In the period from 1984 to 2000 Lahire completed 10 experimental 16mm films that put into focus her innovative filmic approach in dealing with absolutely political topics.
The result is a new form of mixed-genre filmmaking, with a unique synthesis of sound and image, which marks an inventive stage in experimental film in Britain. Lahire's film work eliminates the borders between disciplines and genre. We are travelling from anorexia toward ecological-nuclear devastation; from an inspection of death and disintegration to a re-articulation of power structures within society. Light and sound are the poles of film narration that confront darkness and sound density, which explore in the most vivid way an unthinkable ecological, political or psychological disaster situation.
The result is a powerful investigation of inequalities regarding women's position, lesbian stance and social injustice against women and Jews. Lahire constantly explored the Jewish component of her identity. Lahire's work is to be historically seen as part of the post-1970s independent cinema movement, but it is also attached to painters such as Frida Kahlo and Leonor Fini and to the work of the poet Sylvia Plath to which Lahire dedicated her 1990s film trilogy. In 1999 Sandra Lahire enrolled at Queen Mary College, University of London, to work on a PhD thesis with Jacqueline Rose on the relationship between the visual and verbal component of Sylvia Plath's poetry. This was intended to conclude with a study of her own films alongside a reflection on films made by another gifted filmmaker, Sarah Pucill, who was also her partner for several years. Lahire managed to finish half of this project before she passed away.
