Katy Grannan: The Nine

Photographer and filmmaker Katy Grannan presents her first feature film The Nine, 2016 (98 min). The film is preceded by Grannan’s short Are You Listening?, 2016 (5:10 min), commissioned by The New Yorker.

Following the screening, Fall 2016 VES Visiting Faculty Dru Donovan joins Grannan in a conversation.

The Nine

The Nine is an intimate, at times disturbing, view into an America most would rather ignore. Grannan presents an unblinking portrait of Modesto, California, the heart of the state’s Central Valley, a region devastated during America’s Great Depression. Modesto’s notorious South Ninth Street—the Nine—is a no man’s land where the rules of polite society do not apply. The people living along the Nine form a ravaged micro community whose Darwinian existence is a day to day hustle, and survival is by any means necessary. Kiki, however, is the rare bright light whose magnetic optimism is a means of self-preservation. Her childlike enthusiasm belies the stark reality that surrounds her. The Nine filmed in an elegiac style, honors the casualties of a broken system—people who might otherwise be forgotten. Like a Townes Van Zandt song, The Nine is a film about the beauty of those who fall by the wayside, a bittersweet country ballad that feels at times like a lost page by John Steinbeck or William Faulkner.

Katy Grannan

Katy Grannan is a photographer and filmmaker in the Bay Area. She was first recognized for an intimate series of portraits depicting strangers she met through newspaper advertisements.  She completed her first feature film The Nine in early 2016. Grannan’s photographs are included in collections such as the Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. There are five monographs of her work in print. She most recently presented the portfolio First-Time Voters for the New Yorker.