UNION is pleased to present the UK’s premiere of Damon Packard’s film Foxfur.
The film revolves around a young woman named Foxfur. We meet her while editing a rap video in Final Cut Pro with some clients, but soon she is panic stricken at the thought that two of the biggest names in UFO conspiracy theories, David Icke and Richard Hoagland, have gone missing.
Sensing that something afoul is afoot, Foxfur pays Khris (Khris Kaneff), a pudgy, middle-aged male friend of hers, to drive her to a New Age Los Angeles bookstore called The Bodhi Tree for answers. (The store is a real one in West Hollywood that has since closed.) There she finds Icke (Rigg Kennedy) safe and sound answering phones for the store and another conspiracist, Bob Lazar (Bob Ellis), flipping through the stacks.
The trip to and scenes within the Bodhi Tree take up about the first half of this approximately hour long film. Although, a large section of that half includes the film’s biggest non sequitur sequence in which Khris runs afoul of know-nothing employees at big box retail stores.
Also, up through the first half of the film, so far two different actresses have played the part of Foxfur. One actress (Angel Corbin) calls Khris for the ride to The Bodhi Tree, but when he shows up, Foxfur is played by a different actress (Paris Wagner). The film makes a joking reference to the switch, but following the trip to and the scenes within the Bodhi Tree with Wagner as Foxfur, the film eventually fragments even further with four more actresses taking over the role before the conclusion. They are, in order, Cassandra Nuss, Tessie Tracey, Cassie Yeager and Sarah De La Isla.
The switching of actresses is a creative choice borne by the film’s budgetary and shooting limitations. Packard, as his obsessive fans know, has been documenting the making of Foxfur online and posting scenes to YouTube for the past couple of years.
Foxfur‘s fragmentary nature, though, is perfectly suited to the film’s themes of time travel, space travel and other dimensional activity. On the one hand, the film can be perfectly carved up into short little film chunks that could possibly exist on their own. But as the character Foxfur travels through various realities in her different incarnations, the overall plot is consistent enough throughout so that the film works as a cohesive whole.
Foxfur is best thought of as a total sensory overload of unbridled cinematic and narrative creativity.
The film itself is not for sale as it is not a unique work of art.
Born in 1967, Damon Packard lives and works in Los Angeles. Recent exhibitions and screenings include ‘The Thinking’, Sketch Gallery, London (Currently also showing); ‘Best of 2005’, Lincoln Film Center, New York (2005); Redcat Disney Auditorium, Los Angeles; CineSpace Hollywood, Fantasia Fest, ‘Christian Jankowski, Damon Packard, Antoine Prum,’ Art Sheffield 05: Spectator T, Site Gallery, Sheffield (2005); ‘Biennale!’ BizArt, Shanghai & Temporary Contemporary, London (2005); Filler Gallery, Northampton (2005) and ‘Romantic Detachment’, PS1, New York & Grizedale Arts, London (2004).