HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 1996 VIRGINIA FILM FESTIVAL

Festival Facilities Shine and Ticket Sales Soar
The Festival's long search for three first-rate screening facilities finally ended with the addition of Regal Downtown Mall Theater I, a 250-seat auditorium especially designed to suit Festival needs, supplementing the magnificent facilities at Culbreth and Vinegar Hill Theaters. The move to the Downtown Mall Theater was accompanied by a shift of the Festival's hospitality base to the Omni Hotel, and the centralization of most Festival events and activities in the thriving downtown mall area. These improvements contributed to the unexpected surge in box office activity. Festival attendance reached 8,800, nearly 10% higher than 1995, and proceeds more than doubled the amount originally projected for the year. This was particularly gratifying and surprising since, as a result of the Festival's reorganization, programs were cut by 25% and expenses by over 60% from 1995.

New Sponsors Emerge, Longterm Sponsors Reenlist
The Festival's move in July from the Division of Continuing Education to the College of Arts and Science's Department of Drama, and the integration of its ticket sales into the Drama Department's ongoing operations, could not have gone more smoothly. Partly in recognition of the improved financial and organizational stability, major sponsors, including USAir, Sprint, Adelphia, Bravo, the Independent Film Channel, Jefferson National Bank, Norfolk Southern, and Pepsi Cola -- maintained or enlarged their contributions. Additionally, Turner Network Television (TNT) and Regal Cinemas emerged as new major sponsors of the Festival, and their representatives reported great satisfaction with the 1996 event.

Pre-Festival Events Feature Kathleen Turner
Kathleen Turner, enroute from a Richmond appearance on behalf of the Childhelp organization, opened the Ninth Virginia Film Festival by introducing a screening of Serial Mom in Culbreth Theatre. She also met with press and donors at a luncheon at Carr's Hill, and discussing her career in screen and stage acting with Drama Department chair Bob Chapel and the department's students. At the Serial Mom screening, she was handed an engraved pair of scissors by Festival staff.

Eva Marie Saint Opens and Closes the Ninth Virginia Film Festival
On opening night, following a lively and well-attended reception sponsored by TNT in her honor at the Bayly Art Museum, Eva Marie Saint joined screenwriter Ernest Lehman in introducing a screening of Turner Classics' beautiful new 35mm print of North by Northwest. After the showing, they were joined onstage by film scholar Jeanine Basinger, who elicited Saint's fond memories and Lehman's more sardonic recollections of the process of working with "Hitch" on this classic production. Three days later, as the Festival's final program, Eva Marie Saint was joined by her husband, director Jeffrey Hayden, in presenting their production of Children in America's Schools. This screening was followed by an electrifying town meeting organized by the Curry School Film Festival, which joined forces with the Festival for the first time this year. The panel included over a dozen educational scholars and officials, including E.D. Hirsch, Jr., author of What Our Schools Need, and Reg Weaver, vice president of the National Education Association.

Feature Premieres Impress Audiences
The ninth Festival was blessed with a remarkable array of high quality feature premieres, including the upcoming Fine Line release Shine and CFP's The Daytrippers, both of which elicited powerful reactions and a steady buzz from audiences throughout the weekend. The sophisticated cinephilia of Festival audiences was proven again when the premiere of the uncut version of The Passenger, Profession: Reporter, drew a sell-out crowd to the Culbreth Theatre. Christopher Munch and Luis Meza presented their new features, Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day and Staccato Purr of the Exhaust, to great acclaim from area critics and audiences, and favorable responses were also reported for screenings of Synthetic Pleasures, Cold Fever, and Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern. Michael Stipe's appearance in Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day was followed by an area premiere of his new concert film with REM, Road Movie, courtesy of Warner Bros. Records.

Panel Discussions Address Locations
The annual Screenwriters Panel was particularly lively this year. Moderator Frank Pierson (Dog Day Afternoon, Cat Ballou) was joined by Jay Presson Allen (Marnie, Prince of the City) and writer-director-scholar Peter Wollen (The Passenger). Allen's sardonic observations were tempered by Pierson's avowed "idealism," and Wollen's ability to contextualize current trends in broad film historical terms. The screenwriters initially focused on their own roles in imagining locations, a theme that was picked up in the panel On Location: Finding Movie Sites in Virginia (and the Rest of the World). Moderated by Virginia Film Office Director Rita McClenny, the panel included a location manager (Charley Baxter), producer (Doro Bachrach), directors (Christopher Munch and Wayne Powers), and Mississippi Film Office Director Ward Embling. The panel was rich with illuminating stories -- of turning Richmond into a war zone and a Virginia hotel into a Catskills resort, of municipalities in Missisippi fighting each other over a John Grisham movie, and much more.

Regal Film Workshop is Led by Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert returned for his fifth annual shot-by-shot film workshop, examining Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde on its thirtieth anniversary. Ebert announced that he would henceforth be returning to the Virginia Film Festival every other year, an announcement that disappointed local fans of his witty and erudite teaching style.

Work-in-Progress is Presented by Mark Rappaport
A Virginia Film Festival tradition of presenting works-in-progress was renewed with the appearance of filmmaker Mark Rappaport with a 23-minute segment of his work-in-progress, The Silver Screen/Color Me Lavender. According to Rappaport, "it was nice, and useful, to see a work-in-progress projected in front of a live audience. You get a very clear sense of what is working, what is working well, and what is just dropping dead."

Independent Filmmakers Attend in Force
Renowned experimental filmmakers James Benning and Mark Street, animator Suzan Pitt, and documentarians Austin Allen and Ellen Spiro were among the independents whose work was greeted by large and appreciative audiences. Spiro's Roam Sweet Home , on elderly people living in RV's, was featured in an unusual program with a photo slide show and presentation, Trailers, by Carol Burch-Brown and David Rigsbee. The annual Independents' solicitation process, sponsored by the Independent Film Channel, brought filmmakers Sunny Lee, Glenn McClanan, Jonathan Mednick, Christina Craton, and Tim Schwab with their productions.

Classics Explore the Highway and the Desert Frontier
The selection of classics provided an in-depth exploration of the year's provocative theme, Wild Spaces, Endangered Places. The Festival's first half, In the Wild, explored the image of the desert frontier in a variety of films, from the western classics Wagon Master by John Ford and Cecil B. DeMille's The Virginian and Girl of the Golden West to the "urban desert" film Red Desert . Irrigation and technology turned desert into garden in the classics Wild River and Chinatown (doubled with Pat O'Neill's great experimental feature, Water and Power ). Derek Jarman's The Garden was paired with two Peter Greenaway shorts on water and landscape, and discussed by Dr. Martin Walsh of the Univeristy of Hartford. The second half of the Festival examined the history of the road movie, featuring a classic road film from each decade, from the 1930s with It Happened One Night to the '90s with Speed (discussed by producer Mark Gordon and introduced as a "New Classic" by TNT's Scot Safon). The intervening decades were represented by The Grapes of Wrath (1940), North by Northwest (1959), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Passenger/Profession: Reporter (1974), and Paris, Texas (1984).

Screening and Concert Features the Red Clay Ramblers

The Film Festival presented an unusual film and concert program at the Jefferson Theater. A screening of Sam Shepard's neglected 1994 film Silent Tongue, featuring the Red Clay Ramblers as actors, composers, and musicians, was followed by a live performance by the Ramblers. Their highly theatrical performance bowled over the packed house, and was, for many, the most memorable event of the weekend.

Edible Art Party Engages Collaboration of McGuffey Art Center Artists
The Festival's annual Saturday Night Benefit Party, sponsored by Sprint, was held in the McGuffey Art Center downtown. In the spirit of the gallery environment, an "Edible Art" contest was held, drawing the participation of seven talented artist-chefs who watched their creations being admired and then eaten by party-goers. Over thirty McGuffey artists opened their studios to guests. With music and dance performances on two floors, the event was an unforgettable arts celebration.

Library and Museum Collaborate on Interactive Media and Video Exhibits
The Festival branched out to include new media with the help of two University departments. The Digital Media and Music Center co-organized with the Festival a striking exhibit of CD-ROM's by Festival guests Rick Prelinger and Adriene Jenik in Alderman Library, and also hosted CD-ROM demonstrations by these two artists and by film scholar Robert Kolker. The Bayly Art Museum, which presented a show of Dutch landscape prints to coincide with the Festival theme, also provided a video gallery space for the exhibition of a three-day video exhibition programmed by Richard Herskowitz entitled "Mirages."

Women's Road Movies
The Women's Center and Vinegar Hill Theater helped the Festival extend its reach for five additional days with a fascinating series of ten films entitled "Women on the Road." Claire Kaplan and Karlyn Crowley of The Women's Center added car care and motorcycle safety workshops and organized the discussions which supplemented the screenings of Thelma and Louise, Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!, Je Tu Il Elle, and ten other films.

1996 VIRGINIA FILM FESTIVAL SCREENINGS AND GUESTS

Feature Films
Badlands
Bagdad Cafe
Beggars of Life
Bonnie and Clyde
Butterfly Kiss
Children in Am. Schools
Chinatown
Claiming Open Spaces
Cold Fever
Color Brisk Leaping Day
Daytrippers, The
Deseret
Double Blind
Easy Rider
Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Fat of the Land
Garden, The
Girl of the Golden West
Grapes of Wrath, The
Hearts' Lonely Hunters
It Happened One Night
Je Tu Il Elle
Joan of Arc of Mongolia
Lessons of Darkness
Messidor
My Father's Garden
North by Northwest
North on Evers
Opposite Camps
Paris Texas
Primary Colors
Profession: Reporter
Red Desert
Road Movie
Roam Sweet Home
Serial Mom
Shine
Silent Tongue
Silver Screen (in-progress)
Speed
Staccato Purr of Exhaust
Sweet Smell of Success
Synthetic Pleasures
Tank Girl
Thelma and Louise
They Live in Guinea
Troublesome Creek
Virginian, The
Wagon Master
Water and Power
Wild River

Short Films
Asparagus
Biker Women
Burning Barrel
Bway
Caught Mapping
Coolbreeze and Buzz
Counterwaitress
Cowgirl
Death Valley Days
Desert is No Lady
Deserts
Dykes on Bikes
Fast and Furryous
Freedom Highway
Georgetown Loop
H is for House
Home Where the Heart Is
Idea We Live In
Janauba
Joy Street
Landscape
Midwest Holiday
Patagonia
Portland
Private Life of Plants
Revenge of Kinematograph
Rules of the Road
Scenes from a Vacation
Season of Sorrow
She Lives to Ride
Simon of the Desert
Stones and Flies
Straight Talk Deserts
Summer Salt
Sunbelt Serenade
Tattoo Teardrop
Trailers
Tribes
Water Wrackets
Why Live Here?

CD-ROM
Film, Form and Culture
Mauve Desert
Uncharted Landscape

Special Events
Edible Art Party
Opening Night at the Bayly
Ramblers Film/Concert
Regal Ebert Workshop

Featured Guests
Screenwriters
Jay Presson Allen
Ernest Lehman
Frank Pierson
Peter Wollen
Producers
Lewis Allen
Doro Bachrach
Mark Gordon
Directors
Austin Allen
James Benning
Christina Craton
Jeffrey Hayden
Adriene Jenik
Sunny Lee
Jonathan Mednick
Luis Meza
Christopher Munch
Suzan Pitt
Wayne Powers
Mark Rappaport
Tim Schwab
Ellen Spiro
Mark Street
Actors
Eva Marie Saint
Kathleen Turner
Musicians
John Carden
Leva and Jones
Diane Nelson
Red Clay Ramblers
Art Wheeler
Others
Charley Baxter
Roger Ebert
Ward Embling
Carol Burch-Brown
Marty Kelso
Rita McClenny
Rick Prelinger
David Rigsbee
Scot Safon

Visiting Scholars
Jeanine Basinger (Wesleyan)
Peter Brunette (George Mason)
David Cook
Louis Gallo (Radford)
Arthur Knight (William and Mary)
Robert Kolker (Maryland)
David Paletz (Duke)
James Ruff (JMU)
Raphael Shargel
Robert Sprich (Bentley)
Janet Steele
Randy Stith (Virginia Tech)
Michael Walsh (Hartford)

Education Panel
W.W. Bennett
Albert Butler
James Cooper
George Conway
Penny Early
Cherie James
Joyce Murphy
Deborah Verstegen
Reg Weaver

Women on the Road
Karlyn Crowley
Andrea Hakes
Kendra Hamilton
Mary Ellen Huffman
Claire Kaplan

UVA Faculty
Craig Barton (Archit.)
David Breneman (Curry School)
Bob Chapel (Drama)
Rich Collins (Architecture) Maurice Cox (Architecture)
David Duke (Curry)
Paul Gaston (History)
Doug Grissom (Drama)
John Echeverri Gent (Government)
E.D. Hirsch, Jr. (English)
So Yong Kim (Art)
Walter Korte (Drama/English)
Ann Lane (Women's Studies)
Bernard Mayes (Media Studies)
Randy Pausch (Engineering/Computer Science)
John Unsworth (English)
Charles Vandersee (English)