This exhibition consisted of a continuous screening of three undistributed short films by the filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, widely considered to be one of the most important voices in American film today.

The three Super 8 shorts screened at Esopus Space were all made by Kelly in the 12-year period between her debut feature, River of Grass (1994), and the 2006 film Old Joy. As the filmmaker has said, “That was really a time where I learned how to make films. No one was watching and I went back to Super 8 and I could just really figure things out.” Kelly’s first film from this period, Ode (51 mins., color), is based on Herman Raucher’s novel Ode to Billy Joe (which was inspired by the Bobbie Gentry song of the same name). Ode was completed in 1999 and screened at that year’s Venice International Film Festival. Then a Year (14 mins., color), followed in 2001. Critic Amy Taubin called it “essential Reichardt: lyrical, ominous, and evocative of how horribly love can hurt.” The film won the Best Experimental Film award at the New York Underground Film Festival. Travis (12 mins., color), was finished in 2004 with a grant from the Wexner Center for the Arts. It features abstracted imagery accompanied by excerpts from an NPR radio interview with an anguished mother whose son was killed while stationed in Iraq.

All three shorts displayed Kelly’s extraordinarily poetic and intensely visual sensibilities. Her films are always intimate affairs—Reichardt works with a skeletal crew, and her narratives generally focus on one or two characters—but the Super 8 format of these three shorts (all shot by Reichardt herself) brought that intimacy to a new dimension, while also reminding viewers that her filmmaking is strongly rooted in experimental and avant-garde film practice.