Introduction by director Douglas Buck on Saturday night!

Family Portraits: a Trilogy of America consists of three short horror films – Cutting Moments, Home, and Prologue – that unearth and expose the disturbing secrets of three “ordinary” families.

Unflinchingly and violently taking apart the facade of the American familial utopia, Douglas Buck’s trilogy of shorts comprising Family Portraits: a Trilogy of America is both a physical and psychology undoing. The first, Cutting Moments (1997), shows a small family of three who house a disturbing secret of sexual abuse and abandonment through the eyes of the mother; it’s when this truth surfaces that the brutal self-inflicted punishment begins. Home (1998) is a pseudo-sequel/remake of Cutting Moments where the focus shifts to the father’s perspective; more psychological but no less damaging. And lastly, Prologue, shows us the violent return of a young maimed woman to seek revenge on her attacker one year previously.

“…this is the sort of filmmaking the world desperately needs more of – uncompromisingly honest works designed not to entertain an audience but to destroy them.” – Mitch Davis, Flesh and Blood Magazine