1994 Summary of Programs and Guests

The seventh annual Virginia Festival of American Film was held October 27-30, 1994. The 4-day program revolving around the theme Love & Other Obsessions, featured 55 feature films, 46 short films, and 106 speakers appearing in panels and open discussions. The programming explored the construction of a normative ideal of the Couple in American films from the silent era to the present. Instead of focussing attention on a celebrity guest as in the past, the seventh Virginia Festival concentrated on what has made the Festival unique and widely acclaimed over the years: an academic focus and a heightened commitment to featuring the screenwriter's art.

Opening Night: Film restorers James Katz and Robert Harris brought their own 35mm print of My Fair Lady, and a rare print of Audrey Hepburn's own singing performance of "Wouldn't It Be Loverly", to the opening night gala hosted by AFI director Jean Firstenberg.

Noted screenwriters were prominently featured in the 1994 Festival

• John Guare, who received the Award of merit in 1981 from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his plays (The 4-Tony Awards The House of Blue Leaves, Rich and Famous, Marco Polo Sings a Solo...), presented and discussed his work on Louis Malle's Atlantic City. The New York Times said it was one of Malle's achievements that he has obtained from John Guare a screenplay that turned out to be quintessential Guare but which also provided the basis for a film that is quintessential Malle.
• The legendary cartoonist Jules Feiffer introduced and discussed Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge. Upon its release in 1971, the film was slapped with numerous obscenity suits, all of which were eventually dismissed. Starring Jack Nicholson and Candice Bergen, Carnal Knowledge is both cynical and sympathetic toward its characters, womanizers and castrators alike.
• Frank Pierson won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Dog Day Afternoon. For the same film, Sidney Lumet was nominated best director and Al Pacino, best actor. Following the screening, Frank Pierson discussed his
• Samuel Taylor was the co-screenwriter of Vertigo. He also wrote Sabrina Fair, the successful Broadway play on which Billy Wilder's film Sabrina was based. Samuel Taylor was present at both screenings to answer questions.

Workshop-related screening: Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Roger Ebert taught Vertigo frame-by-frame, with the help of laserdisc projection, to a crowd of feisty viewers who regularly challenged and supplemented his insights with their own articulate observations. Following the initial screening of Vertigo on the first day of the Festival, the workshop was divided in three parts of two hours each.

Roger Ebert was also present to introduce Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and discuss his work as screenwriter.

Regional Premieres:

• Vanya on 42nd Street takes place during a run-through of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (in a contemporary adaptation by David Mamet) inside the dilapidated New Amsterdam Theatre. Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn recruited Louis Malle to film their stage production, and the result is a unique blend of theater and film. Gregory regaled the audience with stories after the Vanya screening, and even jumped in on John Guare's discussion following Atlantic City. Both Guare and Gregory participated in forums with students and faculty in Drama Department of the University of Virginia.
  
• Samuel Goldwyn Pictures 'Oleanna, directed by playwright David Mamet, examines one of the most volatile topics of today - sexual harassment. The screening was followed by a panel discussion with University of Virginia professors that proved to be very animated. The debate continued for several weeks in the C'ville weekly magazine.

Virginia Premiere: National Book Award winner Mary Lee Settle, a friend of many of Dorothy Parker's Algonquin Circle Friends, responded with Parker-like wit to Fine Line Features'premiere film Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle, which she admired a great deal.

Experimental films: Experimental films arrived in force this year, thanks to the participation of artists Lynn Hershman, Mark Rappaport, Su Friedrich and scholar Scott MacDonald. Hershman displayed Lorna, the Festival's first interactive media installation. Su Friedrich presented her most recently completed film, Rules of the Road, on the filmmaker's lingering fetish for her ex-girlfriend's car. Film scholar MacDonald presented a compilation program of classic experimental films on romance to a receptive crowd of nearly 200.

Thursday Night Special: A capacity crowd of 500 people came out for a midnight presentation of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, co-sponsored with the student Visual and Performing Arts Committee.

Virginia Day: Sunday 30 October was "Virginia Day," including a particularly strong lineup of films from Regent University, and a theatrical premiere of Richmond filmmaker Eb Lottimer's Love Matters, starring Festival guest actor Griffin Dunne. The day ended with the powerful and disturbing documentary on forced sterilization in Virginia, The Lynchburg Story.

Panel Discussions:

Virtual Love: From Vicarious to Virtual Romance

Artist Lynn Hershman, Postmodern Culture editor John Unsworth, and Festival program director Richard Herskowitz discussed the evolution of the movies and their audiences from a state of vicarious involvement in romantic fantasies to a future of more virtual, interactive participation.

Screenwriting Romance through Decades:

Screenwriters/ playwrights Frank Pierson, John Guare, Jules Feiffer, Samuel Taylor talked with film scholar Jeanine Basinger about the changing representation of cinematic romance in the movies, from the points of view of four male writers whose writing careers outside of Hollywood have been more successful than their careers within it.

Mass-Mediated Fantasies for Women

Soap Operas, the woman's film, and gothic romances were be discussed by their creators and scholars, along with the more subcultural fantasies of '50s lesbian novels with speakers Judy Lewis, Virginia Wright Wexman (University of Illinois) and Jane Gaines (Duke University).

Closing Feature: Director Darnell Martin flew in to close the Festival with her critically acclaimed new film, I like It Like That. She joined actor Griffin Dunne onstage for the discussion, during wich she explained the film's roots in Italian neo-realist comedy.

Classic films featured:

	A Florida Enchantment (Dir.: Sidney Drew, 1914)
	Young Romance (Dir.: George Melford, 1915)
	The Marriage Circle (Dir.: Ernst Lubitsch, 1924)
	Sunrise (Dir.: F.W.Murnau, 1927)
	I'm no Angel (Dir.: Wesley Ruggles, 1933)
	Design for Living (Dir.: Ernst Lubitsch, 1933)
	The Thin Man (Dir.: W.S.Van Dyke, 1934)
	Woman Chases Man (Dir.: John Blystone, 1937)
	Three Comrades (Dir.: Frank Borzage, 1938)
	Wuthering Heights (Dir.: William Wyler, 1939)
	Rebecca (Dir.: Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)
	Now Voyager (Dir.: Irving Rapper, 1942)
	Duel in the Sun (Dir.: King Vidor, 1946)
	The Lady From Shanghai (Dir.: Orson Welles, 1948)
	All That Heaven Allows (Dir.: Douglas Sirk, 1955)
	Lilith (Dir.: Robert Rossen, 1964)
	Two for the Road (Dir.: Stanley Donen, 1967)
	Minnie and Moskowitz (Dir.: John Cassavetes, 1971)
	Ganja and Hess (Dir.: Bill Gunn, 1973)

Summary of Programs and Guests

Feature Films (55)
All That Heaven Allows
Atlantic City
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
Call of the Wild
Carnal Knowledge
Cheat, The
Choose Me
*Crimson Lights
Days of Heaven
Dog Day Afternoon
Duel in the Sun
Enemies: A Love Story
Florida Enchantment,  A Forbidden Love
Ganja and Hess
Great Gabbo, The
I Like It Like That
I'm No Angel
In the Mouth of Madness
Lady from Shanghai, The
Letter from an Unknown Woman
Lilith
Lolita
Love Matters
Lynchburg Story, The
Marriage Circle, The
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Minnie and Moskowitz
Modern Romance
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
My Fair Lady
Now Voyager
Oleanna
*Out of Sight
Rebecca
Rocky Horror Picture Show
Sabrina
Seven Chances
Shampoo
She's Gotta Have It
Sid and Nancy
Sunrise
Swan Princess, The
Thin Man, The
Three Comrades
Two for the Road
Vanya on 42d Street
Vertigo
Virtual Love
Wedding Banquet, The
Where the Heart Roams
Why Change Your Wife?
Woman Chases Man
Wuthering Heights
Young Romance

Short Films (46)
Are You Popular?
Are You Ready for Marriage?
Bedtime Stories Preview
Beginning to Date
Cancer in Two Voices
Chicks in White Satin
Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter
*Congress of Wonders
Critical Mass
*Cruel
Damned if You Don't
Dancehall Daze
Dark Letter, The
Daughters of Chaos
*Death in Venice, CA
*Dry Heat, A
Exterior Night
First Comes Love
Fuses
*Gaming Table, The
Go Granny
Going Steady
*Irma and Floyd
June Brides
Kiss
Kiss, The
Klarksen
*Laura Sobers
*Love Machine, The
Love Tapes
Meshes of the Afternoon
Message, The
*Mr. McAllister's Cigarette Holder
*New York- Interior Night
*Nunzio's Second Cousin
Once Upon a Honeymoon
Rabbit Trail
Rock Hudson's Home Movies
Rules of the Road
*Siren Moon
This Charming Couple
*Tick...tick...tick
*Underwater
*Urban Myth
*Water Ride
Who's Boss

Featured Guests (25)
Screenwriters
John Guare
Jules Feiffer
Samuel Taylor
Frank Pierson
Directors
Darnell Martin
Eb Lottimer
Mark Rappaport
Su Friedrich
Lynn Hershman
Critic/Screenwriter
Roger Ebert
Actors
Andre Gregory
Griffin Dunne
Restorers
Robert Harris
James Katz
AFI Director
Jean Firstenberg
Archivists
Patrick Loughney
Richard Prelinger
Film Scholars
Scott MacDonald, Utica College
Sumiko Higashi, University of Brockport
Virginia Wright Wexman, University of Illinois at Chicago
Jane Gaines, Duke University
Jeanine Basinger, Wesleyan University
Writers
Mary Lee Settle
William Tazewell
Judy Lewis

Independents (17)
John Brenkus
Marshall Persinger
David Sutherland
William Tyler Smith
Debbie Goodstein
Susan Skoog
Sheldon Serkin
Paul Wagner
Deborah LeMattre
P. David Ebersole
Bryan Root
Kevin McCoy
Mike Dinkins
Valerie Jones Mclean
Rick McCarthy
Parker Cross
Eric Hardie

UVa Faculty and Staff (40)
John Unsworth
Michael Kubovy
Ann Lane
Paul Gaston
George Rutherglen
Paula McClain
Claire Kaplan
David Waters
Paul Lombardo
Jim Childress
John Fletcher
Raphael Shargel
Edna Johnston
Allison Booth
Eric Lott
Susan Fraiman
Fred Damon
Virginia Mosser
Ned Brinkley
Reginald Butler
Robert Chapel
Sharon Hays
Meryl Klein
Richard Collins
Janet Steele
Sarah Corse
Stephan Prock
Sara Blair
Mary Ann Case
Elizabeth Ladenson
Janet Beizer
Walter Korte
Elizabeth Scarlett
Wynx Lawrence
David Novak
Gertrude Fraser
Tejumola Olaniyan
Robert Leventhal
Bernard Mayes

Non-UVa Faculty (17)
Terry Lindvall, Regent University
Andrew Quicke, Regent University
Walter Coppedge, Virginia Commonwealth
Louis Gallo, Radford University
Richard Warringham, Radford University
Anna Elfenbein, West Virginia University
Cynthia Baughmann, Ithaca College
Clay Waite, Radford University
Eric Perkins, Indiana University
Randy Stith, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
Gerald McDonald, Temple University
Margaret McFadden, Yale University
Marie Travis, George Washington University
Trent Nicholas, Virginia Commonwealth
Kathleen Flanagan, Longwood College
David Rigsbee, Hamilton College
Jonathan Freedman, University of Michigan
Sheri Beam, Hampton University


Other Speakers (7) 
Roberta Green, Prodigy
Mary Bishop,  Roanoke Times World News
Rich Simon, editor,  Family Therapy Networker
Michael Williams, Williams Corner Bookstore
Mary Israel, China Consultant
David Chack, Hillel
Jennifer Eilers, Uva Law student

*-Selections from 153 films submitted by independent filmmakers