The theme for the 2009 Festival is Funny Business, dealing not only with aspects of comedy in the movies, but also the current Funny Business of government and finance. Films reflecting these themes will receive special consideration, but we are always interested in considering the work of interested film-makers. We are particularly interested in hearing from local film-makers from Charlottesville, Virginia or UVa.

Full details will be posted here on July 11 2009, we look forward to hearing from you then.

I feel honored and privileged to take the helm here at the Virginia Film Festival. I am excited with the great potential and plan to build upon the firm foundation that has already been established to help turn VFF into a top, destination film festival. I hope to program a film festival that engages the faculty, students, and the entire community of Charlottesville while reaching outward to create an ever evolving dialogue on film and the fascinating topics that it can cover. VFF is unique among film festivals because it’s unique partnership with the University of Virginia enables it to offer extraordinary resources that other festivals simply don’t have. I believe that a festival should reflect the community which it serves and I am looking forward to moving to Charlottesville with my family to become a part of that very special community.

Sincerely,

Jody Kielbasa

He took up the post on May 11, succeeding Richard Herskowitz, who stepped down in November after 15 years as artistic director.

The Virginia Film Festival is a four-day fall event known for its themes that blend entertainment and education.

“We’re thrilled to have Jody on board in this capacity,” said Arts & Sciences associate dean Bruce Holsinger, who chaired the search committee. “The Film Festival plays a significant role in the College’s arts community, and Jody Kielbasa is the ideal leader at this exciting time for arts at U.Va. more broadly.”

Kielbasa comes to the University from Sarasota, Fla., where for the last decade he served as the founding executive director of the Sarasota Film Festival. Under his leadership, that festival became one of the top regional film festivals in the United States with more than 45,000 attendances in 2008. It grew from a three-day mini-festival to a 10-day event, attracting celebrated film artists such as Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Altman, Alan Alda, Gena Rowlands, Rod Steiger, Edward Norton, Charlize Theron, Liv Ullmann, Stanley Tucci, Jon Voight, Norman Jewison, William H. Macy, Billy Crystal, Woody Harrelson, Peter Falk, Werner Herzog, Sydney Pollack and others.

During his tenure, Kielbasa expanded the festival to include the award-winning Sarasota Film Festival Outreach and Education Program, which offered symposiums and special programs for children and families and was recognized with grants from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2005, he launched the Sarasota Film Festival charter cruise, taking more than 150 Sarasota Film Festival board members and supporters to the Cannes Film Festival.

“I am truly excited about the opportunity that lies ahead with the Virginia Film Festival and believe that the University of Virginia provides a unique platform for discussion and dialogue about film while offering tremendous resources through the faculty, students and community to further that dialogue,” Kielbasa said. “I look forward to moving to Charlottesville with my family and becoming a part of this special community.”

A Florida native, Kielbasa graduated from Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., with a bachelor’s degree in history. He received a B.F.A. in theater from Florida State University and an M.F.A. in acting from Florida State University’s Asolo Conservatory for Actor’s Training in Sarasota.

Kielbasa founded the award-winning Tamarind Theatre, where he produced more than 100 plays.

Prior to taking the post at Sarasota, Kielbasa was the producing artistic director of the American Stage Theatre in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Kielbasa recently co-produced the independent film, “The Deal,” starring William H. Macy and Meg Ryan and directed by Steven Schachter. The film premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

“I wholeheartedly welcome Jody Kielbasa to Charlottesville and to one of the most unique and innovative film festivals in the country,” said Mark Johnson, chairman of the Virginia Film Festival advisory board and producer of numerous Hollywood movies including “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “Rain Man.” “Jody’s experience as the director of the large and complicated Sarasota Film Festival and his passion for film, both the classic and the cutting edge, make him the ideal person to take over the reins of the Virginia Film Festival and not only to embrace what our festival has stood for but also to challenge it in directions that we have not yet dared to take.”

For more than 20 years, the Virginia Film Festival has brought together films in a program that resembles a huge comprehensive course on a cultural theme, which illuminates the social and artistic impact of movie-making. “Funny Business” is the theme of this fall’s festival, which will take place Nov. 5-8 in Charlottesville.

Beginning May 29, Kielbasa can be reached at 434-982-5277 or jkk8j@virginia.edu.

The first in director Roger Corman’s series of seven landmark Poe adaptations starring the delightfully creepy Vincent Price, “The House of Usher” is considered among the pair’s best work together – and indeed, one the finest of cinema’s Poe adaptations. Boasting deliriously colored Cinemascope photography (a widescreen movie format used from 1953 to 1967), which he creatively uses to draw the audience into the action, Corman’s film conveys Poe’s brilliant sense of the gothic with a fervor few films can match.

Presented to coincide with the University’s ongoing Poe exhibition “From Out That Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe,” the screening will be followed by a discussion with a special guest to be announced.

Admission is free to Film Society members. Tickets for remaining seats will be available at the box office 30 minutes before the screening for $9 each. There is a special UVa student rate of $3.

Virginia Festival of Student Film

The Film Maker’s Society at the University of Virginia is presenting the Virginia Festival of Student Film on April 10-11 in Newcomb Theater.Events will kick off with a program of short films on Friday from 7 to 9:30 p.m. The program includes 12 to 15 short films selected from about 30 submitted by undergraduate students from around the country. The screening includes three genres: narrative, experimental and documentary. Comedian Sarah Tiana from Comedy Central’s Reno 911 will host the event and also give a performance. Film entries will be judged and awards given.

On Saturday, Lunch Shorts, commissioned by Mike Plante of Sundance Film Festival, will be screened from 4 to 5 p.m. Plante and a friend invented the premise for the Lunch Shorts series while dining together and the friend realized he didn’t have any money to pay. Plante paid and challenged his friend to provide him with a short film made for the cost of his lunch.

A panel discussion will follow at 6 p.m. featuring Lane Kneedler, a programmer at the American Film Institute; Jeff Lowell, a local writer of the feature releases John Tucker Must Die and Over Her Dead Body; Matt Arden, a producer, writer and director for Turner Entertainment; and independent filmmaker Eric Hurt.

The evening continues at 6:30 p.m. with the premiere screening of Hurt’s short feature Lullaby.

At 7 p.m., there will be a special encore screening and award ceremony for the winners of Friday’s short film program. The judges for the festival include Virginia Film Festival board members Mark Johnson, producer of Rain Man and the Chronicles of Narnia and Jeff Wadlow, director of Never Back Down.

This is the 14th year of The Virginia Festival of Student Film, formerly known as the Salmagundi Film Festival. The event is presented by the Filmmakers Society of the University of Virginia and the University Programs Council. Sponsors include the Parents Committee, Arts and Sciences Council, Cavalier Films and Red Giant Software Company.

Attendees will receive a 20 percent discount on all Red Giant Software Company products.

For information, visit www.vasfilm.com or contact festival coordinator Zachary Fabian

This film updates the classic revenge drama to present-day New York City, substituting corporation politics for the country of Denmark. The film will be will be screened April 8 at 7 p.m. at Vinegar Hill Theatre, 220 Market St. in Charlottesville.

After the screening, University of Virginia English professor Clare Kinney and Colleen Kelly, a stage combat teacher from the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton who is directing this semester’s production of “Two Gentlemen of Verona” for the University of Virginia Drama Department, will discuss the differences between dramatizing Shakespeare on stage and film. Kelly will also provide a live demonstration of stage fighting techniques. The screening is a co-promotion with the American Shakespeare Center and coincides with the opening of the Spring Season at the Blackfriars Theater in Staunton.

Derek Armstrong of the All Movie Guide wrote of Almereyda’s “Hamlet, “This 2000 version is a thoughtful re-imagining of Hamlet in a washed-out New York City run by corporate raiders instead of kings, in which iambic pentameter is spoken over cell phones, and information transferred via fax rather than messenger. What saves this setup from mere gimmick is that it gives viewers a vastly improved understanding of the issues at the heart of the play. As portrayed by Hawke, Hamlet is a shiftless trust fund baby with artsy ambitions, who thinks too much while sitting around his apartment or leaving on world travels that utterly bore him. Rarely is Hamlet’s essence distilled in a way so familiar to modern audiences.”

Admission is free to Film Society members. Tickets for remaining seats will be available at the box office for $9 each from 30 minutes before the screening.

For information about screenings or Film Society membership, call 434-982-5560.

The Virginia Film Festival (www.vafilm.com) has earned national recognition and extensive media attention for its unique dedication to the art of film and, at the same time, to its rigorous educational mission.  The four-day event, held in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountain setting of Charlottesville, Virginia, is known for celebrating films as well as for inviting the public to explore a variety of cultural themes through them.

The Festival is currently in the final stages of selecting its next Director. That person, to be chosen from an outstanding pool of applicants from around the country, is expected to be on board by early summer.

Following a rigorous jury process, the festival winners go on the road with festival director John Columbus as he exhibits the standout films around the country. Each individual program is tailored to the location of its screening.

The festival takes its name from the world’s first film studio, built by Thomas Edison in West Orange, N.J. It is one of only a handful of festivals that qualify short films (40 minutes and less) for Academy Award nominations. Since 1981, the festival has toured coast to coast to fulfill its mission to advocate, exhibit and reward the poetic, expressive and insightful vision of independent film- and videomakers.

27th Annual Black Maria Film and Video Festival Charlottesville Program Descriptions

Ice Bears of the Beaufort
Arthur C. Smith and Jennifer Vadenberg, Kaktovik, Alaska This picturesque work picks up where “The March of the Penguins” left off. Magnificent scenery and radiant cinematography capture the lives of the endangered Polar Bears. Sows and cubs romp, nuzzle, nurse and hunt in their natural habitat.

Nora
Alla Kovgan and David Hinton, Somerville, Mass.
A narrative/dance film shot in Mozambique. “Nora” is based on childhood memories of dancer Nora Chipaumire, who was born in Zimbabwe in 1965 and now resides in Manhattan. With close-ups of drumming and panoramas of majestic African scenery, Nora’s presence amid local tribal members brings to life a rich and expressive heritage, an amalgam of modern interpretive dance and indigenous performances. The original score was composed by Zimbabwean legend Thomas Mapfumo.

Yours Truly
Osbert Parker, London, England
Film icons burst through lost layers of yesterday’s emulsion in this assemblage of noir cinema clips and recreations, told as a mixed media mystery/romance with unexpected plot twists as lovers find more than they bargain for when their worlds of animation and live-action cutouts collide in a frenzied tribute to celluloid history.

7 Days of the Week
Sean McBride and David Cowles, Brooklyn and Rochester, N.Y.
This wacky, spirited animation/music video employs inventive strategies to accompany music by “They Might Be Giants,” the Grammy Award-winning alternative rock band, also known for their children’s music.

Bob’s Knee
Michael Attie, Menlo Park, Calif.
Frustrated by the fallibility of his joints, a home garage inventor employs unconventional methods to understand the mechanics of the human knee. “Bob’s Knee” is a delightfully offbeat short that will appeal to all ages.

The Death of Grandma Gladys
Kate Lain, Bozeman, Mont.
The filmmaker found old photos of her grandmother after her death. In those pictures her grandmother most often wore men’s clothing and was usually seen with female pals in playful poses. The filmmaker talks about the intriguing images and the possible cultural and personal subtexts they evoke.

Hold the Soup (Matzo Ball Eating World Championship)
Faye Lederman, Fort Lee, N.J.
It’s not the soup but the quality and size of the matzo balls that matters to the home cooks who supply this traditional Jewish staple as contestants vying to be crowned as the world champion of an unexpected culinary event.

Stuffed
Arwen Lee Curry & Cerissa Tanner, San Francisco
The evolution from collector to pack rat to hoarder can creep up on a person. This eye-opening work visits the domiciles of three hoarders who share their stories and show their stuff. Each person has a strategy to manage the ramifications of his or her obsession, but sometimes the behavior becomes so all-consuming that it’s not possible to function normally.

Utopia Variations
Gregg Biermann, Hackensack, N.J.
Polymorphic algorithms transform sample moments from Judy Garland’s performance of “Over the Rainbow” into a time-shifted, multi-screen encounter with a cinema classic.

Virginia Film Society events are co-sponsored by the Virginia Film Festival and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

The screening will be held Feb. 26 at 7 p.m. at Newcomb Hall Theater. Bob Jackson from the University of Virginia’s Department of Media Studies will introduce the film and he and U.Va. Civil War historian and author Gary Gallagher will lead a post-show discussion.

Though Abraham Lincoln was a perpetual favorite for director John Ford, he was never more brilliantly imagined than in this 1939 feature, which chronicles the development of the would-be president in his early years in Springfield, Ill.

Henry Fonda, in one of his earliest starring roles, delivers one of his greatest performances as Lincoln. Combined with Ford’s direction, at its grandest and most lyrical, the result is an undeniable masterpiece on America’s history. Chicago Reader critic Dave Kehr notes: “The film stirs feelings about the American past that most of us, I suppose, have missed since childhood.”

• The spring season continues on March 5 at 7 p.m. at Vinegar Hill Theater, with a screening of “King Corn,” by director Aaron Woolfe. The film is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation.

Writer-producers Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis move to the Iowa heartland to learn about the source of their food. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat — and how we farm.

U.Va.’s Department of Environmental Science professor Steve Macko participated in the film and will lead a discussion after the screening.

“King Corn” is presented in association with the Virginia Festival of the Book.

• The Black Maria Film Festival with John Columbus returns March 18. From animation to experimental, satire to documentary, the range of the selection is wide in this audience-juried tour of cutting-edge works from independent film and video makers.

• Michael Almereyda’s production of “Hamlet” updates the classic revenge drama to present-day New York City, substituting corporation politics for the country of Denmark. The film will be will be screened April 8.

Colleen Kelly, a stage combat teacher from the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton who is directing this semester’s production of “Two Gentlemen of Verona” for U.Va.’s Drama Department, will introduce the screening and lead a post-show discussion with U.Va. English professor Clare Kinney.

Additional screenings are in the planning stages.

The Virginia Film Society is presented by the Virginia Film Festival with major support from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

Charlottesville, VA – January 29, 2009 – The University of Virginia’s College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences  has announced that a formal search has begun to identify the person who will write the next chapters of an educational and entertainment success story that has spanned more than 20 years.

The Virginia Film Festival has earned national recognition and extensive media attention for its unique dedication to the art of film and, at the same time, to its rigorous educational mission.  The four-day event, held in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountain setting of Charlottesville, Virginia, is known for celebrating films as well as for inviting the public to explore a variety of cultural themes through them.

The event was most recently led by Richard Herskowitz, who recently left the University after a widely-hailed 16-year tenure to take a position at the University of Oregon. There Herskowitz joins his wife Jill Hartz, who was recently hired to run the university’s acclaimed art museum. In addition, Herskowitz will be serving as Curator of the Media and Arts Festival for the Houston Cinema Arts Society.

“The Virginia Film Festival remains one of the most unique and surprising festivals in the country,” said Academy-Award-winning producer Mark Johnson (Rain Man, The Chronicles of Narnia series,  Diner, Good Morning, Vietnam), chair of the Virginia Film Festival board.  “It continually attracts not only from the student body but also filmmakers and filmgoers from throughout the U.S.  It is clearly at the front row of the ‘smaller,’ non-competitive events of the year.”

Johnson said the search committee is interested in identifying a candidate whose abilities and background go beyond a simple list of criteria.  “Our search for a new director seeks an academician, an historian, or merely a film-lover who is up to the challenge of programming disparate and challenging films and complementing them with events that take full advantage of not only the movies themselves but the Festival’s audience.”

Fellow producer and board member Ron Yerxa, whose credits include Little Miss Sunshine, Cold Mountain, The Ice Harvest, and Little Children, notes the Festival’s unique position at the crossroads of the worlds of entertainment and academia. “This is an extraordinary opportunity for someone who is inspired not only by the art of film but by the power of ideas,” he said.  “It is really the only festival I know of that consciously puts together the excitement of a film festival and the intellectual stimulation of a world-renowned university. On top of this, Charlottesville is a fantastic progressive town and a tailor made destination for an event like this.”

The University’s search committee invites applicants with a strong knowledge of current and classical film as well as a proven ability to effectively manage staff.  Experience in fundraising and an interest in teaching and interacting with students is also preferred.

Applicants are encouraged to complete a Candidate Profile online and attach a cover letter, CV and contact information for three (3) references through Jobs@UVA (https://jobs.virginia.edu. Search on Posting Number 0603028.  Review of applicants begins on February 1 and will continue on a rolling basis until the position in filled.

Over the past several years alone, the Virginia Film Festival has compiled an impressive guest list of actors, directors, producers and other industry experts, including Morgan Freeman, Robert Duvall, Vanessa Redgrave, John Turturro, Guillermo Arriaga and others.  At the same time, it has offered rare opportunities for the community to engage with its events, including a special festival-long seminar featuring former 20th Century Fox head Harry Chotiner; the Adrenaline Film Project, a 72-hour filmmaking blitz headed by directors Jeff Wadlow and Beau Bauman; and the annual “Shot by Shot Workshop”, which features directors and film experts taking audiences through a live commentary of a film by one of the Festival’s highlighted artists.