“The Blare Rabbit Project,” a Found-Footage Film That Really Was Thought Lost, Debuts at MidWest WeirdFest

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January 29, 2021

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Joseph Perry is the Film Festival Editor for Horror Fuel; all film festival related queries and announcements should be sent to him at josephperry@gmail.com. He is a contributing writer for the "Phantom of the Movies VideoScope" and “Drive-In Asylum” print magazines and the websites Gruesome Magazine, Diabolique Magazine, The Scariest Things, B&S About Movies, and When It Was Cool. He is a co-host of the "Uphill Both Ways" pop culture nostalgia podcast and also writes for its website. Joseph occasionally proudly co-writes articles with his son Cohen Perry, who is a film critic in his own right. A former northern Californian and Oregonian, Joseph has been teaching, writing, and living in South Korea since 2008.

Many found footage films assert to be discovered after a certain amount of time, but The Revenant director Kerry Prior’s The Blare Rabbit Project can actually lay claim to having been rediscovered after being shot in 1999 and then considered lost. The film will finally have its world premiere this March at MidWest WeirdFest. Following is the official press announcement from the festival.

A found footage feature film, thought lost for over 20 years, is finally seeing the light of the projector booth at its world premiere this March.

Kerry Prior, acclaimed Hollywood special effects artist and the visionary director of the cult horror hit THE REVENANT, lensed the found footage film THE BLARE RABBIT PROJECT in 1999.

There is still some mystery as to why that film – once set for commercial release – was suddenly pulled and apparently lost for over two decades. But now, the re-found, found footage film is having its very first public screening at the 5th annual MidWest WeirdFest. The festival runs March 5-7, at the Micon Cinema in downtown Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

“THE BLARE RABBIT PROJECT has been a ghost that’s haunted me for years” says writer/director Kerry Prior. “Due to either the tragicomic debacle that stymied the release of the film, or the rumor of bootleg copies floating around, people seemed to be aware of it. So when MidWest WeirdFest’s programming director Dean Bertram asked about it, I thought maybe it was time to finally get it in front of a proper audience, and his festival seemed like the perfect venue.”

Kerry will be presenting both the world premiere of THE BLARE RABBIT PROJECT, as well as a special retrospective screening of THE REVENANT, at MidWest WeirdFest this year. A Q&A session will follow each screening.

The festival’s first programming wave has already been announced, and can be seen at: www.midwestweirdfest.com

Full program details and other filmmaker guests will be revealed in the coming weeks.

MidWest WeirdFest passes are now on sale here: https://filmfreeway.com/MidWestWeirdFest/tickets

Individual tickets to each film will go on sale closer to the festival; both on the fest’s website, and directly from the Micon Downtown Cinema in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.