If you think you’ve seen every film made by George A. Romero, the director of Night of the Living Dead (above), you haven’t—not yet. This month, the University of Pittsburgh is hosting an online screening of Romero’s short film Jacaranda Joe, which was long presumed to be lost. But a copy of the short was found in the university’s library system.
Filmed in 1994 with the help of students from Florida’s Valencia College, Jacaranda Joe is a bigfoot movie—and an early example of the found footage style of horror.
As Adam Charles Hart explains at the University of Pittsburgh’s Horror Studies website, “the film was the second installment of an innovative program devised by Valencia Community College faculty member Ralph Clemente that brought established filmmakers to campus to direct a short film.” The Orlando Sentinel covered the project, noting that Romero wanted to know “if audiences can be scared by a documentary format.” The production, as Hart details, was complicated by the fact that all the students who worked on the film graduated before it was completed.
Hart also went into (really fascinating!) detail on the film in a recent Twitter thread:
Buy the Book
And Then I Woke Up
On April 12, @PittArchives will be (virtually) holding the FIRST-EVER public screening of George A. Romero's 1994 short film Jacaranda Joe, followed by q&a w/crewmembers Michael Sellers, George Rizkallah, and Elizabeth Tobin Kurtz. Free w/registration!https://t.co/wmSyeggLju
— Adam Hart🦉 (@m_hulot) March 23, 2022
Jacaranda Joe screens on April 12th, at 7 pm Eastern; the event also includes a discussion with some of the crew members who worked on the film. You can register for the screening here.
(Via Bloody Disgusting)
