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SCREENING, SCREENING + Q&A

Demonic

Friday, Apr 8, 2022 at 7:30 pm

Location: Bartos Screening Room

With director Pia Borg in person

Dir. Pia Borg. U.S., 2020, 29 mins. Demonic revisits the infamous “satanic panic” of the 1980s, a mass hysteria in which people around the world recovered memories of debauchery, murder, human sacrifice, and satanic cults. Blending archival footage, re-enactments, and hyperreal CGI imagery, this innovative, award-winning short by Australian filmmaker Pia Borg—who describes it as a documentary-horror film—uncovers the forces at play between psychiatry, media, and false memory. This film is being screened in conjunction with MoMI’s current exhibition Deepfake: Unstable Evidence on Screen. Included in the exhibition is an exploration of how the “satanic panic” was facilitated by the emergence of sensationalist current affairs programming in a rapidly expanding cable television landscape. The exhibition features an excerpt from “Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground,” an episode of The Geraldo Rivera Specials that used the conventions and aesthetics of news to constitute evidence of a crisis it was ostensibly trying to mitigate.

Your ticket includes Museum admission and access to the exhibition Deepfake: Unstable Evidence on Screen before the screening.

Tickets: $15 / $11 senior and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission. Review safety protocols before your visit.

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