Charlottesville, Virginia
Logistically speaking, I was expecting this year's Virginia Film Festival to be a nightmare. Tucked in between the rolling hills of central Virginia and the sprawling horse farms of Albemarle County, Charlottesville played host to some 60 events in a half-dozen locations sprinkled throughout a city with increasingly congested thoroughfares and minimal public transportation. Not to mention the tens of thousands of football fans expected to roll into town on that first November weekend to see the 23rd-ranked University of Virginia Cavaliers take on the 24th-ranked Wake Forest Demon Deacons.
But I was pleasantly surprised, both by the ease of movement around the university and its environs and by the impressive program that the organizers had thrown together. Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, the Virginia Film Festival pulled off its usual trick of mixing classics and new releases to create a filmgoing experience at which any cinephile can find something to enjoy.
"We are absolutely unique," the festival's artistic director, Richard Herskowitz, explains. "There is no other film festival that has our particular kind of intellectual and educational emphasis." Unlike Tribeca or Cannes, film festivals in which the art of procuring a big distribution deal is just as important as the art projected onto the screen, Herskowitz's festival is all about the movies.
Each year, the festival is tailored to fit a theme; this year's was "Kin Flicks: Families in Film." And each year, one of the key draws is the number and quality of speakers that Herskowitz and his staff
lure to Charlottes ville to educate filmgoers about the productions they have just seen. For years Roger Ebert was dedicated to the festival, running shot-by-shot workshops on films as diverse as Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup and Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction; he also served as chief interviewer of the cinematic luminaries in attendance. Since illness has forced Ebert to cut down on public appearances, David Edelstein, lead reviewer of New York magazine, has assumed the role of grand inquisitor.
An impressive array of filmmakers make the trek to engage with audiences on films both old and new. Tamara Jenkins, writer/director of 1998's Slums of Beverly Hills and this year's Oscar-buzzy The Savages, was on hand to present those pictures and a rare treat: her short film, Family Remains. Stewart Stern, the screenwriter behind James Dean's seminal tale of teenage angst, Rebel Without a Cause, was also on hand to conduct a shot-by-shot workshop on that 1955 classic. Though his long, frequently off-topic, Grandpa Simpson-style answers forced many of the shots to be skipped, some very interesting facts and insights about Dean's contribution to the film could be gleaned.
The discussions and workshops were nice appetizers, but the real meat here was the lineup of features. Worry crept in when my weekend viewing schedule didn't get off to the greatest start. I took in a screening of Killer of Sheep on Friday, a film I've been hearing about for years but never had a chance to see. Sheep is a student film shot some 30 years ago and universally hailed as both a lost classic and one of the preeminent examples of African-American cinema--something of an indictment of the dearth of quality African-American films. Director Charles Burnett summed up my feelings when he told the audience afterwards that his film "wasn't made to be entertaining." I was not thrilled to be informed of this fact after spending 90 minutes watching ham-handed metaphors brought to life by a largely nonprofessional cast in an exquisitely trying style best described as Watts Neorealism.
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