Over the last 20 years, Virginians have not had to travel to New York or Los Angeles to see the following -- Anthony Hopkins leaping up from an interview with Roger Ebert to act out Hannibal Lecter; the screenwriter of Dog Day Afternoon meeting the actual bank robber for the first time; Morgan Freeman, Robert Duvall and Liev Schreiber swapping their acting bug stories in front of captivated drama students.
This weekend, the film industry will once again invade Charlottesville for the 20th annual Virginia Film Festival.
When the University, private investors and the Commonwealth teamed up in 1988, their goal was to create a unique University-based film festival that would attract artists from all across the country.
Contributing to the uniqueness is each year's festival theme. Decided upon by festival director Richard Herskowitz and the festival board, the theme is used as a springboard for debate and discussion. This year's theme, "Kin Flicks," was partly inspired by the passage of Virginia's marriage amendment last fall.
"[It] defined what was a contractual protected family in Virginia," Herskowitz said. "That sparked some discussion about what movies do, and how movies -- it seems to me -- are always questioning: What is a family? What makes a family normal? What alternative kind of families exist? That's really what makes this film festival unusual and why it's based at a university. It's conceived as a four-day course on a cultural theme in which the world is invited to enroll."
This year, the festival will run today through Sunday, showing more than 70 films at theaters around Charlottesville.
Since its conception, the festival has drawn stars and movie experts from every aspect of the filmmaking process, from screenwriting to animation. This year is no exception. Guests include John Turturro, University graduate Sean Patrick Thomas (Save the Last Dance, Cruel Intentions) and Stewart Stern, the man who penned the iconic Rebel Without a Cause.
Turturro, this year's featured guest, is an actor, director and writer who is perhaps best known for his many collaborations with director Spike Lee and his infamous role as Jesus in The Big Lebowski. He will present his latest directorial work, Romance and Cigarettes, Saturday evening at The Paramount on the Downtown Mall.
Herskowitz has been responsible for booking guests such as Turturro since entering the festival director position in 1996. From the start, he's had big aspirations for the festival.
"One of the things I wanted to do was to broaden the involvement of the arts in the film festival [and] make it more of an arts festival," Herskowitz said.
His success in this realm truly makes the Virginia Film Festival stand out. This year, three films are showing that will have live musical accompaniment, including two silent films: Peter Pan and The Kid (Charlie Chaplin's first film). The other will be a mélange of Brent Green's animations and the musical talents of Howe Gelb and Brendan Canty.
Over the years Herskowitz has also tried to increase the festival's involvement with typically non-film oriented university departments. The annual Darden/Chamber Producers Forum, for instance, brings a major producer or executive to talk to business students about the world of film production. Twenty-five University professors will also participate in post-film discussions this year. They hail from diverse departments: politics, media studies, anthropology and women's studies, to name a few. They will use various films as platforms for discussions about broader trends and themes in society.
Of course, film aficionados and students still make up the base support for the festival, and, as usual, there will be various programs that cater to both. An undergraduate student filmmaker favorite, the Adrenaline Film Project, returns this year. The program is a fast-paced competition during which groups of three filmmakers have 72 hours to write, cast, shoot and edit a short film. The films will be shown in Newcomb Hall at 4 p.m. Sunday.
Another goal of the festival is to promote Virginia film production. During the weekend, the Virginia Film Office leads visiting artists around the Commonwealth, showing off locations and introducing them to local filmmakers.
The ultimate goal of the Virginia Film Festival is to bring filmmakers and film lovers together into a unique and thought provoking environment. Judging by this year's lineup, it should once again succeed.
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