Thursday, October 26

A Nation of Immigrants

Thursday, 10:00AM, Vinegar Hill

Out of Ireland

The Irish Potato Famine of 1840s prompted the largest wave of European immigrants in this country's history. Over one million Irish crossed the Great Divide to come to America. This massive influx had profound social and political effects on America and the immigrants themselves as they moved from agricultural Ireland to the industrialized U.S. As Walt Whitman would say, it turned this country into "a nation of nations." Over four years in the making, Charlottesville filmmaker Paul Wagner's documentary focuses on eight Irish immigrants and uses their own letters home to tell the story of their journeys from famine-ravaged Ireland to the industrial shores of America. Through their stories, the histories of Ireland and America are shown to be inextricably intertwined. Actress Kelly McGillis narrates, while Gabriel Byrne, Brenda Fricker, Liam Neeson and Aidan Quinn provide the voiceover readings of the immigrant letters. Historical photographs, newsreels and exquisite footage shot in Ireland add to the narratives, as do interviews with Irish writer John B. Keane and historians Kerby Miller, Dennis Clark, and Hasia Diner. Mick Moloney created the musical score and sings several songs of the Irish immigrants. Out of Ireland is especially relevant today, in the wake of California's Proposition 187, and the anti-immigration candidacy of Pat Buchanan (an Irish-American who, interviews indicate, is quite aware of the period when signs warned "No Irish Need Apply").

Thursday, 10:00AM, County Office Building

Scarface: The Shame of the Nation

Paul Muni stars as Tony Camonte, a thinly disguised fictionalization of Al Capone, an Italian immigrant and remorseless killing machine who rises through the ranks to become a crime boss. Ann Dvorak plays his sister and latent love interest. George Raft, who'd hung around a few gangsters himself, portrays Muni's righthand man and immortalizes the image of the gangster as coin-flipper. Screenwriter Ben Hecht envisioned the story as a modernization of Macbeth. Director Howard Hawks saw the story as that of the Borgias, with Tony Camonte's incestuous feelings toward his sister like those of a latter-day Cesare Borgia toward his sister, Lucretia. All of the murders depicted in Scarface are based on actual killings of crime figures in Chicago. Hawks hired several underworld characters as technical consultants, and even Al Capone was impressed with the veracity of some of the scenes. Capone liked the movie so much that he owned his own print, and he threw a formal party honoring Hawks in Chicago. Censors held up the film's release for two years while scenes were cut and a crime-does-not-pay prologue and epilogue were shot. The title was lengthened to Scarface: The Shame of the Nation to cast a moral slant as further appeasement to the Hays Office. Francois Truffaut admired the scene in which Boris Karloff is killed while bowling. The last pin spins and goes down just as Karloff does. Says Truffaut: "This isn't literature. It may be dance or poetry. It is certainly cinema."

The Discussion: Gangsters and Ethnic Communities
Mark Edmundson, Associate Professor of English, University of Virginia.

Thursday, 1:00PM, Vinegar Hill

The Jazz Singer

The Jazz Singer over time has become legend, and as is the case with legends, many details of the story are not true. The Jazz Singer was not the first Vitaphone picture; Don Juan in 1926 was. It was not the first all talking feature. That didn't happen until 1928 with The Lights of New York. However, it's impossible to overstate the importance of The Jazz Singer. It was a movie that caught the public's imagination, and, said critic Welford Beaton, "definitely establishes the fact that talking pictures are imminent." And it was the movie that made Al Jolson a screen legend. Director Alan Crosland contrasts the worlds of the Jewish immigrant community around Hester and Orchard Streets in New York with the Great White Way of Broadway. Like Jakie Rabinowitz, the title character in the movie, Jolson was the son of a Jewish cantor who ran away from home to perform the secular music he loved. Rabinowitz further forsakes his Jewish heritage by assuming the name Jack Robin and by having a shiksa girlfriend. But he ultimately finds a way to reconcile his Jewish heritage with his upward mobility. Upon its premiere in New York on August 6, 1927, the audience clapped and hooted and gave the film ovations rarely heard in movie theatres. Perhaps the audience that night was aware history was being made. The first Academy Awards ceremony presented The Jazz Singer with a special award for "the pioneer talking picture, which has revolutionized the industry."

The Discussion: Immigrants in Blackface
Sara Blair, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia
David Chack, Director of the Hillel Jewish Center, University of Virginia

Ellis Island

A film about the experiences of immigrants entering America at the turn of the century, displaying the choreographic, musical, and cinematic imagination of creator Meredith Monk. Ellis Island was awarded the CINE Golden Eagle and the Special Jury Prize from the Atlanta and San Francisco Film Festivals.

Thursday, 1:00PM, County Office Building

The Third Man

One critic swears that The Third Man has left lasting memories in the minds of every moviegoer who has seen it. The Festival's Kluge Fellow, critic Roger Ebert has chosen to analyze this story of an American abroad frame-by-frame from Oct. 27-28. Post-war Vienna, occupied by three different armies, is a perfect setting for the moral ambiguity prevalent in the work of Graham Greene. Joseph Cotten, an American writer of children's westerns, goes to Vienna to meet his childhood friend, the enigmatic Harry Lime, played by Orson Welles. He discovers upon his arrival that Welles has been killed and is about to buried. Cotten doesn't believe British intelligence officer Trevor Howard when Howard tells him that Welles was a crook and a murderer, and decides to investigate Welles' death himself. "Cotten learns so much about his friend that when he finally finds him alive, he wants him dead," says Pauline Kael. The mood is classic film noir, heightened by strange camera angles (a la Citizen Kane) that director Carol Reed used "to make the audience uncomfortable" along with Cotten as he discovers the truth about his old friend. Robert Krasker won an Oscar for his cinematography. The emotional tension was further heightened by Reed's use of the practically unknown zither as the only instrument on the soundtrack. The disconcerting tones and twangs performed by Anton Karas made the zither popular across the United States and Europe following the success of The Third Man.

Discussion: Carol Reed's Noir Vision
Walter Coppedge, Professor of English, Virginia Commonwealth University
Robert Sprich, Professor of English, Bentley College

Thursday, 4:00PM, Vinegar Hill

Ethnic Crimes

with filmmakers Edgar Davis and Jeffrey Reyna

A Jury of Her Peers

UVA alumnus Edgar Patterson Davis has already racked up two awards for his 1994 film, A Jury of Her Peers. Davis, a Washington, D.C. native, wanted to portray the middle-class world in which he grew up, and how violence in the streets can affect that world. Gloria Davis-Hill plays a mother whose son has been killed. Three years later as a juror in a murder trial, she's forced to confront her own role in her son's death, and to ponder what went wrong even when you try to do everything right.

Pepino Mango Nance

A young Latino composer, Joseph Julian Gonzalez, wants to incorporate the songs of downtown Los Angeles street vendors into a string quartet. His music becomes politicized when he discovers that street vending is illegal, and the vendors, mostly South- and Central-American women, live in constant fear of arrest as they try to sell their produce. Pepino Mango Nance documents in black and white the progress of Gonzalez's music, while paralleling the gritty survival of Marta-Julia Lemus, the street vendor whose voice he uses in his finished piece.

Brothers

In this bracing new film by a UCLA filmmaker, two seemingly unrelated Latino men are interviewed, until the common ties and tragic memories that link them become powerfully clear.

Thursday, 4:00PM, Culbreth Theater

The Immigrant

Charlie Chaplin had some idea of what it was to be an immigrant in America. Judging from this film, "his most vivid memory was the movement of the ship," says Kevin Brownlow in Behind the Mask of Innocence. By putting the camera on a special tripod that allowed it to rock from side to side, Chaplin made the audience relive his experience of ocean-crossing seasickness. Although Chaplin tried to refrain from overt political statements in his films, he was aware that the scene in which the title card reads, "Arrival in the Land of Liberty," and the passengers are roped together like cattle could be open to criticism. The criticisms by self-proclaimed "patriots" of Chaplin's social commentary in later films such as Modern Times and Monsieur Verdoux eventually led this talented immigrant into permanent exile from America.

Gretchen the Greenhorn

"Gretchen the Greenhorn is about immigrant naivete, survival, and solidarity," writes Eric Aijala. Eugene Pallette plays an evil counterfeiter who sets out to take advantage of Ralph Lewis's engraving skills and his winsome daughter, Dorothy Gish, in this rarely seen silent film. Directors Chester and Sidney Franklin take the plight of the immigrant and cast it in an optimistic light. Children of all races play together, as poverty transcends racial barriers in this idealistic portrayal: "The multicultural harmony in the midst of chaos...," says Aijala, "is the only optimistic, possibly unrealistic, view in this early feature."

Discussion: The Silent Immigrant
Terry Lindvall, President, Regent University
Janet Steele, Associate Professor, Communications Studies, George Washington University

Thursday, 4:00PM, County Office Building

Salt of the Earth

Director Herbert Biberman was a member of the Hollywood Ten and had served a five-month prison sentence for not cooperating with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Producer Paul Jarrico had been blacklisted, as had Will Geer, who plays the sheriff. Independent Productions Corporation, formed to give work to the blacklisted of Hollywood, and the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelters Workers joined together to produce this tale of a Chicano workers' strike. Once word got out that "Hollywood Reds" were making a "Communist propaganda" piece in New Mexico, everyone from the Screen Actors Guild to the F.B.I. and C.I.A. colluded to stop the film. Only five members of the cast were professional actors. The rest were locals from Grant County, New Mexico, where a real-life strike had gone on from October 1950 to January 1952 against Empire Zinc. Juan Chacon, the real-life local union president, plays a zinc worker contemplating going on strike because of unsafe mine conditions. After the strike begins, a Taft-Hartley injunction forbids the male mine workers from picketing. The wives, over their husbands' initial objections, take over the picket lines. The feminist awakening portrayed in the film has made it a feminist film classic, and this screening and discussion are cosponsored by the Women's Center in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of undergraduate women at UVa.

The Discussion: The Miracle of Salt of the Earth
Paul Jarrico, producer, Salt of the Earth; screenwriter, Tom, Dick and Harry and Song of Russia.
Dorothy Healey became international representative for the Mine, Mill, and Smelters Union in 1944. As a Communist party leader, she defied grand juries and the McCarran Act, and her arrests (and the McCarran Act) were repeatedly overturned by the Supreme Court.
Marguerita de la Vega-Hurtado, Chair, Film/Video Program, University of Michigan
Eileen Boris, Professor of History, Howard University

Thursday, 7:00PM, County Office Building

Vampire in Brooklyn

 with guest director Wes Craven Maximillian (Eddie Murphy) is a member of an exclusive race that legend has called Nosferatu, the undead, the vampire. He knows no mercy and has no regret. He can transform himself in a thousand different ways. Max has ventured to New York City in search of Rita Veder (Angela Bassett), an NYPD detective who is unaware of their unique blood bond. As Max and Julius, his hapless ghoul (Kadeem Hardison), attempt to transform Rita into Max's vampiress, her devoted NYPD partner Justice (Allen Payne) finds he has much at stake in protecting her from an age-old evil.

Thursday, 7:00PM, Vinegar Hill

Picture Bride

Certain American industries would not have thrived without immigrant labor. The railroads are one; Hawaiian sugar cane plantations are another. During the early 20th century, Hawaiian plantation owners imported thousands of laborers from China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines. When it became apparent to these men that they would not be getting rich from the Hawaiian sugar cane fields, they sought the comfort of wives and families instead. Marriages were arranged through matchmakers based on photographs of the brides and grooms, hence the term "picture bride." This practice brought 20,000 young women, primarily from Japan and Korea, to Hawaii between 1907 and 1924. Youki Kudoh, who starred in Mystery Train, portrays Riyo, one such picture bride. Stigmatized by her parents' death from TB, Riyo envisions Hawaii as a perfect escape from the strictures of Japanese society. This illusion begins to crumble when she meets her groom, Matsuji (Akira Takayama), who is at least 20 years older than the picture he sent her. Both of director Kayo Hatta's grandmothers immigrated to Hawaii from Japan. Although neither were picture brides ("I'm one of the very few Japanese Hawaiians who didn't descend from a picture bride," says Hatta), the director had been fascinated since childhood hearing stories about the picture brides. Many of these stories are woven into Picture Bride, which is beautifully photographed by Like Water for Chocolate cinematographer Claudio Rocha. Hatta's sister, Mari Hatta, a poet and a graduate of UVa, helped write the screenplay. The film won the coveted Audience Award for best dramatic movie at this year's Sundance Festival.

Discussion moderator: Michiko Wilson, Associate Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages, University of Virginia.

Thursday, 7:00PM, Culbreth Theater

King Kong

with actress Fay Wray

Producer-director-explorers Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack were known for their exciting nature documentaries Grass (1925) and Chang (1927). While filming in Africa, Cooper became fascinated with gorillas and wondered what would happen if a giant one were transported to New York City. Happily for Cooper's fantasy, special effects wizard Willis O'Brien, who'd made the silent dinosaur movie, The Lost World (1925), had come up with some techniques that would make it possible to film the story of a giant ape. Among the effects pioneered in King Kong are stop-motion, rear-projection and the use of an optical printer. King Kong became a testament to the Hollywood studio system because of the skilled artists and craftsmen who contributed to the film. The sound department created Kong's roar by using a lion and tiger's roars and playing them in reverse. Original soundtracks were unheard of at the time, and Max Steiner composed one of the first scores specifically synchronized to the action of the film. For King Kong, America is not the promised land. What can be crueler than to see the king of the jungle reduced to a victim of modern civilization? Who doesn't want him to knock those pesky biplanes out of the sky? Despite the technology that's arrayed against him, Kong never loses his dignity and never forgets the woman-the great Fay Wray as Ann Darrow-he loves.

Thursday, 10:00PM, County Office Building

Godfather II

Both a prologue and a sequel to the story of the Corleone family told in "The Godfather," "Part II" chronicles the early life of Don Vito Corleone and intercuts it with the continuing rise to power of his son, Michael Corleone, played by Al Pacino. Robert De Niro won an Academy Award for his portrayal of the young Vito Corleone, who arrives in New York at the turn of the century after his family has been murdered in Sicily, and is transformed from a sensitive youth to a ruthless Mafia operator.

While family and loyalty are key values for the Corleones, those are ultimately subordinate to the Business, which destroys the family it's supposed to secure. The lesson the former war hero and college-educated Michael Corleone cites after he's become a ruthless Mafia don? "If anything in life is certain, if history teaches us anything, it's that you can kill anyone."

The story of the Corleones is an American tale of capitalism run amok, one in which violence as a way of doing business is transplanted from the old country and works remarkably well in the new. Many immigrants entered America through Ellis Island; few of them ended up being "bigger than U.S. Steel," as one character remarks.

Introduction: James Ruff, James Madison University

Thursday, 10:00PM, Vinegar Hill

Closer to Home

The Virginia Festival of American Film is pleased to premiere Joseph Nobile's film about an arranged marriage between a Filipino woman and a retired seaman. This independent production is an epic, enthralling tale filmed in the Philippines and the U.S. Dalisay, the eldest daughter of a poor provincial family, is determined to do something to help her ill sister. She decides to emigrate, but finds it nearly impossible to raise what she needs to reach the United States. Dean Warren, after spending 20 years in the Merchant Marine, returns to discover he has no home. His parents have died, his sister wants to sell their house, and nobody can stand him. Dean is determined to have the family and home he once abandoned. He contacts a marriage bureau and brings Dalisay from the Philippines to New York to be his wife. The marriage has unexpected consequences for them both.

Thursday, 10:00PM, Culbreth Theater

The Wedding March

 with actress Fay Wray

Although Erich von Stroheim is remembered today mostly for his role as Norma Desmond's loyal retainer in Sunset Boulevard, in the 1920s he was regarded as a directorial genius, albeit one who had only one commercial success and whose greatest masterpieces were lost or destroyed. One of the earliest auteurs, von Stroheim directs, writes and stars in The Wedding March. He plays the Austrian Prince Nicki von Wildeliebe-Rauffenberg, who must marry an heiress to shore up the family's sinking fortunes. During a stunning Corpus Christi parade, which was shot in Technicolor, Prince Nicki spies-and falls in love with-Mitzi, a peasant girl portrayed by Fay Wray, who "gives the most sincere performance of the cast," noted The New York Times. Alas for the lovers, who are photographed romantically under bowers of apple blossoms, Prince Nicki's father has arranged for him to marry the legendary ZaSu Pitts, who takes the role of Cecilia, the crippled daughter of the vulgar but rich corn-plaster king. Von Stroheim's penchant for detail led to his downfall as a director. He built 36 opulent sets, many of them reproducing Vienna in exquisite detail. One story has von Stroheim ordering 1,000 pairs of silk undergarments for the extras so they would know what it was like to feel aristocratic. He shot 33 hours of film and spent seven months editing. Von Stroheim had intended to make two films: The Wedding March and The Honeymoon. The Honeymoon was shown only in Europe, and the sole surviving print was destroyed by a fire in Paris. Exasperated by von Stroheim's excess, Paramount brought in Josef von Sternberg to edit, and then Julian Johnson. Pared down to 10,721 feet, The Wedding March was released to mixed reviews in 1928, perhaps a victim of its sophistication and the new craze for talking pictures, suggests The Motion Picture Guide.

Thursday, 10:00PM, McLeod Auditorium

Oh! Godzilla!- A Monster Tribute

 with guest speakers Patrick Macias and August Ragone

The Japanese Godzilla films (in which, as film scholar Chon Noriega has written, "the U.S. is Them!") are in the midst of a renaissance, although the high quality productions of recent years have not received the attention in the U.S. they deserve-except among a large number of Godzilla cultists. Among those enthusiasts are Patrick Madias, co-editor of the legendary "Zilla-zine," Markalite, and August Ragone, whose musings on the monster have appeared in Asian Trash Cinema, Markalite, and G-Fan, who will present a chronological history of Godzilla with film clips, genre analysis, and behind-the-scenes gossip. They'll begin with the 1954 Godzilla, in which references to the American atomic bomb were eliminated, and scenes with Raymond Burr were added, for the American release. Later years will bring in Mothra, King Kong, Rodan, and the great King Ghidorah, in an amazing psychotronic assemblage that will thrill both Godzilla fanatics and novices.