Les esquisses

Kelly Reichardt, Then a Year, United States, 2001, Super 8 transferred to video, 14 min, colour, in English with French subtitles, previously unseen in France.

Shot in Portland, Then a Year combines footage of nature with views of the city and an interior, images completely devoid of any human presence. The sound, a mix of tens of voices blends the love letters of Mary Kay Letourneau – a teacher imprisoned following a relationship with a student – with extracts from programmes reconstituting real crimes. 

Kelly Reichardt, Travis, United States, 2004, Super 8 transferred to video, 12 min, colour, in English with French subtitles, previously unseen in France.
Extremely blurred to the point of presenting blobs of colour with indefinite contours, the images in Travis give full scope to the tearful voice of the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, extracted from a radio interview and assembled in a loop, repeating an insurmountable trauma. 

Kelly Reichardt, Ode, United States, 1999, Super 8 transferred to video, 48 min, colour, in English with French subtitles, previously unseen in France.
With Heather Gottlieb, Kevin Poole, Jon Wurster 
"Tallahatchie bridge": these words evoke the song Ode to Billie Joe (1967) by Bobby Gentry, a river with troubled water, a mysterious suicide and the mute pain of the sudden loss of innocence. Disregarding the orders of her authoritarian family, the young Bobbie Lee has a date with her boyfriend Billie Joe on Choctaw Ridge. But nothing is simple between them: religion is an obstacle, sometimes desire also. 

Kelly Reichardt and Christopher Blauvelt, Owl, United States, 2019, HD digital, 4 min, colour, silent, previously unseen in France.
When shooting First Cow, Kelly Reichardt and her director of photography, Christopher Blauvelt, filmed the movements of the owl Dimitri at night, until it took flight. 
A short testimony to Kelly Reichardt's attention to animals, which she has never ceased to film – dogs, cattle, birds, horses, cats, cows – often giving them a central role. 

Kelly Reichardt, Bronx, New York, November 2019  / Cal State Long Beach, CA, January 2020, France – United States, 2021, 16 mm digitised, 9 min and 10 min, colour, no speaking, previously unseen in France  
With Michelle Segre, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Alexander Demetriou 
In the context of the collection "Où en êtes-vous ?" (What stage are you at?)  

While writing her next full-length fiction film, Showing Up, on the everyday life of an artist preparing for an exhibition, Kelly Reichardt filmed the actions of two female sculptors working with different materials. 

In her studio in the Bronx, Michelle Segre makes creations using fragile and perishable elements like paper, wool and bread. 

At Long Beach, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, who shares her studio with Alexander Demetriou, sculpts earth.   
Seeking the form of her future film, the filmmaker who works on light and sound reproduced the actions and creative process of artists who transform material. 

Showing Up was later shot, in the summer of 2021, with Michelle Williams.