Artists in Person

In 1967, with the Vietnam War escalating wildly, an invitation was issued to filmmakers to create works running under three minutes in protest against the accumulating carnage. The original organizers chose the rubric For Life, Against the War, and eventually compiled sixty films from the likes of Robert Breer, Shirley Clarke, Storm De Hirsch, Ken Jacobs, Larry Jordan, Stan Vanderbeek, and many others. Now, decades later, an invitation to protest yet another war seemed sadly urgent, inspiring Lynne Sachs, the Brooklyn-based filmmaker and curator, to ring the clarion once “. . . Again.” The response was overwhelming, with submissions from several generations of artists unified by a singular disgust for the war in Iraq and the foreign policy that perpetuates it. Compiled with works from the overtly angry to the formally forceful, For Life, Against the War boldly announces that artists can take a stand, again and again.