International Psychic Film Festival

The 1st International Psychic Film Festival opened in New York City at commercial theaters in September 1975 and subsequently played throughout North America, South America and Europe. The festival introduced hundreds of feature films, documentaries, scientific experimental films, creative art films and videos that brought popular psychic phenomena and spiritual issues to the public. The festival has been credited for bringing psychic issues into mainstream society.

Judges at the film festival included well-known anthropologist Margaret Mead, who as President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science was able the have parapsychology recognized as a legitimate science for the first time in history; astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who spent more time on the moon than any other human, conducted extra-sensory perception (ESP) experiments from the moon, and was the founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California; artist and psychic Ingo Swann, who was considered by the United States Military as America's most reliable psychic during cold war experiments at the Stanford Research Institute; and author Jean Houston who during the Bill Clinton years was a personal spiritual guide to Hillary Clinton.

Noted film maker Howard Kipp Parker created and ran the festival from 1975-81. Although the festival went to many locations around the world, Parker still feels remorse that they were "too busy" to bring a private screening of the festival to Switzerland at the request of Charlie Chaplin. According to Variety magazine, the festival grossed the largest motion picture box office revenue in New York City during its opening weekend. Despite pouring rain all weekend long, crowds for the festival lined up around the corner.

Among the many luminaries who attending the New York opening were New York Yankees Second Baseman Ed White who acted in one of the feature films, "Star Trek"'s Gene Roddenberry, members of the historic William Randolph Hearst family, and psychic Uri Geller.

As spokesman and publicist for the many issues surrounding psychic phenomena, Parker has had the unique experience of convincingly explaining the importance of this phenomena to the world and the future of humanity.