The Time We Killed is a beautiful, impressionistic cine-poem and a companion piece to Reeves's short Chronic. Reeves's debut feature combines elements of experimental film, narrative cinema, and documentary to create a stellar example of personal filmmaking. Poet Lisa Jarnot plays Robyn, a borderline agoraphobe who can't prevent the outside world from penetrating her Brooklyn apartment—whether it's a murder-suicide next door, memories of her true love, or September 11th. Reeves shoots the housebound scenes in uninflected DV and assembles the memory montages from beautiful high-contrast 16mm images. (The dialectical approach means that choosing outdoors over indoors, community over solitude, also represents a vote for film over video.) "Reeves's remarkable skills for expressive cinematography grant this grim tale a stark beauty bereft of sentimentality." (Village Voice) Cosponsored with the Experimental Television Center's Presentation Funds Program, supported by the New York State Council on the Arts.
Jennifer Reeves lives and works in New York and has made about thirteen short films and one feature. Reeves was a Jacob Javits fellow from 1998-2000 at the University of California, San Diego, where she acquired her M.F.A., and she is now a Visiting Professor of Film at Bard College and Cooper Union. Her films incorporate optical-printing and direct-on-film techniques and explore a range of topics including: mental health and recovery, women's sexuality, poetry, free-association, dogs and the infamous Bush crime family. More at jenniferreevesfilm.com
2004, b&w, 1 hour 34 minutes, USA