Jesse Richards - Film and Photography

Film and Photography

Richards has worked on films with Nicholas Watson since 1996. Their film noir, Blackout, was premiered at the event Stuck Films at the New Haven Stuckism International Center in 2002.

In 2003, Richards co-produced Shooting at the Moon, a short film premiering at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival. In 2008, the film made its London premiere at Horse Hospital during its FLIXATION Underground Cinema Club event. Richards said that his films had previously often contained nudity, but this time he wanted to do the opposite and the two leads do not quite even kiss:

While making this film I guess the main thing we were thinking about accomplishing was to express this emotional experience, and have people really feel it, and not to get too complicated with story or anything that would distract from this feeling we wanted people to have while watching the film.

Kurt Walker, an editor and critic on The Auteurs, described one of Richards' films, so tell me again, this way:

While Tarkovsky's aesthetic is impossible to recreate, Richards shows a clear understanding of the dictation of time and capturing those evasive and important moments in life, with his short (or excerpt from an upcoming feature) So Tell Me Again. The first sequences of shots and sounds clearly conjure before they indicate. Nostalgia proliferated through the torrential over-exposure of 9mm film (sic), the moment between two lovers, one being the auteur himself, quickly translates from the personal to the universal. Whether or not the viewer has grasped the palpable beauty of the situation in their own lives, is irrelevant, as Richards Re-modernist cinema seems to assert (though not stated in the manifesto) that our memories of cinema become incongruently melded with the memories and our own lives. Cinema is only 3 senses away from reality, and Richards has taken it upon himself to imply the other senses in the name of a more absolute depiction of it. And yet, realism is not Richards’s concern, as the film hinges on a form far removed from the description of naturalism, and translates its power through a memory that is universal. One gets the sense that if My Bloody Valentine's Loveless were a film, it'd look something like this. Every shot feels as though it could implode under the rays of the sun, and yet the film gradually explodes with a portrait of love at its moment of perfection. The back-lot of this couples sadness is implied in our peripherals, and quickly disarmed by the lurid beauty of an ancient pop melody. Who says naiveté can't be transcendental.

A book of pinhole photography called "Dark Chamber", featuring new work by Richards as well as work by Wolf Howard, Billy Childish and others was published by Urban Fox Press in May 2007.

Brian Sherwin said of Richards that his work was "Street truth":

His work may seem crude to some, but at least it is honest (sometimes brutally honest.) This honesty is captured by his ability to convey human behavior and struggles with each shot from his camera.

In February 2010, the Australian film magazine Filmink announced Richards' participation in a compilation feature film by the Remodernist film movement. The film is scheduled to premiere in New York in December 2010.

Richards announced in July 2010 that he joined a "new international film collective" called Subvex, which was initiated by Tobias Morgan, co-director of The Auteurs's Garage. "Subvex is currently based in Paris and New York and advocates the occupation of new spaces for the projection of films that would otherwise struggle to receive distribution in a mainstream market, and emphasises the development of ground-level cultures around new waves in contemporary filmmaking". In August 2010, Subvex announced its first project, an 8mm film version of Exquisite Corpse, which will feature new work by Richards, Jonas Mekas, Bill Morrison, Nina Menkes, Lav Diaz, Ian Helliwell, Amos Poe and others. The collaboration is not-for-profit and is being financed through crowdsourcing.

In December 2010, Richards joined the Board of Directors of Cine Foundation International.

Richards currently lives in Granby, Massachusetts.