Kelly Reichardt

Contemporary Film Directors

by Katherine Fusco, Nicole Seymour

Kelly Reichardt's 1994 debut River of Grass established her gift for a slow-paced realism that emphasizes the ongoing, everyday nature of emergency. Her work since then has communed with--yet remained apart from--postwar European realisms, the American avant-garde, independent film, and the emerging slow cinema movement. Katherine Fusco and Nicole Seymour read such Reichardt films as Wendy and Lucy and Night Moves to consider the root that emergency shares with emergence --the slowly unfolding or the barely perceptible. They see Reichardt as a filmmaker preoccupied with how environmental and economic crises affect those living on society's fringes. Her spare plots and slow editing reveal an artist who recognizes that disasters are gradual, with effects experienced through duration rather than sudden shock. Insightful and boldly argued, Kelly Reichardt is a long overdue portrait of a filmmaker who sees emergency not as a break from the everyday, but as a version of it.

Genres: Film, Collections

156 pages, Paperback

Published November 30, 2017

Reviews

[F Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this is an academic treatise, it is one that is accessible to the average college grad, which does not mean that it was completely devoid of words I had to look up.

The authors are both thorough and engaging in explicating Reichardt's work. They do a good job of explaining "slow cinema" (a personal favorite of mine), and other terms that have been applied by themselves and other scholars to Reichardt's films. They also explore the role of surveillance and the significance of Reichardt's framing choices among a host of other elements.

The explications are thought provoking for persons who have seen the films, and should pique interest in seeing them among those who haven't. Yes, there are spoilers, but for my money, it's not "what happens" in Reichardt's films that is important, but rather how she lays out "what happens."

Highly recommended. Read the notes and interview with Reichardt at the end of the book.

[Yü · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of great thoughts on Kelly Reichardt's work up to Night Moves. It is accessible and engaging for average film lovers. The book is built on an overarching theme about "Emergencies through the everyday, which I think is an excellent reading of Reichardt's films and the philosophy and vision behind them; although sometimes I find the analysis over-interpreting what could have been simply natural or coincidental choices as conscious decisions or metaphors to achieve certain goals. Overall, this book definitely helped me to appreciate these films better and deeper.

[Garrett Peace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid intro to Reichardt's films with solid theoretical discussions—I especially like the connections made to Rob Nixon's work on "slow violence" and Donna Haraway's work on companion animals—but some of the conclusions reached are stretches.

[Chris Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like Reichardt's films, this is a great analysis of her body of work. I'm a fan of Reichardt's minimalism, realism, and her slow cinema, so this was right up my alley.