The Virginia Film Festival

Highlights To Include Lake City, Sunshine Cleaning and Other Films by Virginia Native and Émigré Artists  and Visits by Directors Abderrahmane Sissako, Gregory Nava, and Guillermo Arriaga, and Actor Peter Riegert

October 30-November 2, 2008

Charlottesville, VA – September 25, 2008 – Charlottesville is preparing for an alien invasion of epic proportions as the Virginia Film Festival scans both earth and sky for tales of strange visitors from other worlds and cultures.

Aliens!, set for October 30-November 2, will feature some 80 films and more than 100 guests covering the entire spectrum of the alien experience, from immigrants to outsiders to extra-terrestrials.  The guest list for this 21st Annual event will feature an international array of some of the most highly respected artists in the industry today, including Mauritanian-French director Abderrahmane Sissako (screening Waiting for Happiness and Life on Earth) and Mexican-American director Gregory Nava, here for the 25th anniversary presentation of El  Norte. Also celebrating its 25th anniversary is Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero, presented by actor Peter Riegert, who plays the American alien in Scotland. Riegert will also accompany The Response,  a powerful new film dramatizing the legal proceedings against a Guantanamo detainee.

For the second year, the Festival will explore the work of several emerging and established filmmakers in depth, with multiple screenings of films by a group of  “Focus On” directors, headlined by Mexico’s Guillermo Arriaga. Arriaga will be on hand to screen several of his filmed screenplays,  including Amores Perros, Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and Babel, culminating with the Virginia premiere of his first feature as director, The Burning Plain, starring Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger.

Other “Focus On” directors include::
•    Director Sean Baker (Prince of Broadway, Take Out)
•    Screenwriter and director Megan Holley (Sunshine Cleaning, The Snowflake Crusade)
•    Underground film pioneers George and Mike Kuchar (Secrets of the Shadow World, Blips, Ascension of the Demonoids, Death Quest of the Ju-Ju Cults, Sins of the Fleshapoids)
•    Feature director and media artist Alex Rivera (Sleep Dealer, The Sixth Section, Why Cybraceros?, The Borders Trilogy)
•    Documentarian Renee Tajima-Pena (Calavera Highway, Who Killed Vincent Chin?, My America: Honk If You Love Buddha)

The Festival program is jam-packed with regional premieres of films that have been making waves on the international festival scene, including Waltz with Bashir, August Evening, The Betrayal, The Secret of the Grain, The Exiles, and A Jihad for Love. A complete list of new titles can be found at the end of this release.

Virginia Filmmaking: Natives, Emigres, and Immigrants

While the focus will be on the theme of outsiders, Aliens! will also feature a uniquely Virginian flavor.  In the course of  looking at the concept of migration, Herskowitz discovered a wealth of riches in the work of Virginia emigres.  “We have a long history of featuring on opening night the work of filmmakers whose roots are in Virginia, and who have left but returned to make or show their films here,” he said, citing Nicole Kassell’s The Woodsman, Derek Sieg’s Swedish Auto and Jeff Wadlow’s  Tower of Babble as precedents.  “We  are proud to continue this tradition with Lake City, a wonderful film with a history rooted not only in Virginia but in the Festival itself.”

The film’s New York-based co-director, Perry Moore, first met its producer Mark Johnson (whose credits include some of the best films of the last twenty years including Diner, Rain Man, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more) at the VFF in the early nineties.  The two U.Va. alumni were joined by a third, Weiman Seid, who became one of Lake City’s executive producers. Together, they decided to film the Southern gothic tale, about a buried family tragedy and its resonances  in the relationship between a mother and her troubled son, in Richmond, Virginia.  The film’s local roots run even deeper thanks to the starring roles played by Charlottesvillians Sissy Spacek and Dave Matthews. Moore, Johnson, and Seid will attend the screening, with additional special guests to be announced.

There is more work by artists with ties to Virginia:

•    The festival will present the regional premiere of the Sundance hit Sunshine Cleaning, which producer Glenn Williamson, another U.Va. alumnus, discovered when its author, Richmond-based Megan Holley, won the Governor’s Screenwriting Award at the Virginia Film Festival in 2003.
•    The Festival slate will also feature the American Premiere of Little White Feather and The Hunter, a film on Pocahantas and the English constructed from a collection of verbal accounts gathered by British artist Anna Lucas from people in Harwich and Essex in the U.K, and  Jamestown, Virginia. Little White Feather will be accompanied by the latest film by Derek Sieg , Wasteland, a contemporary tale of whites and Native Americans in commercial conflict.
•    Charlottesville audiences will finally get a chance to see on screen the controversial animated film about the U.Va. mascot, The Great Seal of Virginia, by alumni Irwin Berman, Michael Wartella and Sam Retzer.
•    And the spotlight will shine on  Moviemaking in Virginia in the Virginia Film Office’s special presentation of Robert  Griffith’s new  documentary on the film scene in the Commonwealth, accompanied by winning shorts from the Virginia Independent Film Festival,

Aliens: The Immigration Axis

“As I started thinking about the Aliens! theme I was struck by the different meanings of this word,” said Virginia Film Festival Artistic Director Richard Herskowitz.  “What ended up evolving was a two-pronged approach, with one axis covering the extraterrestrial visitor, and another looking at issues related to the ‘illegal immigrant.’” The latter kind of alien is certainly playing an outsized role in the current political season, and it seemed worth finding films that will allow audiences to question and debate the use of the term in defining immigrant populations.”

The Festival’s “Immigration Axis” will be highlighted by:

•    Gregory Nava presenting a 25th Anniversary screening of his groundbreaking work El Norte, which he will also explore in depth in the annual Regal Shot by Shot workshop.  Nava’s work will be complemented by a series of new films about Mexican undocumented workers, including My Life Inside, Lucia Gaja’s scathing look at the railroading of a Latino immigrant woman by the Texas judicial system, and August Evening, Chris Eska’s Cassavetes Award-winning indie feature on generational ties and tensions within an immigrant family. Also, “Focus On” director Alex Rivera will screen his futuristic  sci-fi films about  Mexican immigrant labor, Sundance hit Sleep Dealer and his short video pieces, The Sixth Section, Why Cybraceros?, and The Border Trilogy.
•    Abderrahmane Sissako, the Mauritanian director living in Paris, whose work reflects the insights and challenges of a life lived in exile. Sissako will present his films Life on Earth and Waiting for Happiness
•    Peter Riegert, celebrating a 25th Anniversary of his own with Local Hero, in which Riegert played the American business representative adrift in Scotland. Riegert will also accompany writer Sig Libowitz with The Response, a new film in which he co-stars with Kate Mulgrew.  The film follows the hearings against an Arab detainee using actual transcripts from the Guantanamo proceedings, and will be followed by a panel discussion on the Guantanamo tribunals led by Slate legal writer Dahlia Lithwick. Riegert will also present two films that he directed, King of the Corner and By Courier.
•    Ghazel, a noted Iranian-French video and performance artist will appear at the Festival via Skype hookup. Ghazel became even more relevant to the theme when she encountered what she deemed to be humiliating and unreasonable visa roadblocks from U.S. immigration personnel due to her Iranian heritage and canceled her Festival visit.
•    Two “Focus On” directors explore contemporary immigrant life and struggles in the U.S: Renee Tajima-Pena examines Asian-American identity in Who Killed Vincent Chin? and My America: Honk if You Love Buddha and the cross-border family tensions of her Mexican husband in Calavera Highway. Sean Baker creates semi-documentary fictions about New York immigrant life with non-professional actors in Prince of Broadway and Take Out.
•    Classic films about outsiders by immigrant directors include two films made by Spanish director Luis Bunuel in Mexico, Los Olvidados and Nazarin, and Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur’s horror classic about a Serbian immigrant with a secret, Cat People. Other immigrant-themed classics include Fassbinder’s Ali:Fear Eats the Soul , West Side Story, and Bad Day at Black Rock (presented by director John Sturges’ son, Charlottesville resident Michael Sturges).

Also key to this sub-theme will be the keynote talk being offered on the Festival’s opening day by the first Virginia Film Festival Fellow Hamid Naficy, an internationally-acclaimed film scholar and the John Evans Professor of Communications at Northwestern University.  Naficy will also teach a week-long mini-course for students and non-students on the Festival theme for the U.Va. Media Studies Department beginning October 27 (for more information about registering, contact Judy McPeak at jam5wx@virginia.edu). Dr. Naficy is the author of An Accented Cinema, which explores the common subjects and styles of filmmakers who live and work away from their country of origin.  “We are thrilled to have one of the world’s foremost experts on exilic, diasporic, and ethnic filmmaking joining us this year to illuminate the Festival theme for students and our broader audience,” Herskowitz said.

Aliens: The Extra-Terrestrial Axis

As previously announced, the Festival will allow visitors to comb the skies for alien invaders at its McCormick Observatory Cinema, which will play the Orson Welles/H.G. Wells radio play War of the Worlds on its 70th Anniversary, the Festival’s opening night.  The ‘50s George Pal film of the same name will be shown later that night in Culbreth Theatre, introduced by Pal biographer Justin Humphreys.  The McComick Observatory Cinema series will continue with sci-fi and space films by George and Mike Kuchar and Jeanne Liottta and programs curated by Ed Halter of Light Industry/New York and Craig Baldwin of Other Cinema in San Francisco.

No look at Aliens! would be complete without Aliens, and the acclaimed film heads the list of classic sci-fi favorites to be offered throughout the weekend.  Aliens will be joined by the superb Star Trek sendup Galaxy Quest, as the Festival’s two-part tribute to the late Stan Winston, the  special effects master and VFF  board member who passed away earlier this year.  Also on the sci-fi classics list will be Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Day the Earth Stood Still, screening in the new Library of Congress theater in Culpeper,

Bring the Family!

After a wildly successful debut in 2007, the Virginia Film Festival is bringing back Family Day on Saturday, November 1.  Presented in conjunction with the Virginia Discovery Museum, the event will feature a pair of programs at The Paramount Theater for the family and budget-friendly rate of $1 per ticket for kids under the age of 12! The Discovery Museum will also offer free admission for children (ages 1-12) on Family Day from 2:30-5:00 and a 10:30am free screening of the animated Zula Patrol at Cityspace.

Once again Festival favorites Donald Sosin and Joanna Seaton will be joined by Paul Reisler, Terri Allard and the students of Kid Pan Alley to accompany silent films with live music, including songs by Charlottesville schoolkids.  This year’s program, entitled Strangers in Strange Lands, will feature fantasy films by Georges Melies, Edwin S. Porter and Charlie Chaplin.

Director Meni Tsirbas will introduce the  4PM regional premiere of Terra, the spectacular new CGI animated feature about a lush, peace-loving planet whose world is shattered by an invading armada of humans.  The film includes the voices of Evan Rachel Wood, Luke Wilson and Dennis Quaid.

The Festival continues another favorite tradition of silent films at Scottsville’s Victory Theatre with The Mark of Zorro, accompanied by Matt Marshall.

Panels and Classes

•    Accented Cinema: A one-week course with Festival Fellow Hamid Naficy, October 27 – November 2.
•    Adrenaline Film Project: The high-energy, 72-hour film school goes “after dark” for the first time this year as Jeff Wadlow and Beau Bauman present the fruits of three days of non-stop writing, shooting, and editing by twelve  talented and thoroughly exhausted filmmaking teams (Saturday, November 1 at 10PM at Culbreth Theatre).
•    Festival Symposium with Harry Chotiner: For the third year, the NYU film teacher and former vice-president of Twentieth Century Fox leads this popular four-day class that introduces college and adult learners to leading screenwriters, directors, producers and actors. Contact pjw8n@virginia.edu for registration information.
•    Darden Producers Forum: This annual Festival highlight will feature Temple Fennell, co-president of ATO Pictures, who will discuss independent film financing and take questions from the audience (Thursday, October 30 at 1:20PM at the Darden Graduate School of Business).
•    “Gender, Race and Film”: Hamid Naficy and Film Festival Executive Director and U.Va. Chair of Media Studies Andrea Press chair a discussion with guest speakers from the Festival program (Friday, October 31 at 3PM at Campbell Hall, Rm. 160).
•    Regal Shot by Shot Workshop conducted by director Gregory Nava on his film, El Norte (Sunday, November 2 at 10AM in Regal Downtown 4).
•    New Media and New Immigrants: A demonstration and panel on two new media productions exploring the current immigration debate.  ICED is Breakthrough TV’s online video game recreating the experience of surviving as an immigrant to the U.S.; and 9500 Liberty is a YouTube, MySpace and upcoming feature documentary on the immigration clashes in Prince William County, Virginia (Saturday, November 1 at 10AM at Vinegar Hill Theatre, FREE.).

Regional Premieres

•    August Evening (winner John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards)
•    The Betrayal (cosponsored with International Rescue Committee)
•    The Burning Plain with director/writer Guillermo Arriaga
•    The Exiles (restored print of 1961 film, presented with OFFScreen)
•    A Jihad for Love with director Parvez Sharma (cosponsored with Serpentine Society)
•    Koryo Saram with producer and new U.Va. Arts and Sciences Dean Meredith Woo
•    Little White Feather and the Hunter/Wasteland with director Derek Sieg
•    Mock Up on Mu (directed by Craig Baldwin)
•    My Best Friends are Strangers (work-in-progress) with director Alexandra Woodward
•    My Life Inside (Mexico, cosponsored with Legal Aid Justice Center)
•    Passengers with director Rodrigo Garcia (via Skype) and actors
•    Prince of Broadway with director Sean Baker, co-writer/producer Darren Dean,  and actors Prince Adu and Karren Karagulian)
•    The Response with actor Peter Riegert, writer Sig Libowitz and panel discussion moderated by Dahlia Lithwick on Guantanamo
•    River of No Return with director Darlene Johnson and Aboriginal actress Frances Djulibing, cosponsored with Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection
•    The Secret of the Grain (France, Abdel Kechiche)
•    Sleep Dealer with director Alex Rivera
•    Sunshine Cleaning (starring Amy Adams, Emily Blunt and Alan Arkin) with screenwriter Megan Holley and producer Glenn Williamson
•    Take  Out with co-directors Sean Baker and Shih-Ching
•    Terra with director Meni Tsirbas
•    To See If I’m Smiling/Hamdi and Maria (cosponsored with Hadassah, on Israel women soldiers and Palestinians in Israel)
•    Waltz with Bashir (Israeli animated feature and Cannes sensation)
•    Watch Out (directed by Steve Balderson)

Additional premieres and special guests will be announced in the weeks between now and the Festival.