On October 5, the full KIN FLICKS program will be unveiled (along with a new design) on this site. Between now and then, however, I’m planning to reveal the identities of featured artists every week on this blog.

The comments that poured in to my former blog (we’re closing down “Revelations of a Programmer” and opening a new shop here) were terrific….and overwhelming. There were just too many strong, absolutely NECESSARY films to consider for this program. And so I decided to focus on just a few significant contemporary and classic directors who have consistently explored the complexity of “family life” on film, and look at their work in some depth. We’ll be showing two or more films by each of these artists, all of whom will be around for our spotlights on their careers…

Except, unfortunately, for Luchino Visconti.

The great melodramatist and neo-realist is, as my friend Steve Margulies would put it, metabolically challenged. We can’t let that stand in the way of honoring one of the great cinematic explorers of the personal and political dimensions of family life. As Geoffrey Nowell-Smith says, “The focus of almost all his films is families, either the disintegration of large families or the breakdown of couples, with betrayal - whether of marriages or of political causes - a recurring motif.”

We were able to get hold of beautiful 35mm prints of Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers and — for American fans of Visconti, the rarer treat– Sandra. And the author of an illuminating study of Sandra, Walter Korte, also happens to be U.Va.’s longest-running film professor (since 1970!). Professor Korte was instrumental in launching the Virginia Film Festival, and continues to be an invaluable advisor. So what better time than our twentieth anniversary festival to turn over one of our Regal Shot-by-Shot Workshops to Walter Korte, who will select sequences from both Sandra and Rocco for in-depth examination and discussion. (Read the preview news release on our website to learn the name of our second Shot-by-Shot presenter).

I’m off to the Toronto Film Festival on Wednesday to look for some new releases to fill the few spots remaining in the festival program. I’ll be reporting on my adventures, and more festival selections, here on my blog.