Exams and essays are piling up – it’s an unfortunate fact. It would therefore seem unwise to spare oneself a few hours to go see a movie. However, Conn’s film department has managed to tempt the student body with a tantalizing offer not worth giving up: award-winning filmmaker Kelly Reichardt will be on campus for an intimate Q&A session, as well as to screen her 2008 film Wendy and Lucy.
Following department-sponsored appearances by Betsey Biggs and Academy Award winning animator John Canemaker, as well as Jennie Livingston’s own Q&A and film screening, Reichardt’s event will feature the final independent artist hosted by Livingston, who, thanks to a grant, has been teaching at Conn for this past semester.
“I had my Independent Film students see Old Joy,” Livingston says, referring to Reichardt’s first film. “When I saw it at Sundance, I was thrilled. Later that day I ran into A.O. Scott (the New York Times film critic)… and I said ‘You have to see this film!’ Generally… it’s best to steer clear of advocating any particular films or filmmakers, but in this case I was enthused and enthralled and had to say something.”
Wendy and Lucy, the film screening after the Q&A session, was released in 2008 to rave reviews. It was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards, Best Picture and Best Female Performance for star Michelle Williams. Throughout the 2008-2009 awards season, Williams was considered a strong contender for the Best Actress Oscar.
In the film, Williams’s character Wendy journeys towards Alaska with little money and her trusty dog Lucy. “[The film] is about what happens to someone who’s alone and has to make her way alone in contemporary America,” explains Livingston. “It’s a quiet film and… a terribly smart, beautiful film.”
Reichardt’s latest film, Meek’s Cutoff, starring Michelle Williams and Paul Dano, recently screened at the New York Film Festival. As Livingston explains it, the film is “all about families crossing Oregon in covered wagons who get lost. It’s not like too many Westerns, doesn’t reify the grand myths of conquest that so many Westerns are about, nor is it self-consciously political, at least not in ways that aren’t subtle and smart and unpredictable.”
Of course, Reichardt’s accolades should not be the film’s only defining feature. “Though Reichardt is a woman director,” says Livingston, “and women make only 6% of features, and we often think of female filmmakers as being interested in ‘relationship’ pictures, her films aren’t like that at all. When Meek’s Cutoff played at the NY Film Festival, the curator introduced Reichardt as one of the best filmmakers working in the U.S. today, and that’s not an exaggeration.”
The screening is a welcome study break for film lovers of all ages, and it’s not every day that students have the opportunity to have a well-respected independent filmmaker on campus. “Why would anyone who loves film miss this opportunity?” asks Livingston. “And who doesn’t love film?”
Wendy and Lucy is screening on Wednesday, December 15, at 4:30 PM in Olin 014. The Q&A session will immediately follow the movie.
