Page-to-screen highlights

Peter Hujar’s Day A film adaptation of the book recounting a real-life conversation that took place between photographer Peter Hujar and writer Linda Rosenkrantz, this documentary stars Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall in an enthralling recreation of a single day in 1974 Manhattan. Hujar, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1987, was a leading figure […]

Ben is back

Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz returns to the Virginia Film Festival to discuss director Ang Lee’s 1997 drama The Ice Storm, and to introduce The Sting at a Robert Redford tribute screening. Set during the holiday season in 1973, The Ice Storm examines the tangled relationships of two generations of suburbanites grappling with every­thing […]

Pep in step: ‘Pep Banned’ at Culbreth Theatre 10/26

The University of Virginia is often described as Jeffersonian, as academically elite, as a public Ivy. Less often used: cool. The Virginia Pep Band, during its nearly three-decade heyday, was cool. Pep Banned, a documentary that premieres at the Virginia Film Festival, captures the joyful subversion of the student-run band that took to the football […]

Our picks for hot flicks

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere Every artist who hits it big faces an inevitable question: What do I do for a follow-up? Bruce Springsteen confronted it after his fifth album, The River, topped the charts in 1980. Instead of trying to create another commercial smash, he produced Nebraska, a deeply personal acoustic album that surprised […]

Monster mania

As a Halloween warm-up, the Virginia Film Festival’s After Hours collection offers four monster movies, even though none are being screened particularly late at night. Curated by Igor Shteyrenberg of the Miami Jewish Film Festival and horror fest Popcorn Frights, this thematic group of what the VFF calls “films that walk on the wild side” […]

The Virginia Film Festival brings filmmakers, stars, and audiences together for a five-day celebration of cinema

Big-deal film fests are synonymous with location. Toronto, Telluride, Cannes, and Sundance evoke industry accolades and red-carpet credentials. Our own Virginia Film Festival has gotten pretty buzzy over the years, with marquee names, tentpole previews, and movie deals cut on the Downtown Mall. The VAFF has become “one of the nation’s leading regional film festivals […]

Asked and answered

We’ll put just about anyone in The HotSeat—visiting performers, interesting professionals, local tastemakers—as long as they don’t mind answering a few of our hard-hitting questions (asking about a go-to Bodo’s order is the height of journalism, folks). Here are a few of our favorite answers from 2024.  Grad student/lecturer Chandler Jennings Most embarrassing moment: A […]

Choice cuts

By Lisa Provence, Kristie Smeltzer, and CM Turner Images courtesy VFF Mapping the movement Georgia O’Keeffe: the Brightness of Light November 3 | Culbreth TheatreWith discussion  Academy and Emmy Award-winning independent filmmaker Paul Wagner has directed many amazing documentaries that shed light on subjects in American culture. His new film, Georgia O’Keeffe: the Brightness of […]