In 1996, with producer Lori McCreary, Freeman formed his own production company, Revelations Entertainment, with the express aim to “develop and produce projects that enlighten, express heart and glorify the human experience”. Not content with just producing Hollywood hits such as Along Came a Spider and Under Suspicion, Freeman recently formed a second production company, ClickStar, in partnership with high tech chip maker Intel, to offer original films for direct download. The first offering from that company, 10 Items or Less, starring Freeman and directed by Brad Silberling, will screen at this year’s Virginia Film Festival.

Angels, his first feature film shot in and around Charlottesville and featuring many local talents, previewed to great acclaim at the 2004 Virginia Film Festival.

The Stone Carvers, his 1984 portrait of the Italian American artisans who carved the gargoyles and statues of the Washington Cathedral, received both Emmy and Oscar awards; in 1998, he earned another Emmy for A Paralyzing Fear: the Story of Polio in America, a documentary he produced about America’s scientific and cultural conquest of polio; and Out of Ireland earned a Sundance Documentary Grand Jury Prize in 1995.

Since the 1980s, Wagner has directed documentary films for the Smithsonian Institution about old-time medicine shows, museum education, family traditions, fishmongers, Southern pottery, the U.S. Postal Service, the Columbian Quincentenary, and anthropological rituals around the world. He served as executive producer for films on the history of insane asylums and on the French novelist Marcel Proust, both broadcast nationally on PBS. He has co-authored two books, both companion volumes to his documentary films, Out of Ireland and A Paralyzing Fear: the Triumph Over Polio in America.

Paul Wagner has been awarded many grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the D.C. Humanities Council, the D.C. Commission on the Arts and from the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic Media Fellowship Programs. In addition to the Oscar and the Emmy, his films have won many regional Emmy Awards, CINE Golden Eagles, the Irish Silver Harp Award, Blue and Red Ribbons from the American Film Festival and the Grand Prize from the National Educational Film Festival.

The 2006 Virginia Film Festival is honored to welcome back Paul Wagner and to premier The God of a Second Chance, his latest feature documentary about religion, race, poverty, drugs and sensuality in an inner city neighborhood of Washington DC.

The indie wunderkind (with a reputation for playing off-beat characters) graduated to big-time studio releases as one of the kidnappers in Ron Howard’s Ransom (1996) and later that year, essayed the role of accused killer Cotton Weary whose mere look inspired fear in Wes Craven’s blockbuster Scream (a role he reprised twice in Scream 2 and 3). The end of that decade found the actor even more in demand as he took roles in higher profile features alongside such Hollywood heavyweights as Dustin Hoffman and Sharon Stone in Sphere; Gene Hackman, Susan Sarandon, and Paul Newman in Twilight; Alan Arkin and Robin Williams in Jakob the Liar, and Diane Lane and Viggo Mortensen in A Walk on the Moon.

The succeeding years have found the actor very much in demand both on screen and on stage. In 1998, he was again onstage in Central Park in the dual role of the god Jupiter and the villain Iachimo in Cymbeline, for which he received a 1999 Obie Award. while the following year saw him star as Hamlet at the New York Shakespeare Festival. In 1999, Schreiber’s deft performance in RKO 281 as Orson Welles, the similarly brilliant young actor and filmmaker who gave us Citizen Kane, earned him an Emmy nomination. In 2000, he made a compelling Laertes in Michael Almereyda’s modern-day film version of Hamlet and supported Oscar-winners Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt in Pay It Forward.

Every year since then has seen the actor in a successful Hollywood feature or returning with acclaim to the stage. In 2005, Schreiber secured a Tony for his performance in Glengarry Glen Ross, Joe Mantello’s high-octane revival of David Mamet’s play. Later that year, the actor made his feature screenwriting and directing debut with Everything Is Illuminated (screening at this year’s Virginia Film Festival), adapted from the critically-acclaimed novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, about a young American Jew’s journey to Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather during World War II.

With growing demand for his sonorous voice in documentaries, Schreiber continues to offer his talents to successful stage and screen productions. In the summer of 2006, he played the title role in Macbeth opposite Jennifer Ehle at the New York Central Park’s Delacorte Theater. A film version of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil, in which Schreiber co-stars with his real-life romantic companion Naomi Watts (King Kong), is currently in production for release later this year.

“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.”

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).

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.

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.”