Joyce Chopra, known for her documentary, television, and filmmaking career, recounts her experiences in a new no-holds-barred memoir,Lady Director: Adventures in Hollywood, Television and Beyond. But it wasn’t until she read her book’s promo blurbs that Chopra says she understood she had completed “a history of how hard it was for women to ever get […]
Joyce Chopra, known for her documentary, television, and filmmaking career, recounts her experiences in a new no-holds-barred memoir,Lady Director: Adventures in Hollywood, Television and Beyond. But it wasn’t until she read her book’s promo blurbs that Chopra says she understood she had completed “a history of how hard it was for women to ever get […]
With a prime-time Virginia film fest screening at the Paramount Theater, the movie Stay Awake has made longtime Charlottesville resident Jamie Sisley an indie-festival darling again. Sisley first produced Stay Awake, which chronicles a family’s struggles with a mother’s addiction, in 2015 as an award-winning short. After securing Best Narrative Short honors at the Slamdance […]
Film writer Justin Humphreys remembers Peter Bogdanovich, who passed away on Thursday, January 6, at age 82. His tribute is followed by a re-posting of his 2018 interview with Bogdanovich in preview of that year’s Virginia Film Festival. Peter Bogdanovich: He was the cinema Peter Bogdanovich was the cinema—both a brilliant director, and a historian […]
The lineup for the 34th edition of the Virginia Film Festival is stacked with movies that are already getting Oscar buzz, like The French Dispatch, The Power of the Dog, Spencer, and Belfast. These films are bound to do big box office business for weeks to come, but this year’s fest also features several less-hyped […]
The Virginia Film Festival announced a full return to in-person movie viewing for its 34th annual fest, which will be held October 27-31. Jody Kielbasa, UVA’s vice provost for the arts and director of the festival, says the VAFF will offer more than 85 films and host an extensive lineup of live discussions. Special guests […]
Following directions: Mike Nichols’ beginnings as an improv comedian in 1950s Chicago informed his long career as a film and theater director. He shepherded numerous Neil Simon plays to Broadway success, and drew brilliant performances from Robert Redford, Elizabeth Taylor, Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, and Tim Curry, among many others. In 1967 alone, he had […]
Big screen: One of the many gems of our arts community is the Virginia Film Festival’s year-round series Beyond the Screen: A Virtual Conversation Series, which offers more of what we love about VAFF’s programming: special access to film industry bigwigs who discuss their work. Writer-director John Lee Hancock and producer Mark Johnson log in […]
Unprecedented, unexpected, insane…we could go on, but after months of living in a world with coronavirus, a presidential campaign, and a series of transformative social justice movements, well, you get the idea. To combat it all, we’ve been baking, we’ve been Zooming, we’ve been sitting six feet apart at social gatherings. We’re ordering takeout, enjoying […]
Stage to screen: For the second year in a row, the Virginia Film Festival is screening works by local hip-hop video directors and rappers during the 9 Pillars Hip Hop Music Video Showcase. Curated by Cullen “Fellowman” Wade, who compiles a wide variety of styles within the genre, the showcase connects some of the most prolific […]
When Melodious Accord, Inc., reached out to Charlottesville-based documentarian Eduardo Montes-Bradley and asked him to craft a film about the life of musician and composer Alice Parker, Montes-Bradley knew he had to meet Parker before he said yes. He headed up to Boston, and the two drove together to Parker’s 17th-century New England cottage home, […]