on celluloid rooted in a feminist approach to image-making and writing—a commitment that continues to shape her work today. Her films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the New York Film Festival, Sundance, Punto de Vista, and DocLisboa.

In 2021, both the Thomas Edison Film Festival and Prismatic Ground honored her body of work in the experimental and documentary fields. Her poetry collection YEAR BY YEAR POEMS was published by Tender Buttons Press in 2019, and HAND BOOK: A MANUAL ON PERFORMANCE, PROCESS AND THE LABOR OF LAUNDRY, co-written with playwright Lizzie Olesker, was published by Punctum Books in 2025. In 2026, she received the Persistence of Vision Award from the San Francisco International Film Festival, recognizing filmmakers whose work expands the boundaries of the cinematic form.