Leading Swiss docfest Visions du Réel has announced US filmmaker Kelly Reichardt as Guest of Honour at its 57th edition (17–26 April). Reichardt will take part in the Festival with a masterclass and a retrospective of her work, as well as a carte blanche, while her latest feature film, The Mastermind, will also be screened ahead of its limited theatre release.
“A key figure in contemporary independent cinema, Reichardt will discuss her bold, meticulous and radical filmography, which often revisits great American myths and is characterised by an aesthetic of refined simplicity and observation, and by a rejection of the spectacular, through minimalist fiction rooted in gestures, places and the passing of time,” the festival writes. The tribute is part of a collaboration with the Cinémathèque suisse and the ECAL University of Art and Design Lausanne film department, as well as another collaboration that began several years ago with the Fondazione Prada.
The festival continues: “Born in Miami, Florida, yet enamoured with the green landscapes of Oregon since her second film, Kelly Reichardt casts her gaze onto America’s founding myths and territories. With nine feature films – including Meek’s Cutoff, First Cow and Certain Women – and several short films over a thirty-year career, her filmography, carefully constructed far from the major Hollywood studios, is remarkable for its modest means and its inclination to revisit genres that run through American cinema, such as westerns, thrillers, historical films and road movies. A focus on those left behind by the American dream and its modern legacy is the common thread that unifies her work.”
“While rooted in fiction, Kelly Reichardt’s oeuvre nevertheless flirts with “cinema of the real” in many respects: a certain antisensationalism, economical production, a certain narrative and formal restraint, the considerable time devoted to location scouting, the adaptation of the script to the filming contexts, and the immersion of her teams in the living conditions of the places filmed, form the very foundations of a unique and distinctive method and cinematic approach. Through her attention to everyday gestures, places and marginalities, the filmmaker transforms fiction into a sensitive and ethical tool for observing the world.”
Visions du Réel artistic director Emilie Bujès comments: “It is a tremendous privilege to welcome one of the great voices of contemporary cinema. Film after film, Kelly Reichardt sketches fragments of history and lives in remarkably refined and elegant narratives which, through their rejection of the spectacular and their sensitive attention to detail, reveal a fascinating relationship with reality”.
The full programme for the 57th edition of Visions du Réel will be announced on 25 March.
