Laura Parnes's Blood and Guts in High School

As a prelude to an upcoming VDB box set featuring the work of Laura Parnes, we will welcome the artist on Thursday, September 29. Parnes's bracingly inventive, stylized work operates at the intersection of narrative film and video art. This evening, Parnes will present her acclaimed feature, Blood and Guts in High School (2009). Distilled from Kathy Acker’s subversive feminist novel of the same title, the film interweaves events surrounding the book’s publication — the Jonestown Massacre, Three Mile Island, the rise of Reagan Republicanism and the Moral Majority — with interludes from the short, violent life of its pre-teen protagonist, Janie Smith. Parnes will also screen episodes from her new web series, County Down (2011-present). Building on the darkly comic spirit of Blood and Guts, County Down is set in a lavish gated community where parents suddenly prey upon their children. (Jessica Bardsley)
Laura Parnes, 2009-11, USA, multiple formats, ca. 75 min + discussion.