With her critically exalted 1999 debut feature Ratcatcher, Lynne Ramsay (b. 1969) boldly announced herself as one of those rare artists able to bend the cinema to the shape of her own extraordinary vision. Although she has directed only two films since, each has confirmed Ramsay's reputation as an uncompromising filmmaker fascinated by the tremendous power of cinema to appeal directly to the senses and awaken new depths in our audio-visual imagination. Immersive and at times almost overwhelming, Ramsay's films abound with uncommon imagery arresting for its remarkable use of texture, composition, color, music and sound. Grounding Ramsay's sensorially rich cinema are the ultimately quite similar protagonists of her three films, each recovering with a strange assurance from a traumatic, violent death in which they are also directly, although enigmatically, implicated. The outsider protagonists of Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar and We Need to Talk About Kevin are thus defined by a lasting communion with death, a bond with a realm beyond that seems to grant them a heightened awareness of the strangeness of the world around them, the uncanniness of the everyday. Much of the films' power lies in Ramsay's ability to capture and convey the drifting, dreamlike state of mind of her characters and the poetically associative logic that shapes their singular points of view.

Drawn first to photography, the Glasgow-born Ramsay entered England's prestigious National Film and Television School as a cinematographer before eventually switching to directing. Ramsay's equal talents in both disciplines were revealed in her accomplished 1996 graduation short Small Deaths which she shot and directed and which went on to win the Prix du Jury at that year's Cannes Film Festival. Ramsay's early shorts offer a playful yet sophisticated experimentation with the type of non-traditional composition and complexly expanded soundscapes that would become important signatures of her features. Indeed, these same qualities were taken to a bold extreme in Morvern Callar, Ramsay's mesmerizing and trance-like follow-up to Ratcatcher. Breaking the momentum earned by her critically acclaimed second feature, Ramsay suffered a frustrating series of career setbacks, with several tantalizingly close projects reported to have slipped away at the last moment. Yet eight years later her greatly anticipated Tilda Swinton vehicle We Need to Talk About Kevin immediately exceeded and even defied the great expectations weighing upon it, with Ramsay using her incredible skills as an audio-visual storyteller to create a controversial and ultimately devastating portrait of modern day motherhood. Poised to be one of the most hotly debated releases of 2011, We Need to Talk About Kevin confirms Ramsay's status as one of the exceptional stars of contemporary world cinema. – Haden Guest

The Harvard Film Archive is proud to welcome Lynne Ramsay for a showcase of her films, including the three acclaimed shorts that inaugurated her career. Please note that Lynne Ramsay's visit is to be confirmed. Check for updates below.