Storytelling for the Screen: “Showing Up”

Directed by celebrated filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, Showing Up (2022) transforms the tensions of one make-or-break week into a nuanced portrait of creativity, art-making, and the messy task of building a life.

Showing Up stars Michelle Williams as Lizzy, a Portland-based artist struggling to hold things together even as they keep falling apart. Her hot water heater is busted, her brother might be going off the rails, her divorced parents are exasperating in their own separate ways, and the free spirits at the arts college where she works sometimes prove a bit much. But out of the pressurized absurdities and tumult come not just precious moments of creative inspiration, but the jagged shape of one woman’s life.

In this event, writer/director Kelly Reichardt will join moderator Alex Lilburn (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a live Zoom post-screening discussion of Showing Up.”