Premieres at Virginia Film Festival to include:
work-in-progress by Barry Levinson
and new works by directors John Hancock and Mark Lewis

Screenwriter-actor Barry McEvoy will join producer Mark Johnson to pre-screen their work-in-progress, An Everlasting Piece, directed by Barry Levinson. This film joins an exciting selection of premieres at this year's Festival, including John Hancock's A Piece of Eden, Mark Lewis's The Natural History of the Chicken, Kelly Greene's Attack of the Bat Monsters, Dorjkhandyn Turmunkh's State of Dogs, and Kathy High's Animal Attraction.

An Everlasting Piece reunites producer Mark Johnson and director Barry Levinson, the team that brought us Diner, The Natural, Rain Main, Bugsy, and other memorable productions. Against the turbulent backdrop of Belfast in the 1980s, fellow barbers Colm, a Catholic, and George, a Protestant, form an unlikely partnership to corner the toupee market in Northern Ireland. The film's star and screenwriter is a young, soon-to-be celebrated talent, Barry McEvoy, who is joined by a great cast, including Brian F. O'Byrne, Anna Friel, and popular Scottish comedian Billy Connolly. (Friday, October 27 at 7pm in Culbreth Theatre)

Acclaimed director John Hancock (Bang the Drum Slowly, Weeds) will present his new film A Piece of Eden accompanied by screenwriter Dorothy Tristan and actress Rebecca Harrell. A bittersweet comedy, A Piece of Eden follows three generations of the unlucky Tredici family from Corsica in the 1940s to an Indiana fruit farm in the present. Based on memories of Hancock's own childhood upbringing, the film moved National Book Award-winning author John Casey, a classmate of Hancock's at Harvard, to bring the film to the attention of Festival artistic director Richard Herskowitz. Casey, who will moderate the discussion after the screening, has said: "I loved the movie. The last thing I was expecting to do-I mean, there was a happy end-was to burst into tears." (Friday, October 27th at the Regal Cinema 6, Downtown Mall, Main Street).

Dorothy Tristan (who happens to be Hancock's wife and professional partner), has written three of her husband's films: Steal the Sky, Weeds, and A Piece of Eden. She is currently finishing the screenplay on his next project. Originally an actress, Tristan began her career in the theater and in films such as Klute, Man on a Swing and End of the Road with James Earl Jones and Stacy Keach.

In addition to A Piece of Eden, Hancock will present the Christmas classic Prancer, his 1998 film in which Rebecca Harrell made her film debut at the age of eight as a young girl who discovers and protects a wounded reindeer. The film also stars Sam Elliott, Cloris Leachman and Abe Vigoda. Roger Ebert, reviewing the film at its opening, wrote: I know, this sounds like a cloying fantasy designed to paralyze anyone over the age of 9, but not the way it's told by director John Hancock and writer Greg Taylor. They give the film an unsentimental, almost realistic edge. . . And what really redeems the movie . . . is the performance by a young actress named Rebecca Harrell. (Sunday, October 29th at 10 a.m., Vinegar Hill Theatre, 220 Market St.).

Mark Lewis, the wry and comedic nature filmmaker from Australia, will present A Natural History of the Chicken, filmed this past year in Virginia, along with his classic Cane Toads (1988). A Natural History of the Chicken premiered at this fall's Toronto Film Festival, prompting Time's Richard Corliss to write: In a festival that shows 264 features, this critic's favorite film was not a film at all but a video documentary - Mark Lewis's weird and delectable 'The Natural History of the Chicken.' Lewis's Cane Toads, more horrible than any nature-run-amok fiction feature, documents the misguided introduction of the giant poison toad to Australia. Both films will be presented on a double bill on Saturday, October 28th at 4:00 p.m. at the Regal Cinema 6, Downtown Mall, and Main Street. Lewis will also be presenting his award-winning 1998 film Rat, in which New York City residents share their experiences cohabiting with the ubiquitous creature, as a free screening at the Scottsville Victory Hall on Sunday, October 29th at 2:00pm.

Other directors who will accompany their premiere films include Kelly Greene, who will present Attack of the Bat Monsters. Set in 1959, this comedy takes an affectionate look at the men and women who created low-budget science fiction movies for drive-in theaters with their rubber-suited monsters and ubiquitous themes of radioactivity and atomic mutations. (Saturday, October 28th at 10 p.m. at the Regal Cinema 6, Downtown Mall, Main Street).

Mongolian filmmaker Dorjhandyn Turmunkh will present his film State of Dogs. A prize-winner at fourteen international film festivals, State of Dogs is an astonishing mixture of travelogue and mysticism says David Stratton, Variety. Employing human actors and a dog's eye view of the world, the film is structured around the life of a dog called Baasar. (Saturday, October 28th at 7:00 p.m. at the Vinegar Hill Theater, 220 Market Street).

Director Kathy High's Animal Attraction is a documentary exploring our fascination with animals and our attempts to communicate with them. The film follows the work of Dawn Hayman, an animal communicator - or interspecies telepathic communicator - as she telepathically talks with animals and teaches other people to do the same. Hayman and her partner Margot live on a farm with 28 horses, 14 bunnies, two llamas, 27 ducks, and 100 plus cats. Both director High and Dawn Hayman will be present at the screening. (Saturday, October 28th at 4:00 p.m at the Vinegar Hill Theatre, 220 Market St.).