Last year’s Virginia Film Festival opened in grand style with a sold-out screening of Darren Aronofsky’s masterful Oscar contender "Black Swan," easily one of the most talked about films of 2010.
It also went on to break the festival’s box office records by something in the neighborhood of 25 percent. And the 2011 festival, which runs from November 3rd through the 6th at UVa, appears poised to match, if not surpass, that triumph.
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| "Melancholia," starring Kirsten Dunst |
Festival director Jody Kielbasa, who took over the position three years ago with a mission to, in his words, "screen the latest and best films in any given year," has scored a second opening-night coup with yet another highly anticipated screening: "The Descendents," Oscar-winning screenwriter/director Alexander Payne’s first new film since he hit pay dirt with critics and the Academy with 2004’s tragicomic, Cali wine-country drama "Sideways." (See a review of the film on page XX.)
This year’s "Centerpiece Screening" — a literary tale staring Glenn Close as title character "Albert Nobbs," in a role she originated on stage in 1982 in an adaptation of the George Moore short story "The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs," — also looks to be a winner.
Directed by Rodrigo Garcia, the son of famed Columbian writer/poet Gabriel Garcia Marquez, it features Mia Wasikowska, Janet McTeer, Bonnie Curtis and Julie Lynn, who will all join Garcia for the special screening.
And, for closing night, Kielbasa scored acclaimed underground director Jill Sprecher’s first big attempt at a commercial crossover, "Thin Ice," a grifter thriller with a cast that boasts Greg Kinnear, Billy Crudup, Alan Arkin and Lea Thompson.
Along with raising the festival’s profile by bringing in films that are big draws at most of the larger, better known annual festivals, Kielbasa has also taken special care to keep the focus on the great Commonwealth of Virginia.
Five years ago, both Larry Flynt and one of Lynchburg’s own, the late Jerry Falwell, showed up in Charlottesville for a tenth anniversary screening of Milos Forman’s biopic "The People vs. Larry Flynt." This year, Flynt will be back to discuss First Amendment rights at a 15th anniversary screening of the film.
Director Oliver Stone will also be on hand, not just to present his 1991 blockbuster "JFK," but to participate in a discussion of the Kennedy assassination with UVa professor Larry Sabato, who’s writing a book on Kennedy’s life and political legacy.
The Virginia-centric angle doesn’t end there.
For over a year, Kielbasa has been forging a relationship with the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, which was created in 1988 to preserve and restore films deemed to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" at a facility in Culpeper, just 45-minutes north of Charlottesville.
As a result, five of those films will be screened this year, under the heading "Turner Classic Movies and The Library of Congress Celebrate The National Film Registry."
"Screening classic films is something the Festival has always done," Kielbasa says. "I wanted to retain that element, but do it in a more focused way."
To that end, he not only enlisted the support of TCM, whose weekend host Ben Mankiewicz is traveling from L.A. to introduce the five films in the series, but he also targeted films that have links to Virginia.
"We looked at director Terrence Malick, who has two films in the Registry — "Days of Heaven’ and ‘Badlands,’" Kielbasa says. "It just made all the sense in the world to screen ‘Badlands’ because Sissy Spacek and Jack Fisk live outside of Charlottesville. They met during the film, and Jack’s been working with Malick for years."
Both Spacek, who stared in "Badlands," and her husband Fisk will be present for the festival screening.
On a more grassroots level, Kielbasa has amped up the festival’s commitment to promoting and fostering a burgeoning local filmmaking scene as part of the festival.
This year’s program includes everything from David Dillehun’s rockumentary about the Charlottesville indie band Astronomers ("We Are Astronomers") and Richard Knox Robinson’s "Rothstein’s First Assignment," which uncovers some uncomfortable truths about the creation of Shenandoah National Park in 1935, to Saturday screening of shorts and features selected by the Virginia Film Office.
And Kielbasa has high praise for "Growing Up Cason," a documentary by Doug Bari about a local family who weathered the great depression in Charlottesville, sent seven sons off to fight in World War II, and was instrumental in founding the Charlottesville City Market.
Bari, a writer/director who moved to Charlottesville with his wife Judy in 2003 and subsequently started a business making vanity films about people’s lives to support his more artistic endeavors, more or less lucked into the story of the Casons.
In 2004, the Virginia Film Festival screened his fictional feature "Cold Readings." Four years later, a short he filmed on Conrad Brooks, one of the last surviving cast members from the Ed Wood cult classic "Plan Nine from Outer Space," made the cut. In the midst of all that, he stumbled upon the stories behind the story of Cason family.
"My wife and I started this film business," he says, "but we had no idea how much it would cost in time and materials to make a film about someone’s life.
"We needed a business model. So, we threw that idea out to some friends, and someone came forward with an idea. He had a family whose niece worked for him, and he thought it would be interesting to do a film on them.
"There were seven brothers from Charlottesville (who) went to fight in World War II, and they all returned. What’s so interesting about them is that they’ve remained close up until this day. … For over a hundred years, they’ve been having a family reunion every year. I’ve been to a couple of them, and they were more than 100, or even 200, people there."
It took a little finesse to convince the close-knit Conrad clan to open up their lives to him. But once the camera started rolling, the stories did too.
"My first interview was with Ezra, the oldest living brother at the time," Bari says. "I asked him to tell me about his life, and he was done in like two or three minutes. So I started packing up the camera to leave, but he stopped me and said there was another thing he wanted to talk about. He ended up talking for about three hours."
Bari had gotten some sage advice several years earlier from one of the great documentarians of the 20th century, Albert Maysles, whose many credits include "Gimme Shelter," "Grey Gardens" and, most recently, "Rufus Wainwright — Milwaukee at Last."
"I told him I did non-documentary feature work, and I wanted to know what his advice to a documentary maker would be," Bari says. "He said, ‘When I was coming up you had to use film, and that limited you to ten-minute reels. Now, with digital video, you can shoot for hours. My advice is not to ask questions. Just let them speak and you’ll be amazed at what comes out of their mouths.’
"When I told Albert about the Casons, and how they were this big family who all got along really well, he said, ‘I wish more people would make movies about families who are functional.’"
With the Maysles method firmly in mind, Bari simply let the Casons do the talking. And, as his camera rolled, big chunks of local history came pouring out.
"They do have a family historian," says Bari. "When she saw some of the raw footage from the film she asked me how I got them to tell me all these stories, stories she had never heard. I told her that I just let them ramble."
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