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Cultivate Cinema Circle and Hallwalls present
Women Direct: Kelly Reichardt's River of Grass
Introduction by Beyond Boundaries Film & Discussion Series curator Meg Knowles
Women Direct: First Films By Modern Visionary Filmmakers
According to the Motion Picture Association of America's most recent reports, women account for 52% of moviegoers, though the San Diego State's Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film reported that of the top 100 grossing films of 2016, women represented: 4% of directors, 11% of writers, 3% of cinematographers, 19% of producers, and 14% of editors. Obviously, the movie industry has a gender disparity problem.
In an attempt to help right this unfathomable wrong, over the past two years we'vehosted over 60 screenings at various venues around Buffalo, all the while continuously highlighting the immensely important, formally inventive work of female filmmakers, including organizing a five film retrospective of work by Agnès Varda (who just recently received an honorary Oscar), hosting Jessica Oreck at Squeaky Wheel, screening Oscar shortlisted films by Nanfu Wang and Bonni Cohen, and showing important new work by Kirsten Johnson, Petra Costa, and Jenni Olson.
With the coming year, we've decided to go further with Women Direct: First Films By Modern Visionary Filmmakers, a year long series celebrating the first films of modern masters like Kelly Reichardt, Lucrecia Martel, Sofia Coppola, and Julie Dash, as well as important new voices in cinema such as Dee Rees, Desiree Akhavan, and Anna Rose Holmer, each of whom emerged with fully formed, wholly unique perspectives from the start of their careers and have helped shape the world of cinema as we know it today. The series will be graciously hosted by Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center and will run from January through November, with special introductions by Buffalo's most notable women cinephiles and film scholars.
Synopsis courtesy of Oscilloscope Labs: River of Grass, Kelly Reichardt's darkly funny debut feature, brought the writer/director back to the setting of her adolescence, the suburban landscape of southern Florida, where she grew up with her detective father and narcotics agent mother. Shot on 16mm, the story follows the misadventures of disaffected housewife "Cozy", played by Lisa Bowman, and the aimless layabout "Lee", played by up and comer Larry Fessenden, who also acted as a producer and the film's editor. Described by Reichardt as "a road movie without the road, a love story without the love, and a crime story without the crime," River of Grass introduces viewers to a director already in command of her craft and defining her signature style.
"Kelly Reichardt might be the most important independent American filmmaker working right now. Over six features, she has built a body of work that stands in sharp contrast to the prefab stories and festival-friendly satisfactions of much of what passes for independent cinema today. Reichardt's movies are immersive, even gripping, and they often reflect (albeit sometimes obliquely) the social and political issues of their day." - Bilge Ebiri, The Village Voice
Kelly Reichardt Filmography:
River of Grass [1995] Ode [1999] Old Joy [2006] Wendy and Lucy [2008] Meek's Cutoff [2010] Night Moves [2013] Certain Women [2016]
