Jennifer Reeves’s When It Was Blue
Tuesday, April 21, 2026 at 7pm
Light Industry, 361 Stagg Street, Suite 407, Brooklyn

When It Was Blue, Jennifer Reeves, 2008, 16mm double projection, 67 mins

An expanded cinema epic, Jennifer Reeves’s When It Was Blue consists of two 16mm reels projected by the artist atop one another on a single screen, each unfurling a contrapuntal stream of images captured from the landscapes of the Americas, Iceland, and New Zealand. Always on the move, Reeves’s film flits through an ever-changing world of sun-struck treetops, billowing hills, collapsing glaciers, and efflorescent lava, with fleeting portraits of owls, seafowl, snakes, and the occasional human. Black-and-white images, high-contrast to the point of abstraction, share the screen with frames covered in thick, biomorphic swaths of blue, ocher, green, or red. The montage is quick and palpitant, finessed throughout by Reeves’s live manipulations of the projector, the whole accompanied by a score from composer Skúli Sverrisson, which commingles with field recordings on the film’s optical track. Her dyadic projection suggests a strange tactility, and a flickering, phantom depth. Celebrated for earlier works like Chronic and The Time We Killed—movies where the darker recesses of psychic life are translated through striking experiments in film form—here Reeves looks not so much inward but outward, recording and distorting a wondrous yet degraded environment. When it first premiered, When It Was Blue felt like an elegy; these days it echoes like a war song.

Followed by a discussion with Reeves.

Tickets - Pay what you can ($10 suggested donation), available at door.

Please note: seating is limited. First-come, first-served, except for members subscribed at $8/month or more, who may reserve a seat by emailing information@lightindustry.org at least two hours prior to showtime. Box office opens at 6:30pm. No entry 10 minutes after start of show.

Light Industry is supported by our members and, in part, by the Mellon Foundation through the Coalition of Small Arts New York. Public assistance is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.