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Director's
Report
by Richard Herskowitz
The 18th annual Virginia Film Festival was the twelfth that I have
programmed, and it was unlike any other. From the moment the IN/JUSTICE
theme was announced, we were inundated with suggestions from community
organizations and the general public alike. This heightened interest
carried right through the weekend, as people fl ocked to screenings
and took part in some of the richest discussions we have ever held.
The powerfully articulate testimony of Alan Gell, the death row exoneree,
after The Innocent; the emotional response by Mark
Lane, co-organizer
of the Winter Soldier hearings, after the screening of Winter
Soldier;
the testimony from the audience by a Cameroonian student after Sisters
in Law; a late night panel including Vanessa
Redgrave, Angela Shelton,
Keith Beauchamp and other film activists talking about the power of
documentaries to spark social change —these are just a sampling
of unforgettable moments. The preponderance of documentaries this year
and their wrenching content—which I feared might drive audiences
to The 40 Year Old Virgin for refuge— was more than justified
by their power and popularity.
Attendance Records Broken
The Festival
drew a total of 13,139 ticket holders to venues
throughout Charlottesville, topping last year’s tally of
11,074. This surpasses the attendance record of 12,764 set in 1993,
the year before I arrived. Heading the sellout list was the regional
premiere of Nine
Lives, the Festival’s
first-ever screening at The Paramount Theater, the gorgeous, newly
restored 1000-seat theater in downtown Charlottesville. The post-film
discussion, which featured Sissy Spacek and Kathy
Baker in addition
to the film’s director, Rodrigo Garcia,
and producers (and U.Va. alumnae) Kelly Thomas and Julie
Lynn, was brilliantly moderated
by critic David Edelstein. Moviegoers flocked
to the Paramount again for Harold Ramis’ new dark comedy
The Ice Harvest. Ramis toured the Paramount before his screening
and commented that even his hometown of Chicago had no surviving
movie palaces as beautiful. In his wry comments before the film
and in the extended conversation with Harry
Chotiner after Groundhog
Day, Ramis in person proved to be even funnier than Ramis as Egon,
his classic role in Ghostbusters.
Celebrated and Accessible Guests
Spacek,
Baker, and Ramis were just the beginning; the complete lineup of
guests this year was extraordinary. On Friday, Rodrigo Garcia and
Kathy Baker were joined by Vanessa Redgrave and Carlo
Nero for
a memorable forum on acting and directing with U.Va. Drama students,
who were transfixed by the session. The night before, Redgrave
had already made a powerful impression on local students. Inspired
by their viewing of The Fever, they spoke to the unusually
approachable star about their desire to make a diff erence in the
world, asking what direction she could offer. Each thoughtful question
drew an equally thoughtful and thoroughly personalized response
from the actress, and provided an experience never to be forgotten
by the students. Redgrave left with wonderful impressions of the
Festival and Charlottesville.
Author John Grisham was also extremely generous
with his time throughout the Festival. Interviewer Duane
Byrge’s
selection of film clips provided the spark for this wonderful
raconteur’s honest and illuminating recollections. Grisham
also spoke eloquently at the special benefit screening of After
Innocence for the Legal Aid Justice Center.
For The First Time
This year’s Festival boasted a series
of exciting firsts. These included the opening night U.S. Premiere
of The Fever, courtesy of HBO and visiting producer Jason
Blum,
and the closing night World Premiere of the Dan
Ireland-directed
film Mrs. Palfrey at The Claremont, starring Dame Joan Plowright,
written by longtime University of Virginia supporter Ruth
Sacks Caplin, and produced by her son Lee
Caplin. The large audience
for Mrs. Palfrey, including many friends and family of the Caplins,
adored the film, which, thanks again to the Metrotech team, looked
magnificent on the Culbreth screen.
The Festival hosted its first free concert, titled Music
for Justice,
in the Charlottesville Pavilion, with Corey
Harris and Jon Langford’s
Ship and Pilot Band, featuring Sally
Timms. Langford started his
set early when there were still costumed children playing in the
Pavilion after an afternoon Halloween party, supplementing his
usual set of alt-country and punk tunes with the “Winnie
the Pooh” theme song.
Langford’s band’s performance of the multimedia The
Executioner’s Last Songs at the Satellite Ballroom was
also thrilling. Overall, the quantity, quality, and audience enthusiasm
for musical performances at this year’s Festival—including
Donald Sosin and Joanna Seaton’s
score for Kid
Brother and
Vusi Mahlasela’s moving closing night performance with Amandla! were unprecedented.
Another first was the Virginia Film Festival Award competition.
The competition spotlighted six films that had not received, and
yet, I felt, eminently deserved distribution deals. The final
competition included only five films, as Doug
Sadler’s
Swimmers left the ranks of the undistributed by landing
a deal with Skouras just before the Festival began. We attracted
a stellar jury of film industry professionals, including Eric
D’Arbeloff,
Ira Deutchman, Jonathan Douglas and Paula
Silver. The inaugural
Festival Award competition ended with a surprise—The
Definition of Insanity, directed by Robert
Margolis and Frank Matter, swept
both the Jury and Audience Awards, winning a $5,000 cash prize
and a screening at Regal Battery Park in New York.
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Adrenaline
Fueled Surprise
Speaking of competition surprises, the Festival also featured the
second year of its “Adrenaline Film Project.” The highly-caff
einated, weekend-long guerilla filmmaking project was headed by
Director Jeff Wadlow and Producer Beau
Bauman, both fresh from their
feature film debuts with Cry_Wolf. The Adrenaline Film Project featured
eleven teams which labored to complete a short film in just 72 hours.
All of the films were screened to an enthusiastic and packed Culbreth
Theatre audience on Sunday afternoon.
As always, the films spanned genres, from thriller to noir to
comedy; their only common thread (inspired by the In/Justice theme)
was the use of a chain as prop and “That’s just not
right” as a line of dialogue. The biggest surprise
came when Wadlow and Bauman announced the winners of the Jury Prize.
The award went to Dead Ringer, created by a trio of local
high school students, Evans Brown, Sam
Osimitz and Aaron Izakowitz, who triumphed
over many older contestants. Their deserving victory is a testament
to the fine work being done by Light House, a nonprofit, independent
media education center for teenagers, and a true community treasure
here in Charlottesville. Other “Adrenaline” winners
were University of Virginia students Rom Alejandro, Dustin
Thompson and Eric Hurt,
who won the Audience Award for Sweet
Dreams, and
Shea Sizemore, Paul Metzger and Kim
Bonner, from Radford University,
who won the Adrenaline Mentor Award for their film Small Loss.
Film
Society and Year-Round Programs
The Film Festival continued to expand its year-round activities. The Film Society
sustained the Festival spirit by bringing guest filmmakers and speakers, including
the great documentarians William Greaves and Ross
McElwee, to Vinegar Hill Theater
throughout the fall and spring. Festival supporters were also generous in offering
the Film Festival several benefit screenings throughout the year. There was
great excitement in April when producer Mark Johnson flew in with Luke
Wilson
to premiere The Wendell Baker Story and again in September when Jeff
Wadlow brought
actress Lindy Booth for a presentation of his debut feature, Cry_Wolf.
Festival Sponsorships
The benefits helped the Festival’s
bottom line and were greatly appreciated, since it’s been
a tough year for fundraising for all the arts. Festival Development
Chair Janet Matthews has done a great job in this
challenging climate. Longtime supporters Sprint, PepsiCola
of Central Virginia, and
Regal Cinemas returned as Primary Sponsors, joined
for the first time by the Darden School of Business. Crown
Porsche returned as
a Major Sponsor, joined by new supporters Court
TV and Schroder
Fidlow. Matthew’s biggest coup was attracting the
sponsorship of the Foxfield Races, which designated the Festival
as the beneficiary of its fall event. Assisted by Mark
Ballard,
Jennifer Carroll and two wonderful student interns, Maria
Kosut and Michelle Cloud, she organized a lavish Festival benefit party
and auction at Keswick Hall on Foxfield Races weekend in September.
Festival Friends and supporters donated marvelous auction items.
Coming one month before the Festival, the event’s success
was a small miracle.
A Great Staff and Board
With just a short time to
recover from the Keswick gala party, new venues like the Paramount
and the Pavilion to manage, and a complicated program of 62
films and 105 speakers and
live performers, this was, to put it mildly, a challenging Festival
to mount. The two staff members most responsible for the Festival’s
nearly flawless operation are Jenny Mays and Lili
Grabbi, the Operations Manager and Operations Assistant who have
been working with the Festival since their recruitment as student
interns four years ago. This year, they juggled multiple responsibilities
with consummate professionalism. They were reinforced by a fine
group of student interns, including Wesley
Harris, Evan Cunningham,
and Han West, the terrific publicity work of John
Kelly and Cara
White, and a larger crew of staff members and volunteers. Working
with these people, along with a very active Advisory Board who
stay in touch all year through online meetings, has made this year
the most satisfying of my professional career. |
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