JENNIFER TODD REEVES: FEMINISM, ECOLOGY AND CARBON ALTERNATIVE

 THE TIME WE KILLED

Jennifer Todd Reeves

Towards the end of this summer, in search of intriguing places for collecting some shots that I am taking with my mobile phone for a long time now since my last useful pocket cam broke, I have stopped many times at the several same nearby points to examine immediate devastating effects of carbonization of the environment (in the immediate vicinity of my apartment in Split; Croatia).

Together with some personal reasons and feelings that I do not want to discuss openly, that carbo situation make me rethink of “carbon cinema” phenomena and some respectable authors that were “possessed” with analog (S8 - 16 mm) filming around hospitals and factories chimneys, unkempt parks, septic flats, unclean dumps and other (sub)urban rusty places so inspired for catching that strange, dirty but at the same time beautiful and subliminally unexplainable effect on analog film rolls. This was one of the agendas I wanted to discuss with recently deceased underground New York director (“Cinema of Transgression” founder) Nick Zedd (1958-1922) during our 2020/21 fb chats, but he was close to death and so cynical that I felt it would be better not to ask him about anything serious enough at the time.

Nick Zedd/s movie still

Deeper roots of “carbon cinema” are visible in Walter Ruttmann`s (1887-1941) “Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis” from 1927, as in some early silent films from Lumiere brothers. Information about the futuristic cyberpunk universe of the Netflix series “Altered Carbon” (visually stunning as it is colorful, due to the vision and skill of the show's Directors of Photography) as an commercial start point for digital transformation of an ecological phenomenon into a completely new dimension turned me back to the one old VHS tape that I have copied and digitized about 15 years ago during my postgraduate students years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVqPoV9q4ck

Berlin - Symphony of a Metropolis (1927) | by Walther Ruttmann

The movie is “The Time We Killed” (2004) by Jennifer Todd Reeves (1971; Sri Lanka), New York-based independent filmmaker and professor of film at Bard College, The Cooper Union, Millennium Film Workshop and the School of Visual Arts. As Wikipedia states: “Reeves's 16mm films are often experimental and deal with a range of issues, including mental health, politics, sexuality, feminism and the environment. Reeves began making her own films in 1990 and is known to provide her own writing, cinematography, editing and sound design in her works. Her films also feature collaborations with composers such as Marc Ribot, Skúli Sverrisson, Elliott Sharp, Zeena Parkins, Anthony Burr and Eyvind Kang. Reeves has produced many films over the years, the most noteworthy being “The Time We Killed” (2004) and “When It Was Blue” (2008).

Jennifer Reeves - The Time We Killed (excerpt)

After a long time, thanks to an online exchange with a friend, I managed to get hold of a copy of the new digital remaster of the film "The Time We Killed", and subsequently arranged this “FotAT” blog post with Peter and David. Jennifer Reeves has not released any new work for more than eight years, and according to relevant sources the last more complex project she was working on was: “double-projection film titled “Light Work Mood Disorder”, a work which pairs found footage of educational films with X-rays of the body.” She degraded the film with a solution made from dissolved pills which were intended to treat a number of physical and mental conditions. The resulting damage to the film is akin to the adverse effects of overmedication.

COLOR NEUTRAL a film by Jenn Reeves (excerpt) (2014)

But, as her fb page informing her returning short work "Pigment-Dispersion Syndrome (2022, 6 min) went into public display this summer with premiere at the "Curtas Vila do Conde International Film Festival" in Portugal.

Pigment-Dispersion Syndrome (2022, 6 min, Image and Sound by Jennifer Reeves) still 1

From my personal point of view, the films of Jennifer Todd Reeves, thanks to their brutal force of manifesting existential traumas while eliminating (to the bone) all possible doubts about the honesty of those confessions connected with her own situation (by using carbonated video diary method), strongly confirmed the suffering of a woman deprived of any kind of later hypocritical need, ballast extra attention or protective power over the other people as a compensation for the manifestations of someone perverted spirit.

On that destructive basis my own negative experience with delicate relationships with women in crisis was formed several times. I have been under attack for years from my immediate environment, including clinical-psychiatric and general medical wrong assessments and social degradations of all kinds.

Colorful Carbonated Tree in front of the entrance of the building I am living in Split

In the seemingly dark world of the "psyche renegade", as confirmed by the documentary improvisational experimental film practice of Jennifer Todd Reeves, other people burdened with their own bad episodes must not be dragged in to be branded as guilty for someone else's personal condition, but they must be integrated as potential “analysts of the positive that's left”.

Potential pathological image of oneself as a martyr and whistleblower for corrupt health and other institutions must be rejected. That's why I like Jennifer's movies. Her intentions are clean and deeply human.

And, as Peter Tammer noticed in his e-mail while we were preparing this post: "I do appreciate the great strength of character of Jennifer Reeves and her skill in making this disturbingly honest self-portrait film."

Pigment-Dispersion Syndrome (2022, 6 min, Image and Sound by Jennifer Reeves) still 2

Perhaps I would not have insisted so much on the analysis of the personal film drive related to the exploitation of the carbon effect and the ecological devastation of the environment that such works point to, which brought the work of Jennifer Todd Reeves closer to me again, if I had not been simultaneously working on the realization of the medium-length segmented. a project of my own "Low Temperature Hydrogen Peroxide Gas Plasma" (2022). which is available in its entirety and in its constituent parts on my YouTube channel.

Darko Duilo - Low Temperature Hydrogen Peroxide Gas Plasma (medium length borderline) (2022)

I hope some of you will express some interest in “carbon cinema” archives and, of course:

“PLEASE DO NOT TRY TO OVERLOAD THAT WITH RETRO ANALOG SHIT TREATMENT OF FILM STRIPS AND LENS”.

Let us at least keep this blog as clean as it is possible.

Greetings from Split, Croatia...

Darko Duilo

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