Oct. 28 Griffiti with guest animator George Griffin, plus special premiere screening of Charlottesville filmmaker Thadd McQuade's new Charlottesville-produced silent comedy, The Winemaker, a half-hour silent comedy about winemaking, sibling rivalry, falling in love, and falling down -- in the spirit of the Chaplin and Keaton "two-reelers." Shot in Charlottesville with the actors of Foolery.
Also, this special Film Society/Off Screen event:
EXHIBITION: GLORY DAYS: THE BEAT GENERATION PHOTOGRAPHS OF FRED W. McDARRAH
Gallery Talk by Fred W. McDarrah
FEATURED ARTIST: KEN JACOBS
Lecture: "The Art of Hans Hofmann"
Screening: "Jack Smith by Ken Jacobs": Blonde Cobra, Little Stabs at Happiness, Death of P'Town, Little Cobra Dance, TV Plug or Hunch Your Back, and Saturday Afternoon Blood Sacrifice
Live "Nervous System" Performance: "Two Wrenching Departures"
PERFORMANCE: PULL MY DAISY: A BEAT GENERATION REUNION
PANEL: THE ART OF SPONTANEITY
SCREENINGS: BEAT CINEMA AND BEYOND
Friday, October 30
Saturday, October 31
1:30pm Interactive Media Demonstration with artist Lynn Hershman
4pm Keanu Cool with Jose Munoz and Jonathan Flatley
7pm U.Va. Student Film Show: Love's Labour's Lost directed by James Luckard.
Sunday, November 1
Oct. 6 Fishing With John (2 episodes, with Jim Jarmusch and Tom Waits) and Stranger Than Paradise presented by John Lurie (9:00pm, Newcomb Hall Theatre). Lurie, the hipster leader of the Lounge Lizards, star of Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise, and creator of the new Independent Film Channel series Fishing With John, arrives in early October for this special pre-Festival Cool event.
The Bayly Art Museum and the Virginia Film Festival present
THE ART OF SPONTANEITY: BEAT CINEMA AND BEYOND
October 2 - December 23
Picture editor of the Village Voice for 35 years, Fred W. McDarrah produced a lively and unpretentious photographic chronicle of the Beats, selections of which will be on display at the Bayly. McDarrah and his wife, Gloria, were both participants in and meticulous observers of the Beats scene in Greenwich Village in the fifties and sixties, and his images reflect these "glory days" of poetry readings, jazz, cafés, parties, and extraordinary ordinary life.
Sunday, November 1, 2pm, Bayly Museum
Filmmaker Ken Jacobs, whose artwork has been strongly influenced by his early studies with Hans Hofmann, will speak on Hofmann at the Bayly before going on to present his own works throughout the Film Festival. In particular, Jacobs will present his "underground film" collaborations with the legendary performance artist Jack Smith, seen in a film screening on Saturday and then reworked through Jacobs' miraculous "Nervous System" projection instrument on Sunday at Vinegar Hill Theatre.
Friday, Oct. 30, Noon, Bayly Art Museum
Saturday, Oct. 31, 11am, Campbell 153
Sunday, 2pm, Vinegar Hill Theater
Saturday, Oct. 31, 7pm, Culbreth
The Festival's most spectacular event will be an unforgettable gathering of legendary Beat Generation artists: composer David Amram, poet Diane di Prima, and poet-musician Ed Sanders (formerly of The Fugs). The evening will begin with a screening of Alfred Leslie and Robert Frank's Pull My Daisy, written and narrated by Jack Kerouac with a musical score by David Amram. Poetry and jazz performances with Amram, di Prima, and Sanders, featuring local jazz virtuoso John D'Earth and other musicians performing Amram's music, will follow. Be there or be square.
Saturday, Oct. 31, 1pm, Campbell Hall
Guest artists David Amram, Diane di Prima, Ken Jacobs, Fred and Gloria McDarrah and Ed Sanders will discuss the links across jazz improvisation, automatic writing, underground film, abstract expressionism, and other avant-garde arts during the Beat era.
various times and venues
The Festival schedule is filled with many of the classics of the "New American Cinema" and the "Underground Film" of the '50s and '60s, which were cinematic outgrowths of the Beat Generation influence. Among these screenings are Andy Warhol's The Chelsea Girls, Shirley Clarke's The Connection, John Cassavetes' Shadows, Robert Frank's Me And My Brother and (as cinematographer) Chappaqua, and Carolee Schneemann's Fuses and Other Films.
INTERACTIVE MEDIA EXHIBIT: ARTIST LYNN HERSHMAN
Video-installation-film and now digital artist Lynn Hershman, who is premiering Conceiving Ada at the Film Festival, is also the author of Clicking In: Hot Links to a Digital Culture. Hershman will discuss and demonstrate digital artmaking on Saturday afternoon at 1:30pm in Clemons Library, sponsored by the Digital Media Center.
FESTIVAL GALA PARTY
TNT and DirecTV Present the Opening Night Celebration at the Bayly Art Museum
October 29, 5:00 - 6:45pm. Admission: $40
Come and mingle with Festival guest stars at the party that launches the Festival each year. Swing to the music of John D'Earth and the Charlottesville Swing Orchestra, savor the delicious hors d'oeuvres, and experience the Beat photography of Fred McDarrah before plunging into four days of endless moviegoing.
STORMING THE MEDIA: A FORUM FOR FUTURE FILMMAKERS
The Virginia Film Festival and the Film and Media Society at U.Va. present this series of panels and workshops directed towards aspiring filmmakers and all others interested in how films get made. All events (excepting the Interactive Media Demonstration) will take place in Newcomb Hall Theater, located alongside the Emmet Street Parking Garage.
1pm Composers Panel with David Amram and Stu Gardner.
11am Black Cool (participants to be announced; cosponsored with the Carter G. Woodson Institute)
Site: Clemons Library 201. Cosponsored with the Digital Media Center
11am Filming Rebel Women/Rebel Women Filming with B. Ruby Rich, Lynn Hershman, Carolee Schneemann, Melissa Behr, and Sadie Benning.
CURRY SCHOOL FORUM ON MEDIA LITERACY: MARKETING 'COOL' TO KIDS
Thomas Frank, editor of The Baffler and its recent anthology, Commodify Your Dissent!, and author of The Conquest of Cool, has attracted much attention recently with his critiques of the advertising industry and its shaping of the counterculture in the Sixties and after. He returns to U.Va., where he received his undergraduate degree, to discuss the ways that kids are targeted and resist the marketing of "coolness." Respondents from the Curry School will discuss the effects of the "cool pose" on student life, and how much it can be attributed to media imagery.
THE NEWCOMB CINEMATHEQUE
The Cinematheque at Newcomb Hall Theater will present several films in conjunction with the Film Festival theme during Festival week. Among these will be Modulations, the new experimental documentary tracing the history of electronica by Iara Lee, whose Synthetic Pleasures screened in the Festival two years ago. Tickets will be available at the door only. A complete schedule will be published in the Festival News.
TOUCH OF EVIL (Reconstructed Director's Cut)
Vinegar Hill Theatre Oct. 23 - Nov. 5 (excluding Oct. 29-31)
Orson Welles's classic film noir with the legendary opening shot traveling from Mexico to the U.S. and a pulsating "crime jazz" score by Henry Mancini, has been reconstructed according to Welles' recently discovered 58 pages of instructions. Charlton Heston and Welles play good cop and bad cop, and Marlene Dietrich has a memorable role as a dark-wigged madam. Vinegar Hill Theatre will run the film during the two weeks surrounding the Film Festival.