Afterimage: Filmmakers and Critics in Conversation: Kelly Reichardt with B. Ruby Rich

11/11/10 to 11/13/10

This debut of the new Filmmakers and Critics series pairs Kelly Reichardt with B. Ruby Rich for several nights of screenings and conversation. Reichardt's social-realist films for the modern age, such as Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, have earned her a reputation as “an indispensable American filmmaker.” She will be in conversation with acclaimed critic and author B. Ruby Rich.

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Wendy and Lucy, November 13

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Past Films

Wendy and Lucy
- Saturday, November 13 8:30 PM
Kelly Reichardt (U.S., 2008). Screening followed by Kelly Reichardt in conversation with B. Ruby Rich. Michelle Williams is a young woman who loses her way-and her dog-in the Pacific Northwest, in this award-winning American indie, named to multiple Best-of-2008 and even many Best-of-the-Decade lists. “A lucid and melancholy inquiry into the current state of American society.”-NY Times (80 mins)
Old Joy
- Friday, November 12 7:00 PM
Kelly Reichardt (U.S., 2006). Two old friends reunite for a backpacking trip through the Pacific Northwest, but find their paths have diverged, in this “triumph of modesty and of seriousness that also happens to be one of the finest American films of the year.”- NY Times (76 mins)
River of Grass
- Friday, November 12 9:00 PM
Kelly Reichardt (U.S., 1993). New Print. Introduced by Kelly Reichardt. A thirty-something housewife goes on the lam with a young drifter in this atmospheric tale from the Florida swamplands. “Original, controlled filmmaking by creative independents who clearly understand the B-movie legacy they're tapping into.”-Sundance Film Festival (85 mins)
Ode
- Thursday, November 11 7:00 PM
Kelly Reichardt (U.S., 1999). Kelly Reichardt in Person. The 1960s teenage love story of Bobbie Lee and Billy Joe, retold in dusky Southern rhythms with a languid soundtrack by Will Oldham. With shorts Then a Year (“lyrical, ominous, and evocative of how horribly love can hurt”-Village Voice) and Travis. (75 mins)

Afterimage: Filmmakers and Critics in Conversation: Kelly Reichardt with B. Ruby Rich

11/11/10 to 11/13/10

BAM/PFA is proud to present a new series, Filmmakers and Critics, which brings top contemporary cinema directors onstage together with some of the nation's most interesting writers and academics. Our series debut showcases one of the brightest new voices in American cinema, Kelly Reichardt, whose films, such as Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, and the upcoming Meek's Cutoff, have brought a new kind of social realism to American screens, and earned her praise as “an indispensable American filmmaker” (New York Times). Her films are not set in the prototypical Hollywood world of big cities and powerful circles, but rather the forgotten, slightly frayed corners of the “rest” of the United States, of shopping mall parking lots, dead-end train tracks, and one-story homes with peeling paint. Rich with an acute sense of American regions and landscape, moving from the rundown, sun-bleached beaches of rural Florida (River of Grass) to the gray, desperate towns of the Pacific Northwest (Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy), her films spotlight the cinematically ignored, little-seen, but ever-growing American underclass, rootless individuals who have either been shut out of the American dream, or who just prefer to ignore it completely and seek out their own path. “There was a time when this kind of character would seem heroic,” Reichardt told Artforum, “but nowadays there doesn't seem to be too much support for any kind of truly alternative lifestyle.”

Joining Kelly Reichardt on stage will be the acclaimed writer and professor B. Ruby Rich, author of Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement and a key critic and cultural theorist since the mid-1970s. A longtime contributor to The Guardian (UK), sf360.org, Sight and Sound, and many other journals, she is Professor and Chair of the Community Studies Department and Social Documentation (SocDoc) Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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Series curated by Kathy Geritz. Afterimage: Filmmakers and Critics in Conversation is made possible by generous funding from the Hollywood Foreign Press Asscocation® and the continued support of the BAM/PFA Trustees.

Afterimage: Filmmakers and Critics in Conversation: Kelly Reichardt with B. Ruby Rich

11/11/10 to 11/13/10

Past Films

Wendy and Lucy

Old Joy

River of Grass

Ode