NYAB Event - Kelly Reichardt "Three Shorts"

Kelly Reichardt "Three Shorts"

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At Esopus Space
Media: Film

Esopus Space presents “Kelly Reichardt: Three Shorts,” a continuous screening of three undistributed short films by the acclaimed filmmaker.

Kelly Reichardt is widely considered to be one of the most important voices in American film today. Her debut film River of Grass, released in 1994, was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and for three Independent Spirit Awards. Her second feature, Old Joy (2006), premiered at Sundance and won awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Rotterdam International Film Festival and the Sarasota Film Festival. Reichardt’s most recent film, Wendy and Lucy, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was later shown at the New York and the Toronto Film Festivals, among many others. Appearing on numerous critics’ top-ten lists for 2008, Wendy and Lucy was also nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards.

The three Super-8 shorts to be screened at Esopus Space were all made by Reichardt in the 12-year period between River of Grass and Old Joy. As the filmmaker has said, “That was really a time where I learned how to make films. No one was watching and I went back to Super-8 and I could just really figure things out.” Reichardt’s first film from this period, Ode (51 mins., color) is based on Herman Raucher’s novel Ode to Billy Joe (which was inspired by the Bobbie Gentry song of the same name). Ode was completed in 1999 and screened at that year’s Venice International Film Festival. Then a Year (14 mins., color), followed in 2001. Critic Amy Taubin called it “essential Reichardt: lyrical, ominous, and evocative of how horribly love can hurt.” The film won the Best Experimental Film award at the New York Underground Film Festival. Travis (12 mins., color), was finished in 2004 with a grant from the Wexner Center for the Arts. It features abstracted imagery accompanied by excerpts from an NPR radio interview with an anguished mother whose son was killed while stationed in Iraq.

All three shorts display Reichardt’s extraordinarily poetic and intensely visual sensibilities. Her films are always intimate affairs—Reichardt works with a skeletal crew, and her narratives generally focus on one or two characters—but the Super-8 format of these three shorts (all shot by Reichardt herself) brings that intimacy to a new dimension, while also reminding viewers that her filmmaking is strongly rooted in experimental and avant-garde film practice.

[Image: Still from Kelly Reichardt's film Ode, 1999 (color, 51 mins.) ]