JASON ROBARDS TO OPEN 10TH ANNUAL VIRGINIA FILM FESTIVAL

Charlottesville, Virginia:- The Virginia Film Festival, a program of the University of Virginia, announced today that dual Oscar-winner Jason Robards will be the guest of honor at the opening of this year's festival on October 30 in Charlottesville, Virginia. The f our-day festival celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. Previous high profile guests of honor have included the late Jimmy Stewart and Robert Mitchum, Fay Wray, Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier, and last year's honoree Eva Marie Saint.

The highlight of the festival's opening night, which will include a reception for Mr. Robards at the Bayly Art Museum, is a special screening of the uncut version of Sidney Lumet's "Long Day's Journey Into Night" in which Robards reprised his award winning Broadway role as Jamie Tyrone. Mr. Robards will introduce the film and will take part in a discussion of the film after the screening with Bob Chapel, Chair of the University of Virginia Department of Drama.

Mr. Robards, who has a distinguished career on stage, screen and television, is recognized as a leading interpreter of works by the great playwright Eugene O'Neill. Robards gained his first critical acclaim in 1956 in the Circle in the Square revival of "The Iceman Cometh" and later appeared in productions of O'Neil's "A Moon for the Misbegotten" (1974), "A Touch of the Poet" (1978), and "Ah, Wilderness!" (1989). In addition to his celebrated role as Jamie Tyrone, Robards assumed the role of the father, James, in a 1975 production of "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and in the 1988 Broadway revival.

In recent years Robards has become familiar to a new generation of filmgoers with powerhouse performances in "Philadelphia" (1993) and the newly released "A Thousand Acres" (1997). Robards received Oscars for Best Supporting Actor in "All the President's Men" (1976) and "Julia" (1977).

Sidney Lumet's adaptation of what is widely regarded as Eugene O'Neill's masterpiece, Long Day's Journey Into Night stands as the finest screen adaptation of any of O'Neill's work. Released in 1962, Journey's cast of Katherine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, and Dean Stockwell was given a special group Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival. The Virginia Film Festival will screen the rarely seen uncut original version which preserves those performances, and does justice to one of the finest examples of a film adaptation of a great play.

The theme of this year's festival is Caged, exploring the images of imprisonment and confinement. An aspect of this theme will be an examination of the ways film directors cinematically dynamize confined locations, particularly in adapting plays to film and television. Sidney Lumet's Long Day's Journey Into Night and Beth B's Two Small Bodies both screening opening night, will be discussed in a panel on "The Creative Use of Confined Locations" on Friday, October 31 at 1 p.m. in Newcome Hall Theater. Mr. Robards will also introduce a free screening of his four-hour, live television performance of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh from television's golden age, co-starring a 22 year old Robert Redford, at 7 p.m. on Friday, October 31, in U.VA's Campbell Hall 153.

Tickets to the Bayly Art Museum reception, from 5:30 to 7p.m. on October 30, are $35. Tickets to the screening of "Long Day's Journey Into Night" are $6. Tickets may be purchsed by mail via the order form in the '97 Festival Guide (available after September 26.) The festival box office will open in Culbreth theater on October 15 for in person and telephone sales. All tickets will be available on a first come, first served basis. For more information please visit the Virginia Film Festival web site at http://www.virginia.edu/~vafilm or call 1-800-UVA-FEST.