The Virginia Film Festival

“KIN FLICKS� TO EXPLORE THE TIES THAT BIND AND DIVIDE, SHINING THE SPOTLIGHT ON LEADING FILMMAKERS
INCLUDING SPECIAL GUESTS JOHN SAYLES AND MAGGIE RENZI

New “Focus On� Feature Spotlights Multiple Works By World-Renowned Filmmakers Including Tamara Jenkins, Charles Burnett, Nick Broomfield, Alan Berliner, Su Friedrich And Others

Charlottesville, VA – October 4, 2007 – The Virginia Film Festival is celebrating turning 20 with a huge “family� gathering. Kin Flicks, set for November 1-4, features a fascinating array of filmmakers exploring the dynamics of family life from every possible angle and for every possible audience.

The Festival opens with a highly anticipated family reunion with the return of independent film legend John Sayles. Sayles, who was honored at the second Virginia Film Festival in 1989, is extending the family theme, as he will be joined by longtime producer and life partner Maggie Renzi. The pair will present their new film Honeydripper, a look at the origins of rock and roll in the deep South.

Sayles’ and Renzi’s selection as opening night guests suits this year’s programming approach, said Virginia Film Festival Artistic Director Richard Herskowitz. “As we looked at our 20th year, we thought it was particularly appropriate to make the filmmakers our stars,â€? he said. “We could not be happier with the extraordinary lineup of directors we have assembled. Together, they represent an extraordinary range of talent and inspiration, and appropriately, each has explored cinematically our cultural norms of family life.â€?

This year’s lineup also features the Festival’s strongest-ever collection of new releases, Herskowitz said, including many that have wowed festival audiences from Sundance to Cannes to Toronto and figure to be Oscar contenders. “Tracking films on the festival circuit this year, I had a strong sense that this is a truly remarkable year for filmmaking. I was, of course, particularly interested in the great new films exploring family ties, and I feel very lucky that major distributors have given us some of their strongest upcoming titles.�

Dramatic features include:

• Honeydripper, from Emerging Pictures, features an outstanding cast including Danny Glover, Charles Dutton, singer-songwriter Keb’ Mo’ and U.Va. alum Sean Patrick Thomas. Director John Sayles explores a time when juke joints were the place one could find release after a hard week in the cotton fields, all the while documenting that pulsating moment when the blues became rock ‘n roll.
• The Savages, the new Fox Searchlight release starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney as siblings caring for a hated father. The film is directed by Tamara Jenkins (The Slums of Beverly Hills), who will be on-hand for a special post-screening discussion with noted critic and Virginia Film Festival returnee David Edelstein.
• Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, the new Sidney Lumet-directed ThinkFilm release starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke as two brothers who plan to rob their parents’ jewelry store.
• The Diving Bell and Butterfly, the upcoming Miramax release dramatizing the miraculous creativity of the paralyzed author Jean-Dominique Bauby for which Julian Schnabel captured the Best Director prize at Cannes.
• Starting Out in the Evening, from Roadside Attractions, starring Frank Langella in an amazing performance as an aging writer and Lauren Ambrose (of HBO’s Six Feet Under) as the graduate student whose thesis on the writer gets very personal, to the consternation of his daughter, played by Lili Taylor.
• Randy and the Mob According to Herskowitz, “This is a family reunion for us, since guest actor-director Ray McKinnon and actress-producer Lisa Blount brought their earlier films to the VFF, and have a big following here.� Herskowitz also points out that the film also relates to an event that was instrumental in the conception of this year’s theme. “The passage of the ‘marriage amendment’ in Virginia, which enforced a strict definition of what constitutes a legal family, was a huge inspiration for the Kin Flicks theme. This film is a rollicking, Southern movie entertainment about two warring brothers, both played by Ray McKinnon, one of whom is in a gay marriage. McKinnon is a major voice of a more progressive South, challenging with this film an exclusionary definition of ‘family.�

Other new dramatic features include Shotgun Stories, produced by David Gordon Green and Lisa Muskat and directed by guest director Jeff Nichols; and Daratt (Dry Season), directed by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, from Chad.

Documentary features include:

• Autism: The Musical, Produced by UVA alum Perrin Chiles, this HBO film project follows a woman who decides to produce a theater production featuring autistic children, including her own. The film offers an unflinching look at the challenges autism creates in families, and the viewer becomes deeply caught up in the small, yet monumental, improvements in the childrens’ performances and communication. The film will be co-sponsored by the Virginia Institute of Autism and will feature a Q&A session featuring Chiles, director Tricia Regan and a panel of parents of children with autism, including U.Va. Drama Assistant Professor Michael Rasbury.

• The world premiere of Hoop Reality, the followup to one of the most successful documentaries of all time, Hoop Dreams. The film follows the story of Arthur Agee, one of the two subjects in the original film, and his efforts to give back to inner-city youth chasing their own basketball dreams while looking to escape the harsh realities of their inner city lives. Agee will be joined by director Lee Davis, a Spike Lee protégé helming his first documentary.

• Strange Culture is the unforgettable story of artist Steve Kurtz of the Critical Art Ensemble, who called 911 to help his critically ill wife, only to be brought in by authorities on suspicion of terrorism thanks to the art materials in his apartment related to genetically engineered food research. Kurtz will be on hand to discuss the film and update audiences on his remarkably Kafka-esque tale as it stands today.

Other documentarians attending include Esther Robinson with A Walk Into the Sea, Godfrey Cheshire (Moving Midway), and Vivienne Roumanni-Denn (The Last Jews of Libya). Other documentaries showing include Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, For the Bible Tells Me So, and Miss Universe 1929.

A Brand New “Focus�

The new “Focus On� feature will allow audiences to delve into the work of seven extraordinary filmmakers, including some of the world’s most celebrated independent directors and documentarians who have consistently put family issues at the heart of their work. The group includes:

• Tamara Jenkins - Jenkins based her acclaimed Slums of Beverly Hills on her own family and will show that film with her short, Family Remains. She will return with her latest, The Savages, a rich exploration of two siblings dealing with a long-estranged, dying father.
• Charles Burnett – One of the most important African-American filmmakers of all time, Burnett’s Killer of Sheep is fresh from a restoration and rediscovery and will be shown along with the recently-recut and restored My Brother’s Wedding.
• Nick Broomfield, the legendary documentarian, will present two programs devoted to his recent turn to producing verite dramas, using non-professional performers to dramatize real events. He will present Ghosts, last year’s recreation of the Morecambe Bay tragedy involving Chinese immigrant workers. The following night, he will return with a presentation featuring highlights from his latest docudrama on a war atrocity in Iraq, Making “The Battle for Haditha.�
• Alan Berliner (The Family Album, Nobody’s Business and Wide Awake, plus The Early Films of Alan Berliner) – A magnificent re-editor of family footage, Berliner has built a fascinating career of exposing the complex undercurrents of family rituals and poses.
• Macky Alston (Family Name, the Killer Within and Hard Road Home) – Alston’s Family Name traces the African American and Caucasian branches of the Alston family tree. In The Killer Within, he follows the story of a daughter who discovers that 50 years prior, her beloved father had gone on a shooting spree at a college campus.
• Su Friedrich (The Ties that Bind and Sink or Swim) – Friedrich is a groundbreaking avant-garde filmmaker who skillfully mixes experimental narrative and documentary forms and will present her two masterworks respectively exploring her relationships with her mother and her father.
• Jane Gillooly– Leona’s Sister Gerri is a critically acclaimed documentary focusing on the subject of a photo that galvanized the abortion rights movement. Today the Hawk Takes One Chick (work-in-progress) is a fascinating and moving look at the grandmothers (called “gogos�) holding African families together while the AIDS epidemic rages.

Musical Performances

• Animator Brent Green will showcase his dark, uncanny vision in a special performance with musicians Howe Gelb (Giant Sand) and Brendan Canty (Fugazi) at the Gravity Lounge. Green shouts his narration preacher-style while the musicians deliver their classic brand of raucous indie rock. Gelb will perform a special one-night-only show at Gravity Lounge later that evening with Paul Curreri.

• Peter Pan – The 1924 silent will be accompanied by VFF favorites Donald Sosin and Joanna Seaton. This year they will be joined by a chorus of Charlottesville children singing songs they have composed as part of the Kid Pan Alley project headed up locally by Kid Pan Alley founder Paul Reisler and acclaimed local singer-songwriter Terri Allard.

• The Kid – Charlie Chaplin’s classic will be presented at the Victory Theater in Scottsville, accompanied by Matt Marshall and the Reel Music Ensemble.

Special Events

The Virginia Film Festival will join with The Virginia Discovery Museum and the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression in the first-ever Family Day. Highlights of the day will include a participatory film production led by the students of The Light House Studio; free admission to The Virginia Discovery Museum, including special art and film-themed exhibitions, two free programs of international family films programmed by Kids First and presented in City Council chambers, and the matinee performance of Peter Pan at the Paramount, with tickets only $1 for children under 12.

“Another inspiration for the Kin Flicks theme was our desire to broaden the festival audience to include more families with kids, and reach them with adventurous film selections and activities. And just as the Adrenaline Film Project grew out of our ‘Speed’ theme, we hope that this Family Day presentation becomes a staple of our Festival for many years to come,� Herskowitz said..

Night owls can enjoy free midnight screenings at Gravity Lounge on Friday (Mommie Dearest with DVD commentary by John Waters) and Saturday (Grey Gardens) plus a free Sunday afternoon screening of Tick Tock Lullaby and Happenstance, presented with the Water Bearer Films GLBTQ Film Series.

Classes and Panels

• The popular Volvo Adrenaline Film Project returns for its fourth year under the direction of Charlottesville native Jeff Wadlow and his producing partner, Beau Bauman. The pair will once again lead several teams through a guerilla filmmaking experience over the course of 72 often grueling, many times inspiring and always entertaining hours, culminating in a Newcomb Hall screening/competition event on Sunday afternoon at 4p.m. Information is available at www.vafilm.com/adrenaline.

• The Festival Symposium with Harry Chotiner returns for its second year, with the NYU teacher and former Vice President of Twentieth Century Fox introducing college and adult learners to leading screenwriters, directors and producers. Tuition for the symposium is $150 and there is a maximum enrollment of 20 students. Information is available at www.vafilm.com/symposium/.

• The 20th year of the Festival delivers a double shot of the annual favorite Regal Shot by Shot Workshop. The first will see UVA film scholar and longtime Festival contributor Walter Korte leading a session on the Italian cinema and the films of Luchino Visconti. The second will feature Rebel Without a Cause screenwriter Stewart Stern talking audiences through a screening of the film and discussing the experience of seeing his screenplay adapted by director Nicolas Ray and actors James Dean and Natalie Wood.

• Mining the Home Movie will feature Patricia Zimmermann (author, Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film and Mining the Home Movie) and Pamela Wintle, senior archivist from the Human Studies Film Archives at the Smithsonian, conducting a presentation and discussion of rare home movies from the archives. Included in the program will be Think of Me First as a Person, filmed in Virginia, the first home movie selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry .

• The annual Darden Producers Forum will offer up an agent’s-eye view of the industry with guest Jeremy Zimmer of United Talent Agency. A special Women In Film panel, moderated by Media Studies Department Chair Andrea Press, will include Duke University film scholar Jane Gaines and feature guest filmmakers and producers to be announced.

Classics

The Festival’s rich history of showcasing beautiful prints of classic films continues with a lineup including Rebel Without a Cause; Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce and immortalized in Mommie Dearest, Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers and Sandra; Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid (with pianist Matt Marshall) and the 1924 silent classic Peter Pan.

The current schedule for the 2007 Virginia Film Festival is now online and tickets are on sale.

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