10.29.08

The 2008 Virginia Film Festival

Posted in Art, Film, Jacob Canon, The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, University of Virginia, VFF at 11:04 am by Jacob Canon

In today’s show, adapted from an article written by John Kelly, we will preview this year’s Virginia Film Festival, hosted by the University of Virginia.

This year’s Virginia Film Festival, hosted by the University of Virginia, will kick off tomorrow, Oct. 30, and will feature some 80 films and 100 guests exploring the fearful and alluring images of immigrants, outsiders and extraterrestrials alike.

One of the highlights will be a special 70th-anniversary rebroadcast of Orson Welles’ classic radio play, “The War of the Worlds, “ tomorrow at 7 p.m. in the McCormick Observatory. And at 10 p.m., the Culbreth Theatre will be screening George Pal’s film classic, “War of the Worlds.” Pal biographer and Charlottesville resident Justin Humphreys will introduce the film.

Richard Herskowitz, the festival’s artistic director said, “Not only is this the perfect way to open our festival this year, it is also a great way to honor one of the more bizarre evenings in Charlottesville’s history. On the night of Oct. 30, 1938, Welles’ ultimate hoax had the whole nation on edge and our city was no exception. Citizens were so nervous, in fact, that the McCormick Observatory had to open its doors just to prove with its telescopes that the skies were not in fact filled with alien spaceships.

The festival will also kick-off with a screening of Lake City at 7:00PM at the Culbreth Theatre. Starring Sissy Spacek, Troy Garity, Rebecca Romijn, and Dave Matthews, Lake City is a film with deep Virginia roots. It captures a slice of small-town Virginia life with underlying layers of Southern gothic tragedy. Lake City is produced by Mark Johnson and co-directed by Perry Moore, who met at the Film Festival in the 90’s and have since partnered on a number of projects, including producing the Narnia series. Moore co-wrote and co-directed the film with his partner, Hunter Hill, and brought on board a third UVa alumnus, leading independent film and talent publicist Weiman Seid, as executive producer.

Glen Williamson, executive producer of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, also represents UVa as producer of Sunshine Cleaning. Based on a script that won the writer, Megan Holley, the Virginia Governor’s Screenwriting Award in 2003, Sunshine Cleaning premiered at Sundance and will be released by Overture Films this winter.

UVa grad, Julie Lynn, producer of 10 Items or Less, starring Morgan Freeman, is the producer of Passengers, an exploration of romance and intrigue under the shadow of death. Passengers is directed by Rodrigo García, the director of Nine Lives, which García presented at the 2007 Virginia Film Festival.

Charlottesville native and producer, Temple Fennell, will be the speaker at the Darden Producers Forum, held at the Darden School starting at 1:20 PM on October 30

Additionally, a free program of films by Charlottesville filmmakers Doug Bari, Elizabeth Howard and Light House students will screen at the Gravity Lounge at 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 2, under the heading “Moviemaking in Charlottesville.”

To address images of human aliens who migrate across national borders, the festival and the UVa Media Studies Department welcomes their first Festival Fellow, Hamid Naficy, a film scholar and John Evans Professor of Communication at Northwestern University. His book, “An Accented Cinema,” explores the themes and styles of filmmakers who live and work away from their country of origin.

Keeping with this theme, the festival will also screen, Koryo Saram – The Unreliable People, a film executive-produced by the recently appointed UVa Dean of Arts & Sciences, Meredith Jung-En Woo. Honored as “Best Documentary” at the 2007 Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, the film tells the harrowing story of Stalin’s massive ethnic cleansing campaign in 1937 of forced deportation of Koreans living in the coastal provinces of Far East Russia to the unsettled steppe country of Central Asia.

Finally, there is one of the most popular events at the Virginia Film Festival, the Adrenaline Film Project. Mentored by filmmaker Jeff Wadlow and producer Beau Bauman, The Adrenaline Film Project welcomes 10 groups of film makers who will create a short film, concept to completion, from Wednesday evening to the showing scheduled for Saturday night, November 1st at 10 PM at the Culbreth Theater.

To learn more details about these films and all of the events at the Virginia Film Festival please visit www.vafilm.com.

You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will relive the events of this year’s Virginia film festival.

Permalink Comments

03.19.08

Myth & Memory

Posted in 19th Century, Art, Relationships, The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, Uncategorized, University of Virginia, slavery at 12:04 pm by Jacob Canon

In last week’s show we examined a recent study by University of Virginia Sociologist Elizabeth Gorman which said, no matter how the data was sliced or certain variables controlled: women say they have to work harder than men. In today’s show, adapted from an article published this month on the Oscar Web site written by Jane Ford we look at the work of Maurie McInnis and her perspective of class politics, social structures and hierarchies of the antebellum South through the examination 19th century art and material objects.

Objects and ideas inform both history and contemporary thought and are the basis of the study of material culture. For Maurie McInnis, associate professor of American art and material culture and director of American Studies, understanding the antebellum South in the 19th century encompasses understanding art and objects from the perspective of class politics, social structures and hierarchies.

Working with Angela D. Mack, curator of the traveling show that originated at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C., McInnis has spent the last four years creating Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art, an exhibition on view through April 20 at the University of Virginia Art Museum. The exhibition focuses on themes of race, slavery and the plantation from the 19th century to today.

McInnis said, this “is an exhibition about ideas rather than an art history exhibit that traces the development of an artist or a stylistic movement. Race, slavery and the plantation do not have a fixed meaning through time.” Working on the exhibit and the companion catalog, McInnis said she was struck by “how much cultural currency the word ‘plantation’ has. The mythology of the South as a place of gentility and refinement is still held by many today.”

For African Americans, however, the meaning revolves around an imbalance of power. According to McInnis, “The two are fundamentally different ideas of what ‘plantation’ means. The reality is that beauty and brutality lived beside each other. The artifacts explore the widely varying ideas of what ‘plantation’ meant then and today.” The themes of protest, politics, nostalgia and identity run through the artists’ works, which represent a wide variety of viewpoints within these topics.

To help clarify the ideas for both the exhibit and catalog, McInnis began by using her research to develop courses. That, coupled with insight from students in her classes, “The ‘Old South’ in Myth and Memory” and “Arts and Cultures of the Slave South,” which she co-teaches with Assistant Professor of Architectural History Louis Nelson — proved invaluable for defining questions about culture and race.

The exhibit includes works by a slave potter named Dave, who worked in Edgefield, S.C., in the 1840s and 50s. He decorated the large storage vessels he made with poetry and signed them. Both the poetry and signing the pots are acts of political protest, since it was unlawful for slaves to read. McInnis said, “His poetry was sometimes funny, spiritual, ironic or obliquely political. Dave is important. His work is an excellent example of an African-American artisan, of which the South was filled, but many are anonymous to us. His work was integral to the economic foundation of the South and at the same time reveals much about slave life.”

Contemporary artist Juan Logan also deals with issues of slavery. His “Foundations,” a sculptural installation, is composed of a series of iron, brick-like structures symbolizing the part African Americans played in building the South. McInnis said, “They not only provided the economic foundation, but also literally built it,” adding that Logan is engaged in an “ongoing conversation and dialogue with the past.”

Both artists show that the heart of understanding the 19th century antebellum South is the understanding of race and slavery. Over time we construct “narratives to serve contemporary concerns and change surrounding these topics. Memories and ideas are not fixed, but changing.” McInnis will explore these shifts in her upcoming book, Remembering the Revolution: Pictures, Politics and Memory. Her interest in the divergent ways in which the North and South remember the American Revolution, especially with the approach of the Civil War, grew directly out of her research for the exhibition. Perceptions of iconic images and representations have changed over time, in terms of how both the image and the event itself are viewed. McInnis said, “that change helps us understand how contemporary cultural politics shaped the evolution of our key American myths.”

You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when our topic will be the work of Karstin Hohl whose research has demonstrated that the encryption used by the now ubiquitous smart card is much easier to break than previously thought.

Permalink Comments