“SR.” Special Screenings

Screening to be followed by a conversation with director Chris Smith and producers Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey and Kevin Ford.

A tender, career-spanning chronicle of the irreverent, underground filmmaker Robert Downey Sr., who directed films for nearly 50 years, including the iconoclastic works of PUTNEY SWOPE (1969), GREASER’S PALACE (1972) and CHAFED ELBOWS (1966). The documentary is told via revealing interviews with family members, including his son, actor Robert Downey Jr., and friends such as Alan Arkin, Norman Lear and Paul Thomas Anderson. Downey Sr. made a name for himself in the early 60s by breaking into a stirring era of American cinema and soon developed cult status for showcasing outlandish characters and radical politics with biting satirical comedy. Shot in black and white evoking the style of Downey Sr.’s early films, director Chris Smith (JIM & ANDY: THE GREAT BEYOND, AFI FEST 2017), crafts a candid and poignant portrait of the visionary filmmaker that remembers him as the countercultural rabble-rouser that he was. –Julia Kipnis