When photographer and writer Cig Harvey found out her best friend Mary was diagnosed with terminal leukemia, she did what she knew best: made photographs. As Mary faced isolation and debilitating treatment, Cig set out to bring the world to Mary. Over the coming years, Cig captured and sent Mary images of beauty, life and color. Images that evoked the sensual, the sacred, the delicate and the brave. Images exploding with color, piercing with light, evoking the pain and beauty of life, even as we face death. As we reckon with mass trauma and loss across our country and the world, and continue to face so many – at times terrifying – unknowns, Eat Flowers shows us the way. Through images of beauty, and love letters to the world and the ones we love, Cig and Mary find a way through an unspeakable tragedy and loss. One image and message at a time. Eat Flowers is a call to LIVE.
Summary info for schedule – will be hidden on film page
Eat Flowers
15-minutes
Screening day / time
- Oct 24-27: Virtual Encore
Eat Flowers
Eat Flowers
Filmmaker Notes:
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, months into lockdown with the virus at its deadliest; Blue Violet, Cig Harvey’s 4th book of writing and photography, arrived on my doorstep. On one quiet morning, I devoured each page and was transported to a place that felt peaceful, hopeful and connected. I wanted more of Cig’s world of flowers.
Mary’s story of terminal illness was just a short intro at the beginning of Blue Violet, but it moved me deeply. Her isolation from leukemia was surprisingly parallel to the isolation we were all living in the pandemic which began after Blue Violet was published. A premonition of sorts.
In isolation, we are invited to examine what is most important, and who we trust when we are at our most vulnerable. In fleeting moments of clarity, we remember that life is precious. I wanted to create a film that suspends us there, that holds us in the place where we are reminded of what makes life worth living.
I feel drawn to creating work that heals pain, that celebrates the beauty we miss in our plugged in world, that helps us find each other through art and nature. The film brings Maine and Cig’s world of flowers alive and together we exhale.
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