“The American story keeps repeating itself,” American filmmaker Kelly Reichardt told an audience on Tuesday at a master class at the documentary film festival Vision du Rille in Nyon, Switzerland.
During an onstage conversation that was part of a broader tribute to the director, Reichardt was asked if he was trying to rewrite American mythology through his films. “I don’t think I’m educated enough to rewrite history. But when it comes to the cinematic language of Westerns, which obviously are mostly told from the perspective of male directors and male protagonists, it’s interesting to jump in there and change the perspective and see what that does to the mythology.”
This approach influenced Meek’s Cutoff, a revisionist Western that follows a group of settlers lost in the Oregon desert. Reichardt connected the film to the political context in which she made it. “We were going into the Iraq war, and Meek was an arrogant guy — ‘Here we go!'” “You go to a foreign land, you distrust the indigenous people,” she said, adding, “The American story keeps repeating itself. The heroism of power seems like a fire that can’t be extinguished, but it never goes out.”
Reichardt’s films touch on power relations in the United States “A lot of my films are really about hierarchies of power,” Reichardt said. For “The First Cow,” she explained how a seemingly trivial story ties into a broader system. “This small crime of stealing milk from a cow fits into a larger picture of corporate greed, recklessness and crimes against nature.”
She added that the film examines early forms of capitalism, where hierarchies already existed before currencies were established, and its impact on both the environment and indigenous communities.
Reichardt also noted how her films are often described in terms of pacing. Often associated with so-called “slow cinema,” she fired back, recalling an on-air disagreement she had with NPR host Terry Gross, who called “Meek’s Cutoff” slow.
“My sister said, ‘Don’t you get on with anyone? I can’t believe you’re arguing with Terry Gross!'” she continued, jokingly adding, “Then I watched the movie and said, ‘Of course this is slow, she’s right,'” she admitted, drawing laughter from the audience. “But I don’t think being slow is a bad thing,” she says. “Over time, I feel so manipulated by the pace of commerce, and how much sound and image I have to take in in such a short period of time. I feel like no one wants me to do my own research and come to my own conclusions.”
A professor of film studies at Bard College, she said she sees similar shifts in attention related to screen use. “Sometimes it feels almost political, like I’m trying to fight something. Every year I see that my students’ attention spans are shorter than the year before…and I see that happening with my own attention spans,” she said.
Towards the end of the session, Reichardt briefly turned to the issue of fiction vs. nonfiction, playfully referencing Visions du Lille’s artistic director Emily Buges, who argued that Reichardt’s work challenges those boundaries. “Everything I do is fake, it’s all made up,” she said with a smile. She then justified this statement, explaining that fiction is a constructed process and emphasizing shared ambitions. “Ultimately, I hope to create something that speaks some kind of truth, but I don’t even know how to use that word anymore,” she said, adding: “In documentary filmmaking, you don’t let an existing world exist, you enter the existing world and capture it.”
At the conclusion of the conversation, Mr. Reichardt gave a short message to the audience. “I hope there is peace for all of us.”
Vision du Lille will run until April 26th.
