Festival Memories
The 21st Virginia Film Festival, my fifteenth and last one as director, culminated with a gathering in the countryside that embodied what I’ve loved about this festival. I’ll describe it below, but you can also check out our wrapup press release to read about some of the festival’s more public highlights. The release barely skims the surface, so I would love it if readers would send comments at the bottom of this posting with reports about your own memorable experiences during the festival weekend.
I’ll start with my own memories. They involved standing in front of my friends on the Festival Advisory Board (including Doro Bachrach, Ron Yerxa, Mark Johnson, Sissy Spacek, Temple Fennell, and others) and, later, an audience of 500 at the Paramount Theater, after this video tribute was projected:
The video was a surprise orchestrated by Virginia Film Office director Rita McClenny, who has been my colleague, advisor, and close friend since I arrived here in 1994. She cast many of the other partners and friends who have supported me for the past fourteen years in this video memento, which I’ll probably view and inflict on others repeatedly, well into my dotage.
guillermo arriaga-jack fisk-sissy spacek-richard herskowitz
More memories: For many years, I’ve invited a few festival participants to help me detox from the festival’s frenzy at a retreat
hamid naficy
on our final night in a beautiful setting. This year, Russ and Lyn Bolen Warren graciously welcomed my guests, on just six hours’ notice, into their beautiful, art-filled, mountain-flanked home.
kevin everson
jeanne liotta
The group (documented in these Polaroids by our ace Production Coordinator James Ford) included international, experimental, and Hollywood filmmakers, film scholars, and student interns.
george kuchar
As always, it was a surprising amalgamation, but what a kick to gather such a diverse group together. I’ve always drawn great pleasure from mixing up the commercial and experimental in my programming, and in my partying.
lauren o'connor
peter riegert
Seriously, I think it’s healthy and necessary for mainstream and avant-garde and academic practitioners to be in dialogue, and I have never had a better venue than the Virginia Film Festival to help me realize
this ambition.
Now, I’m off to Houston for the next chapter in my career, a Cinema and Media Arts Festival that kicks off on November 20 with a four-day mini-festival, previewing the full festival that starts in November 2009. So long, Virginia filmgoers and festival guests, and thanks for the fifteen memorable years you gave me here.
Dear Richard, My wife Rose and I have been coming to every VFF since 1993, and as you know had Producer’s Passes the last few years. (When I took her to TAXI DRIVER on our first date in 1977 she should have expected this!) We want to thank you for your wonderful programming and opening our eyes to the academic aspects and importance of film. After every VFF I buy DVD’s of films I had either never heard of or ignored. In addition, of course we have fallen in love with Charlottesville. Best wishes and Godspeed in your future endeavors! Dr. Bill Ameen
When I was studying as an exchange student at UVA in 2001-2002, the VFF and yourself as my independent film teacher, made me realize what a small and mainstream world I lived in until that point.
You introduced me to Cassavetes, Iranian Cinema and so much more. It was a wake-up call for a young director initiate, who needed diverse influences to his work, and fortunately got them with your guidance. You taught me thatthe much underappreciated branches of creative genius are easy to overlook.
I am forever in debt to your enlightening dialogue, and your view that mainstream or independent, film has one greater purpose that goes above labels and borders:
“Telling a story.”
Best of wishes sir,
–Alper Caglar