Northwest Film Forum

Jennifer Reeves’s epic, years-in-the-making When It Was Blue presents an experience of a world that is both visceral and fleeting. Photographed in 16mm over many years in various waters and terrains, 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, delighted and mournful visual journey ensues through decades and seasons, as if trying to “capture” as much of the natural world as possible before it disappears. Icelandic musician and composer Skúli Sverrisson’s emotive and haunting score brings the internal human experience to this vast world away from home.