The Virginia Film Festival

What if you gave a class and 15,000 people signed up? That’s roughly how many came to Charlottesville for this year’s Virginia Film Festival — an event director Richard Herskowitz calls “a four-day film course in which the whole country is invited to enroll.” Held the last weekend in October each year, the festival will celebrate its 20th anniversary this fall.

Glimpsing stars along with the colorful leaves and crisp temperatures has been a festival pastime since its inception. Guests such as Gregory Peck, Jimmy Stewart, Sidney Poitier, Sigourney Weaver and Sandra Bullock have all appeared over the years. And the 2006 festival, with the theme “Revelations: Finding God at the Movies,” was no exception.

Actors making appearances included Morgan Freeman, Liev Schreiber and Robert Duvall. Directors Brad Silberling and Tom Shadyac (Government ’81) and novelist and screenwriter Michael Tolkin also attended. Duvall, an Academy Award winner and longtime Virginia resident, was presented with the Virginia Film Award. His screening of “The Apostle,” followed by an onstage discussion between the actor/director/screenwriter and NPR and New York magazine critic David Edelstein, sold out in advance. Indeed, the festival claimed more than 30 sold-out events, and the record attendance was up 12 percent over the previous year.

Yet the festival has staked its reputation not on glitz and glamour, but instead on the extraordinary talent and brain power found at the University and in the surrounding community. Herskowitz is proud to offer the only festival with more speakers than films. “There are more and more film festivals, but they are all doing the same thing — they’re vying for the latest premieres,” he says. “Ours is really about offering perspective and reflection. We have more than 100 speakers who all explore a theme through documentaries, premieres, experimental films and lots of discussion.”

Of the experts participating in postfilm discussions this year, 35 were U.Va. faculty from diverse areas of the University, including religious studies, English, media studies, history, chemistry and education. Herskowitz brings in outside academics as well. A new “Behind the Scenes” symposium, led by New York University film teacher and former 20th Century Fox vice president Harry Chotiner, included seven sessions throughout the festival. “We had a group of 20 students and others gathering in our office,” notes Herskowitz, “to meet with the actors and producers of the films and discuss them in greater depth.”

Though the festival’s audience makeup includes hard-core film buffs and industry types (“recharging their batteries” according to Herskowitz), it’s the U.Va. students who stand to benefit most. While more than 50 students enrolled in festival classes, the event is embedded in the life of the University throughout the year. Herskowitz, who is a member of the media studies faculty, teaches a class each spring titled Contemporary Independent Film and Video. “I incorporate some of the films that we show in our Virginia Film Society, a year-round series meant to carry on the Film Festival all year long,” he says. “Our screenings are always interactive, involving live presentations and discussions since we believe that film-going should be a social experience.”

Media studies chair Andrea Press hopes to build more curriculum around the festival. “We’re very excited to have the festival here,” she says. “Lots of students are interested in film and the way film is being studied more and more in conjunction with the media as a whole.”

Students benefit in other ways as well. Herskowitz says his class usually yields a talented crop of interns who gather valuable experience while providing much-needed manpower for the festival’s small staff (three full-time and one half-time employee). “The Film Festival uses student interns all through the year and during the festival,” he says. “They’re given really important roles. They do publicity, they do development, they run the Adrenaline Project. Several of them have gone on to USC film school or work in the film business, and they meet influential people through the Film Festival.”

Alumni who have made it big in the film industry are a perennial draw. This year, for example, Academy Award-winning producer (and festival board chair) Mark Johnson (College ’71) addressed a standing-room-only crowd at the Darden Producers Forum. Despite having had a hand in some of Hollywood’s most successful films (he won an Oscar in 1988 for “Rain Man” and scored last year with the big-budget family film “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe”), Johnson told the audience that he could “only make movies that appeal to me” even in an increasingly bottom-line driven industry. “You have to stick with it,” he stated. Kelly Thomas (Darden ’03), vice president of development and production at Mockingbird Pictures, joined Johnson in the discussion. Thomas produced the film “10 Items Or Less,” starring festival guest Morgan Freeman. The film, which also screened at the festival, is the first to be financed through the sale of broadband rights.

Much like the film industry itself, the festival has had to adapt over the years. It was not an overnight success, and there were especially lean years in the mid-’90s. “The way we survived was decentralizing to some extent by involving more partners in putting on different parts of the festival — the [U.Va. art] museum doing an exhibition, Darden producing the Darden Forum,” Herskowitz explains. “We developed efficiencies, and we cut back. It’s a little bit like ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ There are very few people behind the curtain producing a massive spectacle.”

In May, the inaugural Virginia Film Festival/University of Virginia “Film Around the World” program, sponsored by the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, is set to visit Ingmar Bergman territory with a trip to Denmark and Sweden. Herskowitz has visions of year-round residencies and workshops and plans for a January Term course in Los Angeles.

“What the Film Festival is particularly good at is using its connections to bring major figures to the University,” he explains. “Have them do public programs so that the whole community benefits, and while they’re in the area, really have them work intensively in master classes, workshops or residencies or class visits. That’s the kind of thing we see doing more and more year round, woven into the University academics.”

He likens the festival’s mission to another popular University institution. We’re similar to the U.Va. Art Museum and how it relates to art education,” he says. “The museum faces the larger public and offers the talents of the University to the public as well as serving the education of students within the University. We have the same role in relation to film studies on Grounds — we make the talents of the University and the resources really open to the wider community and the nation. We let people see what extraordinary minds we have here.”

 

Celebrate the Oscars with the Virginia Film Festival!

To kick off the 20th Anniversary Virginia Film Festival year, the Festival announces its inaugural Pre-Oscar Bash: The Red Carpet Event of the Year. The unforgettable night of glamour, good food and great entertainment will be held the night before the Oscars, Saturday, Feb. 24 at 8 p.m. at The X Lounge, located in the Glass Building at 313 Second St. S.E. in Charlottesville. The evening will include an awards ceremony in which the Oscar choices of the Charlottesville community will be announced, a silent auction, dancing and plenty of surprises.

Tickets to the Event

Beginning Thursday, Jan. 25, Pre-Oscar Bash tickets will be available by phone at 434-982-4543 and through the mail via the online order form. Mastercard and VISA are accepted.

Individual ticket: $100
Upstairs Table: $2,500 (includes a private table for eight, access to a private bar, VIP service and eight swag bags)
Downstairs Table: $1,500 (includes a private table for six and VIP service)

Call Patrick Webb at 434-982-4543 to purchase tickets or inquire about table availability.