Programmed by Amy Kazymerchyk

“The Time We Killed portrays the inner life of a writer unable to leave her Brooklyn apartment on the brink of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Robyn Taylor tries to kick her growing agoraphobia by re-imagining her past and contemplating world events of the present. As Robyn begins to overcome the amnesia that afflicted her as an adolescent, she fears coming down with ‘the amnesia of the American people’... The talking cure of psychoanalysis is evoked as Robyn voices her personal history, fantasies, and observations with a wry sense of humor. As Robyn recounts her jump from a bridge, which left her with amnesia at the age of 17, she muses, ‘The bridge wasn’t high enough.’ Recollections of her days in a mental institution seem to predetermine her present-day compulsion to lock herself indoors. And as Robyn becomes increasingly disconnected from the world, flashbacks of her childhood visit her for the first time. Finally, the horror of the U.S. military ‘shock and awe’ campaign brings to light the terrible cost of self-absorption and passivity, and shakes Robyn out of her self-made isolation”. International Critics’ Prize, Berlin (Forum of New Cinema), 2004. B&W, 16mm. 94mins, USA. 

Cast: Lisa Jarnot, Valeska Peschke, Rainer Dragon, Susan Arthur, Jennifer Reeves

Jennifer Reeves is a New York-based filmmaker who has been making experimental films since 1990. Her personal, subjective films employ optical-printing and direct-on-film techniques and explore, from many different angles, themes of memory, mental health and recovery, feminism and sexuality, landscape, wildlife, and politics.