Thursday, September 25 | Jennifer Reeder in person!
Jennifer Reeder’s pop-noir films explore women’s experiences in breakups, breakdowns, and new beginnings. The award-winning Chicago artist presents four recent shorts and a preview of her latest project, Blood Below the Skin. A Million Miles Away (2014) listens in on the bedroom conversations of teenage girls as they forge bonds over absent parents and bad friends. The discovery of a teenage girl’s dead body sets the tone for the Forevering Trilogy (Seven Songs About Thunder, 2010; Tears Cannot Restore Her: Therefore I Weep, 2010; and I Will Rise If Only to Hold You Down, 2011).
2010-14, USA, multiple formats, ca 90 minutes + discussion
Jennifer Reeder (b. 1971, Columbus, Ohio) is a filmmaker and visual artist who produces Midwestern stories about relationships, trauma, and coping. Since 1993, she has produced more than 40 films and videos and written 12 scripts. Her work has been exhibited around the world including at the 48th International Venice Biennial, the 2000 Whitney Biennial, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, the Reykjavik Museum of Art, and La Casa Encendida in Madrid, in addition to many film festivals, including Ann Arbor, Oberhausen International Short Film, Rotterdam, and Stuttgart FilmWinter. She recently founded a social justice initiative called Tracers Book Club and is finishing a feature-length script titled As With Knives and Skin. Reeder received an MFA from SAIC and currently heads the Art Department in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she is an Associate Professor in Moving Image. She lives in Indiana with her three children.