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Damon Packard Retrospective
July 22, 2022 - July 23, 2022
Two days and two different programs celebrating the work of underground film director Damon Packard.
Friday, July 22nd—Doors: 6:30 pm, films: 7 pm.
REFLECTIONS OF EVIL – This screening marks the 20th Anniversary of Packard’s 2002 magnum opus; a bizarre, difficult and visionary treatise on American life, paranoia and the delusions of Hollywood. “REFLECTIONS OF EVIL is like seeing an astral projection of someone’s mental breakdown through the prism of low-budget horror aesthetics. Produced and self-distributed by filmmaker Damon Packard thanks to an unexpected inheritance, this is a highly personal psychedelic collage that utilizes 16mm film, video, and found footage to tell the story of a wandering creature named Bobby (Packard) as he searches for his missing sister . . . who may have fallen in with a supernatural drug cult. Packard’s schizoid style is built on visual manipulations, breakneck editing, renegade plagiarism, mismatched audio effects, and the juxtaposition of tones. This is true genre anarchy: a rage-filled, 137-minute outsider manifesto that toes the line between artsy triumph and genre pastiche. Imagine a stream-of-consciousness collaboration between Sam Raimi and Charles Manson and you’re halfway there. After being caught while filming REFLECTIONS OF EVIL inside Universal Studios, Packard was banned for life from the theme park. He made the right choice.”
The night will begin with a 20 min behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of Reflections, and an advert for Packard’s Masterclass in filmmaking!
Saturday, July 23rd—Doors: 6:30 pm, films: 7 pm.
SHORT FILMS 1988-2022 – A retrospective spanning 34 years of filmmaking that showcases Packard’s humor, talent and singular vision in underground film. An overview of Packard’s short and mid-length works including Dawn of an Evil Millennium (his first film shot on Super-8), the infamous Untitled Star Wars Mockumentary, 2015’s transmission from beyond the grave titled John Carpenter’s Ghost, and the digital effects laden explosion of 2022’s Howl of the Unvaccinated. NOT TO BE MISSED!!!
