Kelly Reichardt
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Kelly Reichardt on Shooting Certain Women on 16mm, the Ugliness of the Day, and Making the Space Tell the Story
In the more than two decades since her stunning debut film River of Grass premiered at Sundance in 1994, Kelly Reichardt has managed to carve out a unique niche for herself in the independent film world. Her distinctive and uncompromising body of work includes Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff, Night Moves, and her latest, Certain Women, which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. Written and directed by Reichardt and based on the short stories of Maile Meloy, Certain Women stars Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, James Le Gros, Jared Harris, Lily Gladstone and René Auberjonois. Shot by frequent collaborator, DP […]
by Paula Bernstein on Oct 14, 2016 -
The Wexner Center Announces 2016-17 Artist Residency Awards
The Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio has announced its 2016-17 Wexner Center Artist Residency Award recipients in performing arts and film/video. The recipients are Faye Driscoll (Performing Arts), John Canemaker (Film/Video), Kevin Jerome Everson (Film/Video), and Sam Green and Kronos Quartet (Film/Video). Selected by the center’s curators and director to fulfill the center’s role as a creative research laboratory for artists, the residency awards provide significant sums of money (from $25,000 to $100,000) and space — along with technical, intellectual and professional support — to develop new works on-site. Kelly Reichardt was the recipient of last year’s residency award, which she used […]
by Paula Bernstein on Oct 3, 2016 -
Studio 54: The New York Film Festival, Part I
On the evidence of the finest films in the first third of this 54th edition of the New York Film Festival, those familiar with the exhibitionistic, amped-up social set that frolicked in, gawked at, or read about the notorious, dear-departed Manhattan night spot might find it ironic, or a misnomer, that its moniker is my appropriated title for this initial NYFF feature. Sure, Lincoln Center ranks far lower on the cool scale than the legendary club, but, a testament to tenacity, merit, and resilience — how it has managed to survive continuous power struggles and administrative shuffles of parent organization […]
by Howard Feinstein on Sep 29, 2016 -
Trailer Watch: Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women
Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women made its debut earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival where it received excellent reviews and was quickly acquired by IFC Films. In advance of its upcoming screenings at both the Toronto and New York film festivals, the film, which stars Kristen Stewart, Laura Dern, and Michelle Williams, has its first trailer (above). Based on Maile Meloy’s short-story collection “Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It,” the Montana-set film follows three women in an intertwining narrative. In his review of the film out of Sundance, Filmmaker’s Vadim Rizov wrote, “Reichardt’s films take place in an atmosphere of heightened quiet, […]
by Paula Bernstein on Sep 2, 2016 -
Sundance Dispatch 4: Certain Women, Love & Friendship and Indignation
Even by Kelly Reichardt’s disciplined standards, Certain Women brings the rigor. Opening credits are laid over a overhead static shot of a train making its way from the frame’s upper right corner to the bottom left; not quite James Benning’s RR, but that gives some idea of Reichardt’s patience. The “certain women” of Montana have their stories told in three basically discrete segments (there are overlapping characters between each, but no greater cohesion as far as I could tell at first pass). Lawyer Laura (Laura Dern) represents an injured construction worker; unable to get the settlement he deserves, he takes a hostage for leverage. Laura’s sleeping with Ryan Lewis […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 28, 2016 -
“A Film Reveals Itself As You Go Along”: Director Kelly Reichardt | Certain Women
In every film, there is the story that you knew you were telling, the story the audience perceives. But there is always some other story, a secret story. It might be the result of your hidden motivations for making the film, or, instead, the result of themes that only became clear to you after you made the movie. It might be something very personal, or it might be a story you didn’t even know you were telling. What is your film’s secret story? I don’t exactly recall what film I thought I was going to make when I started on […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Jan 24, 2016 -
The Independent Screenwriter: Jon Raymond
Portland-based Jon Raymond has four screenplay credits, all in the last decade, to his name, but his iMDB page only tells half the story. Raymond began his career and is still well known as a writer of novels and literary short fiction, and his film career has come not from the usual Black-Listed spec script but from adaptations of his work co-authored by a director/collaborator/friend, Kelly Reichardt. Two stories from his short story collection Livability, “Old Joy” and “Train Choir,” became Reichardt films (Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, respectively), with the two co-authoring their scripts. That work, and the […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 31, 2014 -
“Why Don’t We All Go Blow Stuff Up?” Kelly Reichardt on Night Moves
In Night Moves, Jesse Eisenberg’s baleful, twitchy intensity finds another fitting incarnation. His Josh is an environmentalist visibly dissatisfied with perceived half-measures who plans to blow up a dam as an act of eco-terrorism-/-activism with the help of ex-Marine buddy Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard) and Dena (Dakota Fanning). To do this, they’ll need to purchase suspicious quantities of ammonium nitrate and buy a boat to pack it into. The middle-aged suburban guy selling his fishing vessel couldn’t be more innocuous in his personal manner, but we see his neighborhood through Josh’s angry eyes: the backyard waterfall is a clear misallocation of […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 30, 2014 -
A Taste of Cannes in the Yucatán: The Riviera Maya Film Festival
For a beach bum cinephile it doesn’t get much better than the Riviera Maya Film Festival. Only in its third year, Riviera Maya mixes the accessibility of AFI Fest – surprisingly, it’s free and open to all – with a bit of the sensational cachet of Cannes. (Right down to a brazenly coordinated, multi-store jewelry heist in Cancun that resulted in the car carrying Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Gyllenhaal getting stopped en route to the opening night screening of Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves. Now that’s entertainment!) I didn’t catch Reichardt’s edge-of-your-seat eco-thriller until the last day of the fest, but […]
by Lauren Wissot on Mar 27, 2014 -
Venice International Film Festival 2013
To get to the Lido — the strip of beachy land upon which the Venice Film Festival is held every year — one must take the vaporetto (or water taxi) from the Marco Polo Airport. While waiting for the transport to arrive, one is stuffed into a rectangular holding pen that sways and jerks with the current, provoking a mild but unmistakable seasickness in the more sensitive among us. Little did I know I was to experience almost exactly the same feeling the following morning while watching festival opener Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón’s first since 2006’s Children of Men. It’s an […]
by Ashley Clark on Oct 21, 2013
