The Virginia Film Festival

with speaker Temple Fennell. To reserve a seat, email levines@darden.virginia.edu

Key note speech by Film Festival Fellow Prof. Hamid Naficy

Filmed in Richmond, the debut feature from the co-writer/director team of Perry Moore and Hunter Hill weaves an engaging, classically Southern tale of family drama, propelled by Sissy Spacek’s powerful lead performance. Troy Garity, Rebecca Romijn and Dave Matthews all deliver strong supporting roles.

Shot on location with amazing performances by a mostly non-professional cast, Sean Baker’s film delves into the world of a young Ghanaian immigrant working as a hustler peddling knock-off goods on the streets of New York. The film presents a portrait that never caves to the saccharine expectations of Hollywood.

Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater radio broadcast echoes through the Observatory’s Dome Room on the precise 70th anniversary of the night it terrified America. The telescope is available for use to reassure that the Martians are not coming. ART$ Dollars cannot be used for this event.

Renee Tajima-Peña’s road trip documentary follows her Mexican-American husband and his brother across the American west and into Mexico, where they hope to bring together their siblings in the wake of their mother’s death. Tajima-Peña presents an internationally resonant discourse on the New American Family.

In this speculative survey of comparative cosmologies, we at last begin to guess the infinite possibilities of a radically relativistic universe, at turns pop-cult and paranoid. Featuring Craig Baldwin’s Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America, plus works by Bjorn Melhus, Rodney Ascher, Bill Brown, Unarius, and the Ford Motor Company. ART$ Dollars cannot be used for this event.

The 21st Annual Virginia Film Festival Opening Night Gala will take place at the U.Va. Art Museum and begin at 9:30pm.

Considered one of the great sci-fi films of the fifties, George Pal’s film was the first cinematic depiction of the H.G. Wells classic novel, setting the focus of Martian wrath in Southern California. The film won a deserved Oscar for special effects.

This beautiful semi-autobiographical film evokes both alienation and longing primarily through the play of color, décor, and shades of light. Director Sissako describes his work as " a portrait of people in departure, who have to a certain extent already left, without having actually yet moved."

Phoebe in Wonderland is an artfully layered tale about a young girl struggling to fit in. Elle Fanning (younger sister of Dakota Fanning) stars as Phoebe, a nine-year-old girl who finds herself fighting against the rules that confine her. Despite her inappropriate outbursts, Phoebe is an intelligent and creative child who worships the story of Alice in Wonderland. Although she often finds herself in the principal’s office, Phoebe finds solace in her friendship with Miss Dodger (Patricia Clarkson), the eccentric school drama teacher.

Perhaps the best known film of Luis Buñuel's Mexican period, Los Olvidados (The Forgotten Ones) follows a band of poverty-stricken children living in a Mexican slum. Although infused with many of Buñuel's trademark surrealist fetishes (including disturbing dream sequences, a girl bathing her legs in milk, and a rooster staring down a blind man), Los Olvidados features stylistic choices comparable to those of the Italian Neo-realists of the same period. Buñuel used mostly non-professional actors for the film and shot almost entirely on location. Upon its release in 1950, Los Olvidados received a storm of criticism for its focus on controversial themes including rape, murder, and pedophilia. Nevertheless, it was, and is, a heartbreakingly truthful account of localized, highly personal experiences.