Cinema Arts Festival Houston 2009

When It Was Blue is an ode to nature and 16mm film as they rapidly vanish. This double-projection 16mm film rejoices in the splendor of seasons, landscapes, and wildlife as we traverse land and ocean. An elaborate montage connects diverse ecosystems, spanning from the northeastern USA to Iceland, Canada’s Pacific coast, New Zealand, and Central America. Reeves hand-painted the 16mm film, creating impressionistic textures and colors that mimic the qualities of land, water, and trees, and fuse with the photographic imagery. A frenetic and complex visual journey ensues through decades and seasons, trying to “capture” as much of the natural world as possible, before it disappears. Andrea Picard, who programmed this film’s triumphant premiere at the 2008 Toronto Film Festival, writes: “When It Was Blue not only reprises themes characteristic to Reeves’s prolific output—most notably that of natural ecosystems—but also substantially expands her impressive 16mm visual repertoire in a virtuosic display of luminescent overlapping imagery.” Houston-based critic Michael Sicinski remarks that her “collaboration with Icelandic guitarist/composer Skúli Sverrisson is key to this remarkable capaciousness: his soaring minimalist score, with its arpeggiated movements and accelerations, provides a perfect sonic analog to Reeves’s ranging motion and agitated brushstrokes.” Chris Stults sums up: “The resulting film, created out of a sense of sincere need, transcends the beautiful to tap into deep, resonant emotions in the viewer.”