The Virginia Festival Film Society, in collaboration with the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, is pleased to announce the fourth year of its participation in the Southern Circuit, a tour of independent filmmakers and videographers now in its twenty-second year. Six of this year's Film Society programs will be part of the Circuit. Click here for complete Southern Circuit program information. Annual Film Society membership benefits include free admission to Killing of a Chinese Bookie at the 1998 Festival and all Film Society events, two passes to Regal Theatres. Film Society members also get 50 percent off the general admission price to the OffScreen film series at UVA. OffScreen will select important new foreign titles, classic rereleases, and independent films that would otherwise bypass Charlottesville, and bring them to Newcomb Theatre, conveniently located alongside the Emmet Street Parking Garage. For more information on the OffScreen program, please contact Adam Popp. Rates $30 annual membership $20 seniors and students $6 individual admission For more information, please call (804) 982-5277. 1998-99 Schedule Wednesdays at 7:00pm in Vinegar Hill Theatre Southern Circuit screenings presented with the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and coordinated by the South Carolina Arts Commission with support from the National Endowment for the Arts: Sept. 23 Dear Jesse with guest director Tim Kirkman Dear Jessie follows the director on an emotional journey home to North Carolina, taking a personal and probing look at the pervasive, malicious influence Jesse Helms has had on Kirkman and other gay Americans. Taking the form of a filmed letter to the Senator, this smart, original movie shares the political and social urgency of Michael Moore's Roger & Me and the charming nostalgic vision of the New South of Ross McElwee's Sherman's March. Oct. 28 Griffiti with guest animator George Griffin and the premiere of Thadd McQuade's The Winemaker "Animated film is uniquely suited to create an alternative synthetic world of the imagination. Creating a sequence involves a symbiosis of drawing, writing choreography, and acting: every detail, at every frame, comes under the animator's scrutiny. The process appeals to those of us who are control freaks and who can tolerate large doses of delayed gratification." -- George Griffin. The Winemaker is a half-hour silent comedy about wine-making, falling in love, and falling down in the spirit of Chaplin and Keaton "two-reelers." Shot in Charlottesville with the members of Foolery. Nov. 16 Letter from Waco with guest filmmaker Don Howard "If you hang around Waco as long as I have, you'll start to sense something in the air -- kind of like electricity ... or maybe it's those geologic plates underneath everything, grinding up against each other. It shows itself in some pretty strange ways too, as you may already know; I call them 'Wacons' ... the best part's that Wacons always come back to the important things: Race, Religion, Death, & Football." -- Don Howard Coming this spring: Feb. 3, 1999 The Farm: Angola, USA with Jonathan Stack March 10, 1999 The Phony Trilogy with experimental filmmaker Emily Breer April 14, 1999 Girls Like Us with Jane Wagner Also, this special Film Society/Off Screen event is free to Society members: Oct. 6 (9:00pm, Newcomb Hall Theatre) Fishing With John (2 episodes, with Jim Jarmusch and Tom Waits) and Stranger Than Paradise presented by John Lurie. 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. And for its fifth annual visit ... TBA The Black Maria Film and Video Festival with John Columbus.

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