Blood Below the Skin

Blood Below the Skin

Jennifer Reeder

US
2014
Feature Film
33’
Focus

»Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.«
Eleanor Roosevelt / Graffiti in Blood Below the Skin

Jennifer Reeder’s film chronicles a week in the lives of three teenagers who are preparing for the most important night of their lives – the Prom Night. While one of them sells underwear worn by her mother to a teacher, the other two fall unexpectedly in love with one another. Intimate moments, a feeling of comfort, alone and as a pair in the bedroom. The music blasting out of the record player creates a synchronicity between the girls. Blood Below the Skin is a powerful ode to adolescence.

Film programme Life’s a Bitch

Director / Script / Contact

Jennifer Reeder

Cinematography

Christopher Rejano

Editing

Mike Olenick

Sound

Paul Dickinson

Music

Aesop Rock, Arms and Sleepers, Stars of the Lid, Joan Jett

Cast

Kelsy Ashby-Middleton, Morgan Reesh, Marisa Castillo, Jennifer Estlin, Connor Golden, TJ Jagodowsky, Megan Johns

Production

Steven Hudosh

Portrait of Jennifer Reeder

Jennifer Reeder

Jennifer Reeder is a filmmaker and visual artist as well as associate professor and director of graduate studies at the School of Art at the University of Illinois in Chicago. She received a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996. She has been repeatedly nominated for the Rockefeller Grants for Film/Video/New Media. In 2001, she was also nominated for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award for Visual Art and the Richard H. Dreihaus Foundation Award. She lives in Chicago with her children. Reeder speaks with deeply feminist conviction about trauma and overcoming trauma. Her award-winning work has screened internationally, including at the Sundance Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, the Rotterdam Film Festival, the London Film Festival, SXSW, Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennale.


Films by Jennifer Reeder (selection)
Knives and Skin 2019 | Crystal Lake 2016 | Blood Below the Skin 2015 | A Million Miles Away 2014 | And I Will Rise If Only To Hold You Down 2012 | Tears Cannot Restore Her: Therefore, I Weep 2010 | The Heart and Other Small Shapes 2006 | White Trash Girl 1995