The Virginia Film Festival

We’ve just announced the final new titles and guests in our festival program, and you can read the release here.

I’m very happy that, at my final program as artistic director, Sissy Spacek will be our opening night special guest, with her new film, Lake City. Sissy has been a friend and supporter of both the Virginia Film Festival and me for many years, and I love her performance in this film. Her performing partner is Troy Garity, who plays her estranged son, forced back into his mother’s home while escaping from a nasty drug dealer (played by one Dave Matthews). Garity, who starred in Soldier’s Girl (which director Frank Pierson presented at the VFF in 2003), will also be at opening night, along with the film’s producers and co-directors. Mark Johnson is one of those producers, and I’m also thrilled that this longtime supporter of the Festival is joining this gathering.

Looking over our guest list, I’m struck by their international diversity– featured directors this year are Maurtanian-French Abderrahmane Sissako, Mexican Guillermo Arriaga, and Mexican-American Gregory Nava. This is quite an evolution from my first year here (1994), when we were still called the Virginia Festival of American Film. 1995 was the last year we called our festival by that name, and the theme that year was U.S. and Them. The precise point of that theme selection was to argue that American films could hardly be distinguished from the international films they influence, reflect, finance and/or poach, and to segue into our re-emergence the next year as the Virginia Film Festival. Thirteen years later, we have a strong anti-immigrant political movement that is trying to wall off America’s borders, and so it seems worth making the point again that immigrants are vital to our economy and culture, and that immigrant filmmakers constantly revitalize American film. Hence, the theme of Aliens!

Our other guest actors in this year’s festival include Ghanaian Prince Adu and Armenian-Lebanese immigrant Karren Karagulian, appearing with Sean Baker’s Prince of Broadway. The two are non-professional actors who give knockout performances as immigrant hustlers in contemporary New York City.  Also attending will be Pedro Castaneda, another non-professional who gives a stunning performance as the aging patriarch, an illegal immigrant, growing estranged from his assimilating children in August Evening. Prince of Broadway just won the top prize at the Woodstock Film Festival and August Evening won the Cassavetes Prize at the Independent Spirit awards. If you come to our festival looking for strong filmmaking that the commercial distributors are neglecting, start with these two beauties.