Jennifer Reeder

Jennifer Reeder is an American artist, filmmaker, and screenwriter. Reeder first encountered Steina’s video art while working at the Video Data Bank in Chicago. The experience inspired her own work Nevermind, which was shown at the Whitney Biennial in 2000. Reeder moved from experimental to feature film, now constructing personal fiction films about relationships, trauma, and coping. Her award-winning narratives are borrow from a range of forms including after school specials, amateur music videos, and magical realism in the vein of what she calls “noir camp.” 

Her films have shown at festivals and museums around the world, including Sundance, Berlin, Rotterdam, SXSW, Tribeca, BFI-LFF, and The Whitney Biennial and the Venice Biennale. She received the 2024 Tour De Force Award from the Chicago International Film Festival. Bong Joon Ho, the director of such films as Parasite (2019), The Host (2006), and Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), recently named Reeder as a filmmaker to watch in the 2020s. 

Reeder received an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996 and currently currently teaches in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Illinois, Chicago where she holds the position of Associate Professor in Moving Image. She is the founder of the social justice group Tracers Book Club, which focuses on feminist issues. She is also the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including the USA Fellowship, the Alpert Film Award residency at MacDowell Colony, a Creative Capital Grant and the SFFIM/Rainin Foundation award.