Chronic is an experimental narrative about a young woman who began mutilating herself as a girl to cope with a traumatic mid-western childhood. The lush optically-printed scenes take Gretchen’s point of view from her punk youth, a stay in a mental hospital, and her release into the big city. Scripted scenes are inter-spliced with documentary and found footage, illustrating the culture Gretchen lives in, her inner world and relationships from her birth to her final day.

CHRONIC
1996, 16mm, 38 minutes
Writer, Director, DP, Sound and Starring Jennifer Reeves

Chronic is an experimental narrative about a young woman who began mutilating herself as a girl to cope with a traumatic mid-western childhood. The lush optically-printed scenes take Gretchen’s point of view from her punk youth, a stay in a mental hospital, and her release into the big city. Scripted scenes are inter-spliced with documentary and found footage, illustrating the culture Gretchen lives in, her inner world and relationships from her birth to her final day.

THE GIRL'S NERVY
1995, 16mm, 5 minutes

Exuberant rhythms are created for the eyes in this nostalgic study of the single film frame, by cutting, pasting, and painting clear and photographed 16mm film frames. Fleeting shapes in lush, spattered color flicker and dance to big band beats.

“Chronic conveys a disturbed mind through a pastiche of visual styles, effectively and often movingly with a camera that seems both playful and emotionally subjective. The rapidly shifting tones and moods of this work both give it energy and suggest the “unquiet thoughts” of a mind that hasn’t found a resting place”. -Fred Camper, The Chicago Reader