Revelations of a Programmer

I've Moved

2007-09-24T17:34:00.000-04:00

I'm no longer offering revelations here, and have moved my blog to the Virginia Film Festival website. Come check it out.

The Film Festival as Superpower

2007-05-08T00:24:00.000-04:00

I ran off to the Tribeca Film Festival last Thursday night. Now here I am, 23 films later, ready to report for blogging duty. Those 23 films include seven shorts, plus three feature selections I watched on my laptop on the bus, after downloading them thanks to Tribeca’s partnership with the amazing new Jaman service. I’m not sure my fellow passengers were as thrilled by the flicker effects of Ken Jacobs’ RAZZLE DAZZLE as I was. The 23 also included two remarkable films I snuck away from Tribeca to catch at the IFC Center and Film Forum, since they’re not likely to make it to Charlottesville soon, Robinson Devor’s ZOO and Johnnie To’s TRIAD ELECTION.

The Tribeca festival has attracted more than its share of gripes. Since it was created after 9-11 to aid in the revitalization of lower Manhattan, the festival has managed to squander the affection of many, not unlike another superpower I could mention, with behavior that is, arguably, imperial. The festival has been accused of stomping on filmmakers and other festivals who won’t let Tribeca screen its desired films first, and being crassly profligate in its hoopla. Being the director of a regional film festival, I’m sensitive to the cries of smaller festivals; our fall event is often turned down by filmmakers afraid of blowing their chances (incredibly slim—4 out of 100) of getting into Sundance, the neighborhood bully faced by fall film festivals.

Yet I don’t think gripers are giving enough credit to the terrific programming by Peter Scarlet and his team. Peter is one of the most knowledgeable and tireless film discoverers I know, and shorts programmer Maggie Kim also has a great eye. Out of the hundreds of films on offer, I was able to carve out a program of extraordinary films on the theme of “family,” since I’m shopping for films to screen in our KIN FLICKS program in November. And much of what I saw was so extraordinary, that I can only hope that my festival in November is as good as the festival I attended this past weekend. What I admired, I will pursue for Charlottesville.

My personal favorite of the weekend was the new documentary, AUTISM: THE MUSICAL. Less than a year ago, I sat on the balcony of the Georgian Hotel in Santa Monica, and met the producer Perrin Chiles, a University of Virginia alumnus, who told me about the project. I can’t say the premise—autistic kids gather to perform in a musical, sounded all that promising, at least to my somewhat jaded ears. But Perrin and his partners, including vet indie producer Janet Grillo and Kristen Stills, wife of Stephen (both moms of autistic children) found fantastic subjects (five kids and their parents) and the perfect director, Tricia Regan. Regan elicits such frank and honest testimonies from the parents, and, with her own camerawork, such a range of awkward, agonizing and exhilarating moments with the kids, that the strong emotional response of the loudly applauding audience felt wholly earned, not tugged.

Other titles I am likely to solicit include FIESTAPATRIA, a Chilean film about a family gathering that gets very messy as political fissures between Pinochet regime defenders and opponents, and the generations, erupt. TUYA’S MARRIAGE, the Berlin Film Festival prizewinner, is a visually stunning portrait of a woman whose extraordinary strength and character supports her damaged family, yet is undermined by the patriarchal norms of her community. THE LAST JEWS OF LIBYA is the amazing accomplishment of a Libyan Jewish émigré grandmother, and first-time documentary filmmaker, who tells the dismaying story of the collapse of a 2500 year old Arab Jewish community through the voices of her own family. MISS UNIVERSE 1929 is the latest film by the great Peter Forgacs, the experimental documentarian who mines home movies to uncover the social history of 20^thcentury Europe. Here, he has hit on a treasure trove of footage by the lovestruck husband of the Jewish Austrian Miss Universe of 1929. The winner of the best short film award, A SON’S SACRIFICE, is about a reluctant Muslim son’s assumption of the reins of the family butchering business. Not likely to be the favorite film of vegetarian viewers, the film is nonetheless a great portrait of a Muslim-American family.

Home Movies

2007-03-29T17:15:00.000-04:00

A suggestion came in today that we show Su Friedrich’s film about her father, Sink or Swim and Alan Berliner’s film about his dad, Nobody’s Business. Friedrich also made a film I love about her relationship with her mother, The Ties That Bind.

Su has been to our festival several times, but, somehow, I’ve never brought Alan Berliner. Alan and I were film students together in Binghamton in the early ‘70s (Alan’s voice, I insist, carries the intonations of his influential film professor, Larry Gottheim). Alan has accumulated a tremendous body of work that could be described as “experimental home movies.” He's an incredibly talented editor of archival footage, including the home movies of many unknown families he stitched together in Family Album (1988). That film brought out cultural and formal patterns linking the amateur movies, and was illuminating and funny, like all of his work. Along with Nobody’s Business, Intimate Stranger, and his latest, Wide Awake, it deserves to be showcased in connection with our theme, and I’ve already asked Alan to hold the dates November 1-4.

When Alan gets here, he’s going to find that some of the editing stations at the local Light House media access center for high school students are named after his movies. Light House founder Shannon Worrell is a big fan, and she says her students are inspired by Alan’s editing skills.

Another filmmaker who works with home movies is Peter Forgacs, whom I’d love to invite. He compiles his films from historic home movies reaching back to the Nazi era and postwar Hungary. I’ve also gotten in touch with Patricia Zimmermann, author of Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film and the upcoming Mining the Home Movie, and she may be presenting films collected at the Smithsonian’s Human Studies Film Archive.

Any other ideas for me in the home movie area? Should we have an open screening of home videos?

And do people have more filmmakers to suggest who have made films about their parents or kids?

Your suggestions

2007-03-06T19:24:00.000-05:00

Thanks for all the tips. There are more suggestions pouring in than I received last year, and I’m relieved that the theme is going over so well.

Here are some reactions to your thoughts……

Mrs. Bates is definitely a great movie mom to feature alongside MILDRED PIERCE and MOMMIE DEAREST.

I saw the French Quebecois film C.R.A.Z.Y at a film festival and was surprised it didn’t get released here, since it was so entertaining and inventive (although it reminded me a bit of Alain Berliner’s MA VIE EN ROSE). I’ll look at it again…..

I’d forgotten about LALEE’S KIN, which impressed me when I was on a documentary award panel in 2001. I was thinking of inviting Al Maysles with GREY GARDENS, and now this gives me another film of his to present.

Donald Sosin sent me a lot of tantalizing choices. I got stuck at the top of his list, with Herbert Brenon’s 1924 PETER PAN. I showed that film several times at Cornell Cinema when I worked there in the 80s, and I’d love to introduce it to kids and families here. Great cinematography by James Wong Howe, and a pleasure for grownups too.

LE SOUFFLE AU COEUR is a good idea, although its treatment of incest may be too tasteful. I think I prefer Francois Ozon’s SITCOM, which has greater shock value, as John Waters would say. The DVD comes with a precociously twisted early short by Ozon called FAMILY PHOTO, in which he murders the members of his (real) family before posing them for the camera.

Keep the suggestions coming, and I'll keep adding titles to my video queue...

Kin Flicks Kicks Off

2007-02-25T02:10:00.001-05:00

It’s 2am and I just got back from the Film Festival’s first annual Pre-Oscar Bash. I announced the 20th annual Film Festival’s new theme, KIN FLICKS, and dates, November 1-4, 2007. The press release should be up on our website shortly with more information about the kinds of family films and films about families (The Shining, Joshua) and film families (The Wilsons, The Fondas, the Rossellinis, etc.) we’re looking for.

This blog is now re-open for business, and I need suggestions, for titles, guests, and sidebar events (art exhibits, musical performances, etc.). Last year’s blog sparked a lot of great programming ideas I would not have had otherwise.

I’ll update this blog regularly with news as the program comes together, and reactions to your suggestions.

Final Revelations

2006-11-05T23:02:00.000-05:00

     The festival is over, and I have only a few more revelations to offer.
     The attendance records we broke, and the comments and emails I’ve received, are very gratifying. But, since I was running around giving introductions and doing festival business, I was only able to watch two film programs—Live…From the Hook and the Black Maria Festival program. The first one was a big gamble for me, since I had only seen a few minutes from it before promising it a slot, and I saw the completed film at the same time as the rest of the audience.  It turned out to be the highlight of the weekend for me and many others. I didn’t share the deep connection with the Charlottesville live music scene that most people in the audience clearly had, and yet the sense that there is something extraordinary about this scene came through powerfully to me. The rapport between the musicians of different bands, their self-effacing humor, and their taste for musical experimentation was absolutely inspiring. And I just got a wonderful message of thanks from singer Johnny Sportcoat himself (Bob Girard) that made my week.
     I also loved the experimental films that John Columbus brought for his Black Maria program, especially the flowing video abstractions of Leighton  Pierce’s  Viscera.  The spectacular beauty that emerged from the artificial, chemically induced decay of Phil Solomon’s Clepsydra and the natural nitrate decay of Bill Morrison’s How to Pray were pure examples of cinematic transcendence.
     I was glad to have the opportunity to screen, at the end of that program, my most exciting film discovery of the year, DeeDee Halleck’s documentary  Bronx Baptism, which DeeDee  filmed with Richard Serra and Babette Mangolte in 1980. It portrays a reconstituted movie theater in the South Bronx, with a glass window where the screen used to be. Behind the window/screen, the Puerto Rican congregation could view a live parade of baptismal bathers. The three artists who made the film stumbled into this phenomenal space of sacred, community performance art, and they recorded it with a sense of awe and  wonder that came through strongly even in the much-faded print. DeeDee Halleck was present, and she indicated that my enthusiasm is inspiring her to search for the negative and strike a new print, which I hope others will screen and rediscover.
     Robert Duvall seemed to have  a great time, and his rapport with David Edelstein on stage was something to behold. Duvall, Liev Schreiber, and Morgan Freeman all really enjoyed their forum with Drama students, and everyone seemed charged by the incredible gathering of talent in the room.
     I am always eager to hear reports from others about what they experienced, both good and  bad, at the festival, and so  I encourage people to send  comments to this blog about their experiences.
     Also, over the next few weeks, I am preparing theme proposals for the Festival’s Advisory Board, and so now is your chance to influence the theme selection  for our 20th anniversary event. Somehow, we’ve got to top this last one, and given the amazing turnout and critical response, it ain’t gonna be easy.

God...and Other Stars

2006-10-05T02:32:00.000-04:00

We found God….or at least the guy who plays Him in the movies, and announced today that Morgan Freeman is coming to the festival on October 27. It has turned into quite a lineup of featured actors this year.

We had some pretty interesting guests lined up by late August: writer Michael Tolkin, punk preacher Jay Bakker, video game artist Eddo Stern, and the rising young actors William Moseley and January Jones. The line-up of films, particularly the new documentaries like Jesus Camp and Iraq in Fragments, and the silent and Scandinavian classics, looked pretty good to me.

But the audience here demands very celebrated actors, and has come to expect them from the beginning, when Jimmy Stewart and Gregory Peck showed up for the first Virginia Film Festival. In recent years, we’ve brought Anthony Hopkins, Nicolas Cage, Sandra Bullock, Vanessa Redgrave, and the list goes on. Regional festivals do not usually attract stars of this caliber. Regional festivals are harder to get to then big city events. But the actors have loved the experience here, particularly the encounters with students and our highly intelligent audiences. We also have a very active and committed Board of Advisors, most of whom are based in LA and well-connected in the film industry.

The first featured guest to confirm was Robert Duvall….on September 8, a year to the day after Vanessa Redgrave confirmed her participation. And once again, the Preview Guide was on its way to the printer when we yanked it back and added in the exciting confirmation. Many of my advisors on this program, especially the knowledgeable religion and film authority Drew Trotter, asked repeatedly for Duvall and The Apostle as a centerpiece event. But we had not had luck with our invitations to him in recent years. In early September, one of the supporters on our new Council of Festival Friends, actress Betsy Brantley, helped us reach Duvall, and we got our most wanted guest. Now, it looks like a second Robert Duvall masterpiece will be added to the program….so keep checking our website.

Then came Liev Schreiber, a week later, through a wonderful, fortuitous encounter I had with a close relative of his. The first time he made an impression on me was in 1996, when we showed The Daytrippers, and that was the same year he scared the hell out of everyone in the first Scream, as Cotton Weary. I’ve been an admiring fan of his acting ever since, but the invitation we extended was for him to show the film adaptation of Everything is Illuminated, which he wrote and directed. It was only a few days between the conveying of the invitation and its confirmation. What a nice experience.

Finally, Morgan Freeman’s film is the one I described in an earlier blog entry. I was handed an invitation to a test screening while I was in Santa Monica last spring. I sat in the theater a few seats away from Brad Silberling, the director. 10 Items or Less felt like a Dogme production….a low-budget, minimally scripted, improvisatory shedding of Hollywood excess, a therapeutic cleansing from the big budget behemoths Silberling and Freeman knew too well. And Morgan Freeman is liberated in 10 Items or Less. It’s the loosest, funniest, most charismatic performance I’ve ever seen him give. The test screening audience cheered, and the audience at the Paramount is likely to do the same.

Julie Lynn, a member of the Film Festival board who had brought us Nine Lives last year, is co-producer of 10 Items or Less. We have been working on arranging this visit for the past six months, and nearly gave up a few weeks ago. The schedule was tight; Freeman will be starting his next film two days after our screening. Transportation was a problem. But, about two weeks ago, Charlottesville was squeezed into an itinerary that includes a visit the day before in Mississippi. And so we had our last answered prayer for Revelations.

Now that the program is out, what do you think? Write me your comments, ask me questions about the selections, and I’ll try to respond here on the blog.

Meet the New Website

2006-09-08T02:19:00.000-04:00

Our new website is now up, along with the preliminary press release about the REVELATIONS program. What do you think? Thank you, Rick Montoya, for the divine poster design and Category 4 for the website improvements.

Some of the unsolved mysteries that have been tormenting faithful blog readers are now solved. The opening night movie at the Paramount Theater on October 26 will be Swedish Auto. Most of this film was shot down the street from our office on West Main Street, much of it in the legendary Mel’s Diner. The producer, Tyler Davidson, was a student in a film class I taught in 1997. He recently told me that he met his wife there (I remember he seemed distracted). The director, Derek Sieg, also went to UVA, but somehow managed to become a major talent without my professorial guidance.

Check out the glorious reviews the film has been receiving! I loved this movie, but hesitate to over-hype it. Its cinematic qualities, including gorgeous cinematography by Richard V. Lopez, gave me great pleasure, but the story is small and its pacing is slow. It is a truly independent film that will be a rapturous experience for some, and a frustrating experience for others. I have already gotten into an argument with a local screenwriter who thinks I’m crazy for loving it.

As for the classics, I did finally find Ordet by Carl Dreyer, with the help of a film collector in New York named Martin Scorsese, and his archivist, Mark McElhatten. Some may think I’m stretching my Scandinavian classics series by including Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice, but it was, of course, filmed in Sweden by Sven Nykvist, and has many echoes of Bergman (including its star, Erland Josephson).

Fear not that we’ve gone completely Scandinavian, because the selection of classics will also include films by Hitchcock, Bunuel, Satyajit Ray, and Cecil B. DeMille. I promised some Bresson, and OFFScreen helped out by scheduling both A Man Escaped and Au Hasard Balthazar in the two weeks after the Film Festival. Sadly, I could not find good prints of The Gospel According to St. Matthew and The Miracle.

There is so much more to unveil. I won’t wait until the September 28 program announcement, but will spill more beans in this blog over the next few weeks.

The Pressure's On

2006-07-29T00:36:00.000-04:00

The pressure’s on to finish most of the programming. The Preview Guide copy has to go to the designer, Rick Montoya, on August 10. So I met yesterday with our writer, Sean McCord, to hand him a batch of titles to begin writing up. Usually, we drop in a lot of fake blurbs and give ourselves until early September to replace them with newer titles …but I’ve got this program mostly figured out. Some of the invited films have already announced their participation. Chris Hansen’s very pleased to have his Proper Care and Feeding of an American Messiah in the program, and I’m pleased we can present his hilarious and well-executed faux documentary. Avid readers of this blog will surely recognize Chris as a serial commenter here, but I swear his compliments didn’t sway me.

I’ve been hunting for prints of the classics. First, I checked the reliable distributors. Jessica at Kino had Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice. Sarah at Janus provided The Seventh Seal. So much for the easy finds. Where are good 35mm or even 16mm prints of Ordet, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, The Miracle, and DeMille’s The King of Kings? Throughout the week, I was in touch with the kind archivists I know (including Bob Harris, Ray Regis, Steffen Pierce, and Caroline Yeager). The first three films are still elusive. Anyone else have any clues?

The best part of the week was working on panel discussion topics. I drove to Washington DC last weekend to hang out and brainstorm with Pat Aufderheide. We caught the Sugimoto, Christenberry, and Kiefer shows on the Mall, and A Scanner Darkly in Bethesda, and only stopped talking while the movie was running. I first met Pat when she was writing film reviews for In These Times in 1980. We’ve crossed paths many times since then, and her Center for Social Media at American University has become an annual organizer of panels at our festival. This year, we think we want to gather a panel of media makers who reach beyond preaching to the converted, and now we’re calling around to gather the ideal panel members we imagined, including David Van Taylor and the Jesus Camp directors.

Pat also led me to some old friends--Bobbi Abrash, her Research Director, who also helps run, with visual anthropologist Faye Ginsburg, the Center for Religion and Media at NYU. Their NYU center is likely to host another panel at our festival, possibly addressing spiritual performances. While thinking about their panel, I experienced another one of those odd coincidences that are constantly occurring this year. I looked at a 1980 short film that DeeDee Halleck had sent me called Bronx Baptism, and the film blew me away. It was filmed by DeeDee with, believe it or not, artist Richard Serra and Babette Mangolte. I think it’s a forgotten gem, beautifully shot and filled with provocative cinematic, political and spiritual discoveries. I raved about it to Bobbi and Faye, and Bobbi wrote back: “You have unerring instincts!” It turns out Faye had presented it just after it was made as part of a program on the Bronx, a program that helped launch her career.

Focus on Scandinavia

2006-07-21T00:18:00.000-04:00

I’ve watched a LOT of movies these past few weeks. Like last year, the new documentaries on our theme are really strong, and there are going to be a lot of them in the program. Others have noted that the inadequacy of the mainstream news media is inspiring a renaissance of independent documentaries addressing social issues. Among the documentaries that could show up in our program are Jesus Camp, Deliver Us From Evil, Jonestown, Keep Not Silent, A Flock  of Dodos, God of a Second Chance, and Iraq in Fragments.

Narrowing down the classics is the hardest part. There are so many great classics of spiritual cinema, most catalogued here, and passing on The Decalogue, Groundhog Day, and Andrei Rublev will be painful. But I may have found the hook that will give shape to the program, and rationalize my exclusions.

The Virginia Film Festival and the University of Virginia’s School of Continuing and Professional Education are joining forces to sponsor an annual spring film travel program, part of the University’s Travel&Learn programs for adult travelers. In May of 2007, we hope to travel to Denmark and Sweden to look at the historical and contemporary film traditions of these nations, including the legacies of Ingmar Bergman and Dogme 95. (If enrolling in the weeklong program interests you, please contact joangore@virginia.edu for more information).

So I’ve decided to focus on Scandinavian spiritual classics, as a prelude to the Scandinavian trip. The region is obviously highly evolved both spiritually and cinematically. The Danish film professor who will be my teaching partner on the travel program is likely to come to our festival to introduce the films. I’m presently searching for good prints of Dreyer’s Ordet, Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, and Axel’s Babette’s Feast. The Andrei Tarkovsky film we’re likely to show is  The Sacrifice, filmed in Sweden and marked by Bergman’s  influence. I’d like to throw in a Dogme 95 film (the whole movement parodies religion), or von Trier’s Breaking the Waves, but may not have room.

Strange coincidences keep materializing with this program. Our opening night film is an American film with a Scandinavian fixation, and that’s all I can say. A famous Swedish émigré director may be premiering his latest film at the festival.  And Volvo has just signed on as a primary sponsor of the festival this year (really….it’s a happy coincidence).

Don’t worry. I’m still planning to show Rosselini, Bresson, and Bunuel, since I’m sure they visited and were fond of Scandinavia.

From LA to the Flaherty Seminar

2006-06-22T22:22:00.000-04:00

I’ve been picking up the pace on my programming lately, and have made two trips—to L.A. to consult with members of the Festival’s well-connected Advisory Board and, now, to Vassar College, where I’m participating in the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar.

In L.A., I had an uncanny experience. There’s an upcoming film that may be our closing night event at the Paramount, if we can attract the star and director to come along. I’m uncomfortable about committing to a film I haven’t seen, but the personnel are impressive and I might have booked it sight unseen. But while walking on Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade, I was handed an invitation to a test screening for this very film. I had to lie and say I’m not connected with the film business; but, since She’s collaborating on the programming of this year’s REVELATIONS festival, God has forgiven me. The film was wonderful, and if it all comes together, it’s going to be a spectacular closing night event.

It was an exciting board meeting, and the board members are really pitching in this year with ideas and connections. That’s all I can say for now, but the guests and premieres are going to be thrilling.

Here at Vassar, I just met and invited Stanley Nelson, the director of Jonestown, which I had caught and admired in San Francisco. I’ve recently been in touch with Valerie Cooper, a professor in Religious Studies at U.Va. who is teaching a course on Race, Religion, and Film, and she’s excited about collaborating on this and other programs.

I also was blown away by an amazing work of video game/installation art called Waco Resurrection. When I get back to Charlottesville, I’m going to try to interest the U.Va. Art Museum in helping to install this piece during the festival. It’s a ten-minute game in which the player assumes the role of David Koresh. Here’s how it’s described on its website:

“Waco Resurrection re-examines the clash of worldviews inherent in the 1993 conflict by asking players to assume the role of a resurrected "cult" leader in order to do divine battle against a crusading government. While the voices of far-off decision-makers seem resolute and determined, the "grunts" who physically assault the compound appear conflicted and naive in their roles. The game commemorates the tenth anniversary of the siege at a unique cultural moment in which holy war has become embedded in official government policy. In 2003, the spirit of Koresh has become a paradoxical embodiment of the current political landscape - he is both the besieged religious other and the logical extension of the neo-conservative millennial vision. Waco is a primal scene of American fear: the apocalyptic visionary - an American tradition stretching back to Jonathan Edwards - confronts the heathen "other" - in Waco Resurrection, the roles are anything but fixed.”

The programmer, Eddo Stern, was fascinating today during the Flaherty discussion on video games and other new media art forms. He and the other artists on the panel talked about the difficulty of interjecting critical thought into the gamer’s experience of playing their alternative video games. In Waco Resurrection, the player, wearing a David Koresh mask and punching keys on the keyboard, can shoot a lot of ATF agents and attract many followers, before he or she inevitably dies. But do any of the ideas in the previous paragraph sink in? Stern has interesting things to say about how he tries to provoke reflection, and so I hope to bring him with the piece to Charlottesville.

Mormonsploitation and More

2006-05-24T02:19:00.000-04:00

The program is coming together. A great Cecil B. DeMille silent with musical accompaniment at the Paramount….and a prominent Iranian video artist on display at a local gallery…and the recipient of the Virginia Film Award has accepted our invitation. Unfortunately, there’s a restraining order from our publicist preventing me from naming names prematurely.

I’ve gotten woefully behind on my previewing of festival submissions, and I’m staring guiltily at a pile of tapes across the room. Meanwhile, suggestions are pouring in and I’d better get cracking.

I did watch a fantastic film called THE HOLE STORY, one of last year’s criminally unreleased independent features. The protagonist’s search for a hole in the ice (and you want to see this film even though that’s basically the film’s story) is, by turns, pathetic, comic, and heroic. It takes on metaphysical dimensions, and does relate to our theme. If it doesn’t make it into the festival program, I will try to get the film into next year’s Film Society schedule.

I also watched a clever remake of a 1922 “Mormonsploitation” film called TRAPPED BY THE MORMONS. It seems that before their polygamous ways were appealingly rendered on HBO’s “Big Love,” Mormons were portrayed as vampiric threats to society. The film is funny and would be a good late show. It just has the misfortune of being comparable in style to Guy Maddin’s work. His films have a visual panache that this film can’t touch.

Don’t miss THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES at The Bridge in Belmont on Wednesday and Thursday, May 24 (Part 1) and 25 (Part 2 and 3), at 8pm! It’s an enlightening exploration of the rise of both Islamic fundamentalism and American neoconservatism over the last half century, and director Adam Curtis is equally talented as a visual essayist and collagist.

San Francisco Wrapup

2006-05-07T21:20:00.000-04:00

A couple of other films I caught in San Francisco have potential as REVELATIONS titles. Stanley Nelson’s new film Jonestown recounts the descent of a seemingly enlightened, integrated church and its minister into isolation and suicide. I can’t say that Jonestown helped me understand Jim Jones, although I understood more about the utopian vision that attracted his followers. Aleksandr Sokurov’s The Sun also showed an all-powerful leader, Emperor Hirohito, whose religious authority led many to their deaths. However, this Sun God had the sense, for his defeated country’s sake, to renounce his divinity; the multidimensional performance by Issei Ogata paints an unforgettable portrait of a pathetically oblivious and yet strangely admirable leader. This is the most accessible Sokurov film I’ve ever seen, and I hope it gets an American release.

Other favorites in San Francisco: Taking Father Home (to which our jury gave the SKYY Prize), Half Nelson (our honorable mention), Backstage, Look Both Ways, Play, and Wide Awake.
Back here in Charlottesville, I’m looking forward to the last Film Society screening of the season, Shakespeare Behind Bars, which shows on Tuesday at 7pm at Vinegar Hill Theater. The film’s gotten award after award at film festivals.

Now that I’ve finished teaching my spring semester class, I can turn to the huge pileup of tapes that have been submitted for consideration. Hopefully, I’ll find some gems, and report back here.

Greetings from San Francisco

2006-05-02T12:01:00.000-04:00

I’ve been here since Friday. Alongside fellow jurors Marian Masone and Ed Arentz, I’ve seen ten of the eleven films vying for the $10,000 SKYY prize, which we’ll hand out on Wednesday night at the Golden Gate Awards. The films are all directors’ first features, drawn from all over the world.

We had a competitive award in the Virginia Film Festival last year, with jury and audience prizes given to the best undistributed film out of a pack of six. The award tied in to the IN/JUSTICE theme, because all of the films were critically acclaimed and eminently deserved distribution. This year, we’re going to concentrate more on our theme and drop the competitive sidebar. Does anyone think we’re making a mistake and should make an award competition a permanent component of our event?

When the opportunity arises, I am looking at films that fit our REVELATIONS theme. I saw a feature called THE GIANT BUDDHAS, an essay film by Christian Frei on the implications and aftermath of the Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Valley Giant Buddhas, which were 1600 years old but, alas, not Islamic. I was disappointed, and found it plodding and not that illuminating. SILENT HOLY STONES is a surprisingly irreverent film about the allure of TV to young monks in training in Tibet, made by a Tibetan director. It’s not what you’d expect in a Tibetan Buddhist film and so I’m looking into showing it. Unfortunately, I missed INTO GREAT SILENCE, a nearly three hour portrait of the Grande Chartreuse monastery that my colleagues are raving about. A fellow programmer is going to send me a DVD, and I am fairly confident that I am going to be pursuing it for our festival.

I got to see Tilda Swinton give the annual State of Cinema address here. She was eloquent, moving and beautiful. She talked memorably about, among other things, how Derek Jarman led her and others to be rebellious artists, and about how inspiring his film about St. Sebastian was for the emerging gay movement in 1976. I immediately added SEBASTIANE to my list of likely prospects. My wife, Jill Hartz and I knew Jarman, and visited him at his amazing cottage in Dungeness, under a nearby power plant and surrounded by a strangely wonderful garden of mostly lifeless objects. That day, Jarman was brooding because he’d had an argument with Tilda while directing her in a stage production. The next day, he called to apologize for not being more gracious and offered us one of his black paintings, called “A Song for Dungeness,” with angel figurines emerging out of thick black paint. I will display it in the theater when we show Jarman’s film. Tilda, will you come visit us too?

Some Guest Invitations

2006-04-24T00:32:00.000-04:00

Ever attentive to your suggestions, I did snag a copy of THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL and will try to watch it next week, on my flight to the San Francisco Film Festival. The festival’s new Executive Director, Graham Leggat, who is impressing everyone out there, is an old friend, and he invited me to be a juror. I’m proud to say I gave him his first film job about fifteen or so years ago. I knew it would get me a free trip to SF if I waited long enough.

I read the article on Tom Shadyac recommended by another commenter, and an even more fascinating interview in Catholic Exchange. Tom Shadyac’s in Charlottesville right now shooting EVAN ALMIGHTY with Steve Carell, and I have invited him to come back in the fall. He is very passionate and articulate in advocating for a Christian cinema that is not pre-cleansed of all sin, and he’d be an exciting guest.

We’re also inviting to the festival BRUCE and EVAN ALMIGHTY’s co-star, Morgan Freeman, whose film company happens to be called …. Revelations Entertainment. I will refrain from saying there’s a divine hand in this. But in the last few days, I ran into the glorious poet Rita Dove, who mentioned that she had a cameo appearance in Freeman’s upcoming movie, 10 ITEMS OR LESS, and that he and his producing partner, Lori McCreary, are considering attending in the fall. A few days later, one of the film’s producers, Julie Lynn, visited my film class (and George Sampson’s) at UVA and offered more encouragement. Julie’s the board member who brought us NINE LIVES, Rodrigo Garcia, and Kathy Baker last year, and she was one of VARIETY’S 10 Producers to Watch in 2005.

Julie was in town to help launch the new free speech monument, which is a public chalkboard, installed by the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. I walked by it tonight on the way to the Wilco concert at the Charlottesville Pavilion (they were incredible, by the way). The chalkboard is getting many more comments than this blog, and I’m okay with that. Josh Wheeler of the Center called earlier this week to remind me that he’d like us to plan a festival program at the monument. Any ideas what we should project and stage there?

Awesome Suggestions

2006-04-15T18:22:00.000-04:00

The programming suggestions that came in as comments to my first posting are terrific, and I want MORE. First, I’m going to comment on the comments.

Pasolini’s THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW seems like a sure thing, and I think I have a line on a relatively new print. I remember that it was mentioned quite a bit around the time Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ was released, generally by critics who did not view Gibson’s version favorably. Pasolini’s TEOREMA might also be a good, more scandalous, choice, possibly alongside other “Christ-figures” movies. (No, that probably will be a road not taken, because there are just too many candidates: E.T., Shane, The Terminator (JC= John Connor), etc. Then again, it would be interesting to alternate these with some movie anti-Christs: (The Omen, The Devil’s Advocate, The Exorcist, etc.).

Groundhog Day was mentioned to me before, but I shrugged it off. Then I listened to that Christopher Lydon podcast that was sent as a link in one of the comments, and now I’m thoroughly convinced. Buddhists seem to have the greatest claim to it (it’s a story of Bill Murray’s successive reincarnations, which continue until he gets it right and achieves selflessness), but a lot of other religions seem to want to claim it too.

The only problem with Groundhog Day is that we showed it last year, and even brought Harold Ramis to introduce it. Still, it would be interesting to have a panel of different religious authorities address it. One of the things I enjoy about programming this festival is showing how movies can become entirely new when viewed through different thematic lenses. For example, we showed The Manchurian Candidate in 1995’s U.S. and Them festival, where it was discussed as a take on Cold War paranoia. We brought it back in 1998 as part of the Cool festival, when its great jazz soundtrack was the focus of guest composer David Amram’s fascinating commentary.

So many people have suggested Elmer Gantry to me, that I’ve just moved it to the top of my video rental queue (which is now up to a mere 148 movies), since I’ve never seen it. Notice I didn’t mention the name of the rental source, while our sponsorship proposal to the corporation is still pending. I’m only half-joking. We’re actively searching for new sponsors and supporters; you can send leads to festdev@virginia.edu and find our donor levels here: http://www.vafilm.com/getInvolved.html .

The Life of Brian is almost a sure thing. And a Bresson film, possibly Au Hasard Balthasar.

That question that someone sent in about movies that “show Islam in an understanding, let alone, favorable light” is a tough one. Maybe Malcolm X? Kiarostami’s A Taste of Cherry, which might be sacreligious in addressing the taboo of suicide? Can others offer suggestions? (Also just added to my queue: The Message, which apparently tells the story of Islam without depicting Mohammed).

I like the idea of showing The Apostle and Tender Mercies, and hopefully persuading Robert Duvall to visit our festival again. The Say Amen Somebody idea is great, especially if we can get a choir into the theater to follow it.

Keep ‘em coming.

The Theme is Announced

2006-04-05T16:38:00.000-04:00

Today, we’re announcing the theme of the 2006 Film Festival—“REVELATIONS: Finding God at the Movies.” Over the next few months, I’ll use this blog to solicit suggestions for films and guests and also share behind-the-scenes reports about the program’s creation.

About two-thirds of what the Virginia Film Festival shows is theme-related, and about half our films are classics. We also feature many upcoming releases, and some exceptional new films by Virginia filmmakers, that have nothing to do with the theme. So I’m open to non-theme-related film suggestions, as well as ideas for panels, exhibits, performances, and any kind of festival event or improvement you’d like to see next October. Some of the comments sent to me will be posted below my entry.

I’m often struck, especially when interviewed around the time of the festival, that some of the most interesting stories to tell are about what I wanted to include in the program, but couldn’t. Not all of these stories can be shared, obviously. Let’s see how much I feel free to ‘fess up to in the coming months.

Here’s an example from 2004, when our theme was SPEED, and we had Sandra Bullock as a featured guest. It was the tenth anniversary of her career-making film of the same name. My fantasy was that I would open the festival with Speed and close it with Bullock’s latest film, Crash. Perfect, right? I had seen and admired Crash in September 2004 at the Toronto Film Festival. But the distributors decided to hold its release back from other festivals until the spring, and not even Sandra Bullock’s presence and her interest in having us show it could persuade them to let us have it. And so my perfect programming bookends were ruined.

You can read the festival press release at www.vafilm.com to see some of the vague ideas I already have in mind for REVELATIONS. As you can see, some of the films I want to show will represent the kind of spiritual cinema that may not be about religion, but that aims to produce a religious experience in the viewer. We touched on this during the SPEED year, when we contrasted the commercial vogue of fast-paced editing with what we called “the cinema of slowness and contemplation” (you can view that program here). Paul Schrader was here to talk about the “transcendental style” of Bresson’s Pickpocket. I’m rereading Schrader’s Transcendental Style in Film, and also highly recommend Nathaniel Dorsky’s even better Devotional Cinema, on this branch of filmmaking.

Many films of the transcendental kind are included in one very convenient location, the Arts and Faith Top 100 Spiritually Significant Films . Any favorites from this list you’d like me not to skip?