(2006) with Chris Hansen
7:15 pm, Regal 3
Director: Christopher J. Hansen
Writers: Christopher J. Hansen and D.M. Lovic
Cinematographer: Damon Crump
Cast: Anne Dennis, Ellen Dolan, Joseph Frost, Heather Henry, Dustin Olson
Running Time: 95 min
Archive for September, 2006
PROPER CARE AND FEEDING OF AN AMERICAN MESSIAH
A FLOCK OF DODOS (2006)
w/ Randy Olson
7:15 pm, Regal 3
Director: Randy Olson
Cinematographer: Peter LoGreco, Shane Seley, Joseph Trinh
Cast: Michael Behe, John Calvert, Jack Cashill, Tom Givnish, Randy Olson
Running Time: 84 min
G. I. JESUS (2006)
with Carl Colpaert and Lee Caplin
7:15 pm, Regal 3
Director: Carl Colpaert
Writer: Carl Colpaert, Deborah Setele
Cinematographer: Fred Goodich
Cast: Joe Arquette, Patricia Mota, Telana Lynum, Maurizio Farhad, Mark Cameron Wystrach
Running Time: 100 min
SPECTACULAR TRANSCENDENCE:
African-American Christianity on Film
Regal Film Workshop with Terry Lindvall
10:30 AM, Regal Downtown #2
Terry Lindvall’s interactive presentation looks at the energy and spectacle of religious fervor in African-American church life as portrayed in film. Less of a lecture and more of a dialogue, Dr. Lindvall (C. S. Lewis Chair of Communication and Christian Thought at Virginia Wesleyan College) will present film clips while fielding questions from and interacting with the audience. How do these films tease out the particular practices of various Church traditions? How do they capture both the practice of true Christian faith and its hypocritical shadows in the communities of saints who are also sinners? How do these films stereotype religious rituals and embalm them in the understanding of audiences? Where do these films fail to represent vital aspects of various religious believers?
Stylistic moments of excess, passion, justice, and music lead to a rich portrayal of the abundant expression of African-American Christianity throughout film history. From King Vidor’s first all-black melodrama, Hallelujah (1931), through Tyler Perry’s hilarious but devout Medea series (Diary of a Mad Housewife, 2005), Dr. Lindvall leads us on a tour through the charismatic black spirituality of the “invisible Christianity” as portrayed on the silver screen.
HOLLYWOOD, TEACH US TO PRAY
Regal Film Workshop with Terry Lindvall
10:30 AM, Regal Downtown #2
Terry Lindvall, a great scholar of silent comedies, animated films, and religious cinema, has long been one of the VFF’s most popular and entertaining speakers. As C.S. Lewis Chair of Communication and Christian Thought at Virginia Wesleyan College, Dr. Lindvall is uniquely qualified to offer shrewd analysis of the treatment of Christianity in film and the interaction of film and religion generally. He may be best known for his studies of humor in both film and religion, and for his own lively sense of humor in his books and lectures.
Hollywood, Teach Us to Pray examines how Hollywood teaches the Cinematic Arts to fold hands and pray. Dr. Lindvall’s clip lecture provides both an overview of the portrayals of this sacred ritual as well as a romp through some favorite and obscure films that illustrate what Hollywood filmmakers have seen as both pious and hypocritical practices of a segment of their audience that they don’t completely understand. This interactive presentation encompasses a broad visual history of images of prayer in over 40 films, from the silent classics of Chaplin, Keaton, Pickford and Fairbanks to Bride of Frankenstein, Nightmare on Elm Street, Cold Mountain, and Million Dollar Baby. Cinematic representations of prayer, in drama, comedies, westerns, and horror films, have constructed their own ways and words of praying to a culture given to prayer.
THE APOSTLE (1991)
with Robert Duvall and David Edelstein
6pm, Paramount
Director: Robert Duvall
Writer: Robert Duvall
Cinematographer: Barry Markowitz
Cast: Robert Duvall, Farrah Fawcett, Billy Bob Thornton, Miranda Richardson, June Carter Cash
Running Time: 134 min
ROBERT DUVALL
“Stripping away artifice –it’s the constant standard I aim for in acting, to approximate life. People talk about being bigger than life –but there’s nothing bigger than life.” –quoted in the Los Angeles Times, December 21, 1993.
Virginia resident Robert Duvall is considered by many to be among the finest actors of our time (Vincent Canby of The New York Times called him the ‘American Laurence Olivier’). The son of a Navy admiral, Duvall served in the US Army and drew from this background to play many memorable military characters, including Major Frank Burns in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970), Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Apocalypse Now, 1979) and career military man Bull Meechum (The Great Santini, 1980). He also portrayed Civil War Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Gods and Generals (2003), a particularly appropriate role since Duvall is a descendant of Lee on his mother’s side. Some portions of that film were shot on the actor’s Virginia estate, and he has found actual Civil War battle remnants on his property.
Duvall has played a wide variety of Southern parts (an affinity perhaps owing to his father’s Virginia roots), beginning with Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird (1962), Tomorrow (1972, regarded by many as the best film adaptation of a William Faulkner work), faded country singer Mac Sledge in Tender Mercies (1983, which Duvall also co-produced and for which he won the Best Actor Oscar). Other pictures in his Southern oeuvre include Rambling Rose (1991) and Sling Blade, among others.
Duvall’s earliest Hollywood success was as Tom Hagen, valued ‘consigliari’ and adopted son of Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972). In 1975, the multi-faceted actor added director to his title with the award-winning documentary We’re Not the Jet Set, about a Nebraska rodeo family. He made his feature directorial debut with the engaging Angelo, My Love (1983), a well-received portrait of New York Gypsy life in which he used many nonprofessional actors, but his third time behind the camera was truly charmed as he earned well-deserved accolades for The Apostle (1997), which will screen at this year’s Virginia Film Festival.
In 2002, Duvall sat once again in the director’s chair to write, produce, and star in Assassination Tango, a gritty crime thriller that uniquely incorporated his love of Argentinian tango dancing as well as dense character study.
Duvall’s early triumphs were on stage; at the beginning of his career, he worked often with his friends and roommates Gene hackman and Dustin Hoffman. He played recognizable characters in such classic TV shows as The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Route 66, and The Defenders. Returning to the small screen again after his motion picture success, the actor has played such diverse historical characters as Eisenhower, Stalin and Eichmann. His most memorable television appearance was probably retired Texas Ranger Captain Augustus ‘Gus’ McCrae in the CBS miniseries adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove (1989). The actor has lent his rugged majesty to other Western characters in Kevin Costner’s Open Range (2003) and, most recently, AMC’s Broken Trail (2006).
EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED (2005)
EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED with Liev Schreiber
Director: Liev Schreiber
Writer: Jonathan Safran Foer (novel), Liev Schreiber (screenplay)
Cinematographer: Matthew Libatique
Cast: Elijah Wood, Eugene Hutz, Boris Leskin
Running Time: 106 min
MICHAEL TOLKIN
Novelist, screenwriter, producer and director, Michael Tolkin has solidified his reputation as a “feeling intellectual”in the jaded milieu of show business. His father, Mel, was screenwriter and his mother, Edith, a VP at Paramount. His brother, Stephen, is also in active in the movie and television industry.
Tolkin’s early childhood was spent in New York City before moving to Los Angeles, the customary setting for his stories. He is best known for the screenplay of his novel The Player, a highly-acclaimed satire of the movie business that was directed by Robert Altman in 1992. The film won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Picture and a Golden Globe Award for Best Comedy or Musical.
Tolkin’s works are known for their complicated and absorbing examination of meaning and morality in modern life. As critic Gavin Smith noted in Film Comment: “All his characters abandon or fall from the social mainstream and enact dramas of self-redefinition.”
Tolkin wrote and directed The Rapture in 1991, scheduled to show at this year’s Virginia Film Festival, featuring Mimi Rogers in a star turn as a woman born again into both an acceptance and examination of faith. The New Age followed in 1994, a dark comedy starring Peter Weller and Judy Davis as a financially overextended couple who opens a boutique. Other screenwriting credits include Changing Lanes, Deep Impact, and The Burning Season.
His novel The Return of the Player was just published by Grove Press, continuing the story of the conniving studio executive, Griffin Mill.
Tolkin graduated from Middlebury College, Vermont in 1974. He lives in New York City with his wife.
EDDO STERN
Eddo Stern is an artist and independent computer game developer who operates in the disputed borderlands between fantasy and reality, exploring the uneasy and otherwise unconscious connections between physical existence and electronic simulation. He was born in Tel Aviv and currently lives in Los Angeles. Since 1998, his work has been shown at The Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, The Walker Art Center, The Ludwig Museum, ARGOS in Brussels, and The Tate Gallery Liverpool. His interests are in new modes of narrative and documentary, and cross-cultural and cross-media representation in film, computer games, and the Internet. He works in various media including computer software/game design, sculpture, performance, and film and video production. He is a founder of C-level, a cooperative media lab in LA’s Chinatown, where he co-produced the physical computer gaming projects “Tekken Torture Tournament”, “Cockfight Arena”, “Waco Resurrection” and the internet meme conference “C-level Memefest”. Stern is on the visiting faculty on the Graduate School of Cinema and Television at the University of Southern California and CalArts. He received his Master of Fine Arts degree in Art and Integrated Media from California Institute for the Arts in 2000.
BRAD SILBERLING
Now one of the most sought-after directors in Hollywood, Brad Silberling launched his career in television and film as a production assistant on a CBS Schoolbreak Special even before he completed his MFA at the UCLA Film School in 1987. In terms of his knowledge and understanding of the entertainment industry, however, he was even then almost a veteran, having grown up around the business, thanks to his father, producer and network executive Robert Silberling. His student film, Repairs, for which his advisor was acclaimed director Martin Ritt, won him a contract with Universal, but it also impressed powerhouse television producer Steven Bochco, who, over the next several years, brought in Silberling to direct episodes of L. A. Law, Cop Rock, Doogie Howser, MD, and NYPD Blue. His work on television continued into the nineties, when an award-winning episode of Brooklyn Bridge directed by Silberling brought him to the attention of Steven Spielberg, who hired him to direct Caspar (1995). Remarkably, his debut feature became a colossal hit, leading to his assignment to helm City of Angels (1998), with Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan, another top-grossing and well-reviewed picture. Parlaying this success into the freedom to write, produce, and direct more personal films, Silberling’s next project was Moonlight Mile (2002), with Jake Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, and Susan Sarandon, based upon his own experiences after the 1989 murder of his girlfriend, actress Rebecca Schaeffer. Having scored another commercial success with the imaginative 2004 film Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Silberling returns to smaller films with this year’s 10 Items or Less, with Morgan Freeman. Married for over 10 years to actress Amy Brenneman, his recent television credits include directing the pilot episode of her long-running series Judging Amy.
TERRY LINDVALL
Former president of Pat Robertson’s Regent University, Terry Lindvall assumes this year a new position, the C. S. Lewis Chair of Communication and Christian Thought at Virginia Wesleyan College, an entirely appropriate title, given not only his broad interests, but also his nationally recognized expertise in the writings and thought of C. S. Lewis. With a Master of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary and a PhD from the University of Southern California, Lindvall is uniquely qualified to offer shrewd analysis of the treatment of Christianity in film, especially in the silent era, and the interaction of film and religion generally, and yet he may be best known for his studies of humor in both film and religion, and for his own lively sense of humor in his books and lectures. His books include Surprise by Laughter: the Comic World of C. S. Lewis, The Mother of All Laughter: Sarah and the Genesis of Comedy, and The Silents of God: Silent American Film and Religion, along with the forthcoming Sanctuary Cinema: Origins of the Christian Film Industry. Himself a producer of numerous films, Lindvall is a frequent and popular guest at film festivals around the country. His Virginia Film Festival appearances include 1999’s presentation of Technotoons: Technology and the Animated Film, a collection of international cartoons, including Warner Brothers classics.
JAY BAKKER
Jay Bakker is a 30 year old minister who runs the new New York City branch of Revolution Church. While some preachers wear religion on their sleeve, Bakker wears at least some on his heavily tattooed body with images of Jesus and even the phrase “Preacher Man” inked on a wrist.
Bakker established the original branch of Revolution Church in Atlanta, but recently moved to New York City so his wife Amanda can attend medical school. His goal is to run an inclusive church that welcomes those that other churches overlook or reject.
“I grew up seeing the good and bad of the church”, he says. “Both of my parents are ministers and at one time had the largest church in the country until their lives were changed by one of the biggest scandals in America.” His parents are Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker Messner who ran the PTL Club and started Christian-oriented Heritage USA (at one time the third most visited theme park in America).
“My main focus is helping people realize God loves them no matter what,” he says. A sign promoting Revolution Church calls it “A church for people who have given up on church.”
HIS PEOPLE (1925)
w/ music by Haverim, Donald Sosin and Joanna Seaton
1 pm, Paramount
Director: Edward Sloman
Writer: Isadore Bernstein, Alfred A. Cohn, Charles E. Whittaker
Cinematographer: Max Dupont
Cast: Rudolph Schildkraut, Rosa Rosanova, Robert Gordon, George J. Lewis
Running Time: 93 min
SON OF MAN (2006)
4:30 pm, Regal 2
Director: Mark Dornford-May
Writers: Mark Dornford-May, Andiswa Kedama, Pauline Malefane
Cinematographer: Guilio Biccari
Running Time: 86 min
IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS (2006)
10:15 pm, Regal 3
Director: James Longley
Cinematographer: James Longley
Cast: Mohammed Haithem, Suleiman Mahmoud
Running Time: 94 min
I’m Reed Fish (2006)
Director: Zackary Adler
Writer: Reed Fish
Cinematographer: Doug Chamberlain
Cast: Jay Baruchel, Alexis Bledel, Schuyler Fisk, Chris Parnell, Katey Sagal
Running Time: 93 min
I CONFESS (1953)
4pm, Regal 4
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writers: Paul Anthelme (playwright), George Tabori, William Archibald
Cinematographer: Robert Burks
Cast: Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, Karl Malden, Brian Aherne, Anne Baxter
Running Time: 95 min
THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957)
10:15 am, Regal 3
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Writer: Ingmar Bergman
Cinematographer: Gunnar Fischer
Cast: Gunnar Bjornstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Nils Poppe, Max von Sydow, Bibi Anderson
Running Time: 92 min
SWEDISH AUTO (2006)
w/ Derek Sieg and Lucas Haas
7pm, Paramount
Director: Derek Sieg
Writer: Derek Sieg
Cinematographer: Richard V. Lopez
Cast: Lucas Haas, January Jones, Lee Weaver, Chris Williams, Mary Mara, Tim De Zarn, Brianne Davis
Running Time: 97 min
REBELLION OF THOUGHT (2006)
w/ the Williamson Brothers
4:30 pm, Regal 2
Director: Kent and Brad Williamson
Writer: Kent and Brad Williamson
Cinematographer: Kent and Brad Williamson
Cast: Skip Burzumato, Drew Cotter, Gene Edward Veith, Jr.
Running Time: 90 min
FORGIVEN (2005)
w/ Paul Fitzgerald and Kelly Miller
10:15 pm, Regal 3
Director: Paul Fitzgerald
Writer: Paul Fitzgerald
Cinematographer: Vanja Cernjul
Cast: Paul Fitzgerald, Susan Floyd, Kate Grant, Russell Hornsby
Running Time: 81 min
TIBET: A BUDDHIST TRILOGY (1979)
7pm, Regal 4
Director: Graham Coleman
Writer: Graham Coleman
Cinematographer: David Lascelles
Running Time: 134 min
IN YOUR HANDS (FORBRYDELSER) (2003)
4:30 pm, Regal 2
(in Danish with English subtitles)
Director: Annette K. Olesen
Writers: Kim Fupz Aakeson, Annette K. Olesen
Cinematography: Bøje Lomholdt
Cast: Ann Eleonora Jørgensen, Trine Dyrholm, Sonja Richter
Running Time: 101 min.
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JONESTOWN: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (2006)
10pm, Regal 4
Director: Stanley Nelson
Writer: Marcia Smith
Cinematographer: Michael Chin
Cast:
Running Time: 85 min
JESUS CAMP (2006)
7pm, Regal 4
Directors: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
Writer:
Cinematographer: Mira Chang, Jenna Rosher
Cast: Becky Fischer, Levi, Mike Papantonio, Rachel, Tory
Running Time: 86 min
The God of a Second Chance (2006)
w/ Governor’s Screenwriting Award
7pm, Regal 4
Director: Paul Wagner
Writer:
Cinematographer:
Cast:
Running Time: 80 min
Ordet (The Word) (1955)
10am, Regal Downtown #4
Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Writer: Carl Theodor Dreyer (based on a play by Kaj Munk)
Cinematographer: Henning Bendtsen
Cast: Emil Hass Christensen, Henrik Malberg, Birgitte Federspiel, Ejner Federspiel, Kay Kristiansen, Preben Lerdorff Rye
Running Time: 126 min
EVE AND THE FIRE HORSE (2005)
4 pm, Regal 4
Director: Julia Kwan
Writer: Julia Kwan
Cinematographer: Nicolas Bolduc
Cast: Vivian Wu, Lester Chit-Man Chan, Hollie Lo, Phoebe Kut
Running Time: 92 min
CHRONICLES OF NARNIA (2005) w/ William Moseley
10 am, Regal 4
Director: Andrew Adamson
Writers: Ann Peacock, Andrew Adamson, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely
Cinematographer: Donald McAlpine
Cast: William Moseley, Tilda Swinton, James McAvoy, Georgie Henley, Liam Neeson
Running Time: 223 min
LIFE OF BRIAN (1979)
10pm, Newcomb
Director: Terry Jones
Writers: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin
Cinematographer: Peter Biziou
Cast: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin
Running Time: 94 min
THE RAPTURE (1991) w/ Michael Tolkin
4pm, Regal 4
Director: Michael Tolkin
Writer: Michael Tolkin
Cinematographer: Bojan Bazeli
Cast: Mimi Rogers, Darwyn Carson, Patrick Bauchau, Marvin Elkins, David Duchovny, Will Patton
Running Time: 100 min
Meet the New Website
Our new website is now up, along with the preliminary press release about the REVELATIONS program. What do you think? Thank you, Rick Montoya, for the divine poster design and Category 4 for the website improvements.
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10 Items or Less (2006)
Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman produced and stars in this comedy written and directed by Brad Silberling (A Series Of Unfortunate Events, Moonlight Mile). Freeman plays an aging actor, once the center of Hollywood, now forced to consider a role in a small independent movie. Abandoned by his driver while researching for his role, the world famous actor must rely on Scarlet, a spitfire check out clerk at a Latino community market, to lead him back to his side of the tracks. Their trek through Los Angeles features comic twists, chance encounters, and personal revelations that bind both characters in surprising ways. Mr. Freeman will take questions after the film via live video feed.
Son of Man (2006)
The story of Jesus reclaimed as an African fable and shot against the backdrop of a violence-riddled township and with text updated to modern times, Son of Man delivers one indelible impression after another. Mary conceives the Christ child during a militia attack on a grade school, Jesus asks for the surrender of handguns from his apostles, and the angel Gabriel is a precocious child marked with simple white feathers. Equally intriguing is the melding of the crucifixion and resurrection — alluding to the fact that in today’s Africa, political dissidents, as Jesus was, are conveniently made to disappear. Roger Ebert described Son of Man as “continuing the South African film renaissance…one of the most extraordinary and powerful films at Sundance.”Â?
Ten Canoes (2006)
Ten Canoes was shot on location in the breathtaking Arnhem land of Northern Australia and recounts an aboriginal myth as told by one brother to another. Inspired by the black-and-white photos of anthropologist Donald Thompson taken in the 1930’s, the “recent past” of the storyteller intermingles with the lush and colorful dreamtime past of ancient myth, depicting a story of wrong love, kidnapping, sorcery, bungling mayhem and revenge gone wrong.
Dutch-born director Rolf de Heer, who has been chronicling Aboriginal life for over twenty years, used an indigenous cast consisting entirely of native peoples who speak only Ganalbingu. That cast also served as crew, creating most of the traditional artifacts used in the film, such as the bark canoes, the weapononry, and the dwellings. The film is sub-titled in English, and English narration is provided by the great David Gulpilil. (Festival patrons may remember Gulpilil’s visit to Charlottesville in 2002 to accompany the release of Rabbit-Proof Fence.)
Ten Canoes reveres nature and the land in the same way the Aboriginals do: not as backdrop or resource, but as a living entity. Framed by glorious aerial shots of unspoiled landscape, this story and story-within-a-story eloquently depicts the deep spiritual connection between a land and its people and shows us the forgotten wisdom and humor of a lost culture.
Out of Faith (2006)
Out Of Faith examines the complex and emotionally charged issues surrounding assimilation and interfaith marriage in a Jewish-American family. The family’s matriarch, Leah Welbel, and her husband Eliezer, both survived nearly three years in Auschwitz; however, in their minds, their grandchildren marrying non-Jews represents a posthumous victory for Hitler.
The film began as an attempt to recount Leah Welbel’s incredible story of survival in Auschwitz and Birkenau, across Europe to Italy and Palestine and eventually to Chicago. While exploring her remarkable journey, another story began to emerge. Leah laments that by allowing her grandchildren to marry non-Jews, “I feel like a traitor … we’re finishing the job Hitler started.”Â?
This feature-length documentary explores several themes — conflicting loyalties within families; family estrangement and how it can or cannot be resolved; conflicting loyalties between one’s own tribe and society; issues of cultural continuity; and finally, the trajectory of assimilation in this country that seems to cause an inevitable loss of culture over generations.
Both the Producer L. Mark DeAngelis and Director Lisa Leeman bring their own varied backgrounds to the film and so create an even-handed exploration of the balance between living one’s life independently yet keeping proper reverence for the obligations of the past.