The Changing the Narrative Project team: Daniel Fairley, II, Deonte Johnson, Juliani “Julz” Robinson, Clarence Green, Christian Means, JaQuavion “Quay” Gaines, Desiree Conner Image courtesy of LIght House
By Adriana Wells
arts@c-ville.com
The Virginia Film Festival will screen an original documentary by four local young black men during its Light House Studio Shorts event.
This past summer, Daniel Fairley II, the City of Charlottesville’s youth opportunity coordinator, sought to bring attention to the achievements of a number of black men in the Charlottesville community. Fairley selected four teens, ages 14 to 18, to write, film, produce, and edit a documentary that showcases not only the talent of the subjects, but also the filmmakers. Clarence Green, filmmaker and visual storytelling instructor at Tandem Friends School, offered them guidance.
The documentary is only one step in the ambitious Changing the Narrative project, which, in the wake of the events of August 11 and 12, 2017, aims to keep local students engaged in (and in some cases, leading) conversations about race and racism in Charlottesville. That the VAFF will screen the film is an indication that this advocacy has the potential to reach beyond local bounds.
The Light House Studio Shorts begin at 5:30 pm this Thursday at The Vinegar Hill Theatre, and the event is free and open to the public.
When the great classics of world literature were first being written, they were not meant for students or academics decades or centuries in the future. First and foremost, they were meant to foster a relationship between reader and writer. For Andrew Kaufman, who teaches Russian literature at the University of Virginia, that connection came to life during a prison workshop he taught in 2009, on Leo Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
The story, about the thoughts and emotions that overcome a man who is suddenly conscious of his imminent death, is one of the first stories taught in Russian literature classes. New students are encouraged to dissect Tolstoy’s meditations on sin, the valuing of physical and social pursuits over spiritual ones, and other Russian writers who underwent similar deathbed conversions, such as Nikolai Gogol.
What Kaufman discovered in the workshop was a new dimension to the work, sparked when he shed his “professorial persona” and simply asked the inmates, “What did reading this story mean to you?”
“I had to come to this jail…to see what I did. But I learned something from this story I can use when I get out,” Kaufman recalls one participant telling him. “It’s too late for Ivan,” another said, “but it’s not too late for us.”
In an email, Kaufman observed that “Ivan Ilyich, a careerist judge living in 1880’s Russia, couldn’t have been more removed socially, economically, and culturally from the world inhabited by the inmates at the Virginia Beach Correctional Center. Yet his story struck a powerful chord in these men, inspiring them to open up to a complete stranger about bad decisions they’ve made, people they’ve hurt, and opportunities they’ve squandered, or perhaps never had to begin with. It…encouraged others to see their world anew, to glimpse fresh possibilities for their future.”
“I came away from that experience realizing and understanding the story in a new way for myself,” says Kaufman. “I had written about it, I had studied it many times, but for me as a teacher, teaching in this unfamiliar context, it made it come alive in a whole new way.” It planted the seed for Books Behind Bars, the program he would found the following year.
No-comfort zone
The idea behind Books Behind Bars was to bring students enrolled at the University of Virginia to the Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center to discuss the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and other greats of Russian literature with incarcerated people of the same age group.
“[I thought], if going into an unfamiliar environment and leading a discussion about a story that I thought I knew can have that kind of an illuminating effect on me,” says Kaufman, “what would happen if I were to create a class in which I’d put my students into a similar environment…and then have discussion about literature outside of their comfort zone? What learning might take place for them?”
In 2016, Kaufman’s Books Behind Bars class was documented by Charlottesville-based filmmaker Chris Farina for Seats at the Table, which screens at the Virginia Film Festival on Sunday at Newcomb Hall Theatre.
In the film, metaphorical barriers between people are dismantled, even as physical ones remain. Both student and resident come to the table ready to discuss the same written work with radically different life experiences, but with a shared desire to understand each other. The literature they read together speaks to universal fears and emotions that are hardcoded into us as human beings; Tolstoy’s How Much Land Does a Man Need? challenges our need to acquire, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Matryona’s House asks how much a person can give before it becomes too much. And in analyzing it together, the walls that separate one person’s experience from another’s begin to soften, allowing student, resident, and even author to contribute to a free exchange of ideas at a level that would have previously been difficult to imagine.
One resident called the class “the one time I don’t feel locked up.” Photo: Sanjay Suchak/UVA
Perceived notions
One of the most striking things about Farina’s documentary is the film’s refreshing tone of good faith. The viewer is dropped almost immediately into the action of UVA students entering Beaumont (which closed in 2017) for the first time, not knowing what to expect.
Maybe a university student wants to alter his perception of what makes a person “criminal.” Perhaps a resident has a specific notion of what a university course is or what sort of person thrives in it. And neither participant has much familiarity, lived or otherwise, with the time or place where these works were written. But as the film progresses, the viewer witnesses genuine emotional exchanges between three very different people—UVA student, correctional facility resident, and 19th-century Russian author.
“Part of it is bringing people together at that age,” says Farina, “and part of it is the stereotypes they have going in. They dissolve within a couple weeks, and they really open up. And particularly for the residents, it’s their one time of the week when they have a little sense of safety, but also a little sense that they can be themselves and not have to put up their guard. It means a lot to them. One [resident] literally said, ‘That’s the one time I don’t feel locked up. I can be myself.’”
Farina’s style of filmmaking allows the story to unfold with minimal prompting, but it is anything but passive. It took energy, focus, and determination to create the space where the man with the camera at the end of the table could be trusted with this level of vulnerability. Farina attended the program for two years before recording a single image, then made sure that trust did not dissipate once production began.
“I conducted a bunch of early interviews with the residents to get them to be a little more comfortable with me,” says Farina. “That relationship between me and them, I knew was going to be crucial, and so I wanted them to understand that I wasn’t sitting there with an agenda. I was sitting there, asking them the questions, and leaving it up to them as to what they want to talk about.”
“Chris did a great job with that,” says Kaufman. “Not every filmmaker would have been able to get the residents to open up like he did.”
The students who came into the class knew they were going to be filmed. But Kaufman says, “I told them, we’re not there to please the filmmaker. We’re here to do our work, and the cameras are just other students in the class.”
He adds, “There was a kind of heightened level of urgency when the cameras were there. It didn’t change anything, but I think it gave everyone, even at a subconscious level, the sense that what we’re doing is important.”
Gene Rhodes, director of photography, with producer and director Chris Farina. Photo courtesy Rosalia Films
Story sharing
Farina’s approach to filmmaking is to let the subject tell his own story as much as possible, a quality that is also seen in his earlier work. West Main Street, also screening at VAFF (Saturday at Vinegar Hill Theatre), captures residents of the Charlottesville neighborhood in the late 1980s and ’90s just as they are, tying them to their location through shared memories and interwoven archival footage.
Farina’s involvement with Books Behind Bars came on the heels of another project relating to experimental education: World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements, a documentary he made in 2010 about Virginia educator John Hunter, who developed a game that allowed young students to address global conflict. Hunter’s game puts children in roles of global consequence-—prime minister, head of the United Nations, trade association leaders, and the like—and charges them with resolving conflicts in their own interest. In the process, they discover that collaboration is the key to success.
Despite their obvious differences, the connection between the World Peace Game and Books Behind Bars is also evident: Both programs create clear parameters and a structure for learning, then inspire the student to go places he might never have imagined. In the real world, two strangers who notice they are both reading the same book would not necessarily begin discussing their life choices and their feelings of pride and regret. But in a trusting environment where one is allowed, even encouraged, to open up, a shared story becomes a powerful thing—a springboard for conversations that might never have occurred otherwise.
“I heard this from both students of the [World Peace] game and from Books Behind Bars, it’s the ‘most important class they ever took in their life,’” says Farina. “The reality is, I’m not sure that the university students were expecting such a level of learning from the residents…and that by itself is such an important part of education—to realize that it’s by listening to others that we can learn.”
Leveling through literature
“In 2010,” says Kaufman, “one of the UVA students was asked by one of the young residents, ‘Do you guys read these same books that we’re reading here? You read these in your UVA classes?’ And the UVA student said ‘yes.’ And you could just see the glowing pride on the face of the resident who had asked that question. And that little moment…then the UVA student in turn was also very proud and very happy to have been able to share that with the resident. That moment of connection, I’ll never forget that. Because for me, in so many ways, that’s what education is about.”
Russian literature isn’t the most obvious subject matter for young people to connect around. But Kaufman says one plus is that it’s equally foreign to both groups. “The UVA students and the residents are kind of figuring this stuff out together,” he says. “Neither group is an authority on this…and that creates a sense of…honest connection.”
Discussing a modern American author may get people talking about today’s issues, but an unfamiliar author from a distant time and place focuses the conversation on universal truths.
“It is the urgency with [what] the Russians call the accursed questions: Who am I? Why am I here? How should I live?” Kaufman says. “Russian writers, they tell great stories, but they never looked at themselves as storytellers alone.”
“Ivan Ilyich is a great example,” he adds. “Tolstoy will not let you run away from that question: Why the hell are you on this earth, and what are you going to do with your short time here? He won’t let you walk away from it, no matter how much you want to. …Those are questions that students are hungry for, that residents are hungry for, and they didn’t realize that they were allowed to talk about in literature classes. But it’s very liberating for them.”
Kaufman says the opportunity to discuss life through literature is a connection that’s especially needed right now. “We do not know how to have conversations in this country with one another about anything substantive without getting at each other’s throats,” he says. “We don’t know how to talk.”
“Tolstoy will not let you run away from that question: Why the hell are you on this earth, and what are you going to do with your short time here?” –Program director Andrew Kaufman. Photo: Sanjay Suchak/UVA
Two sides
One memorable sequence in Seats at the Table juxtaposes the two groups of students in the most human of activities: a shared meal. The UVA students enjoy a restaurant’s outdoor seating while laughing, bonding, and discussing the program and anything else they please. It’s a boisterous, noisy, joyful occasion. Cut to Beaumont: enforced silence. Absolutely no talking allowed. The scene amplifies the sense of liberation felt by residents during class, where no such restrictions exist.
It’s at this moment that the viewer may notice that the film has no score, an intentional decision made by Farina to capture the music inherent in the dialogue. “I didn’t want to inject myself in it,” he says. “I wanted to get out of the way. I wanted people to feel the emotion from what they were in the midst of, and not impose, ‘Okay, here’s the emotion you need to feel right now.’”
It’s tempting to describe the ending scenes of the film, but it’s best to see them as the journey unfolds. The residents are prohibited from contacting UVA students for five years after participating, but as the program enters its ninth year, the lasting effects are still apparent. A Washington Post piece from July 5, 2018 followed Josh Pritchett, who took the course while incarcerated, then again as an enrolled student at UVA. Other success stories, like that of Douglas Avila–who appeared on television with Kaufman, describing his journey from Beaumont to studying fine arts in college thanks to the program and the lessons learned from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment–speak to the long-term impact of Books Behind Bars.
UVA graduate Kelsey Bowman, a double major in psychology and youth & social innovation who is seen in the film, says the experience made her more interested in social justice work, and influenced her decision to pursue a master’s in social work. “What I hope to do with that degree is some kind of rehabilitation programming or counseling…in a correctional setting,” she says. “This course…really pushed me towards that path.”
Maeve Curtin, a global development studies major, reflects that, “We need more people who are willing to recognize our shared humanity, and we just happen to use literature as a way of getting [to] that ultimate goal, for how we should be living our lives every day.”
There are real factors that cause people to make different decisions, arrive in different circumstances, and form different sets of beliefs. But so much of what divides us is little more than fog; the appearance of division that clears the moment you approach it. Russian literature is a field often seen as prohibitively complicated, due to the lengths of many of the works, the often impenetrable names, and the era-specific references, to name a few perceived obstacles. But what Seats at the Table shows us is that two people from different walks of life sitting across from one another can pierce fog as well as any classroom–by trusting their shared humanity.
Get lit
The syllabus for Books Behind Bars contains some of the greatest and most celebrated works in the history of Russian literature, with themes of redemption, finding
inner peace through suffering, and reconciling one’s physical and spiritual needs. Here are three of the works the participants read and discussed in Seats at the Table.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
by Leo Tolstoy
As a painful illness brings death closer by the hour, Ivan Ilyich reckons with the manner in which he has lived. He struggles with why, despite a life lived according to the norms of his social class, he deserves such anguish, ultimately accepting that none of his social climbing and proper (yet unremarkable) living can help him in the face of genuine suffering and impending death. Tolstoy is best known in the West for his epic novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, but much of his philosophy and gift for language is captured by his short stories and novellas. Here, we see his interpretation of how one can—and indeed, must—live morally, and consider his spiritual well-being, even in his everyday behavior.
How Much Land Does A Man Need?
by Leo Tolstoy
A peasant named Pahom unknowingly tempts Satan by proclaiming, “If I had plenty of land, I shouldn’t fear the Devil himself!” After acquiring some land and establishing a more comfortable life, Pahom becomes obsessed with the land itself, suspicious of perceived outside threats. Ultimately, the title’s question is answered in Pahom’s fate: A man only needs enough land to be buried in. Tolstoy’s parable contains an epic quality, yet is succinctly told, and can be read as a companion piece to The Death of Ivan Ilyich as two stories with very different tones but the same moral core.
Matryona’s House
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A former prisoner in a Soviet gulag—a network of forced labor camps—takes up residence on a collective farm with a woman named Matryona. She lives meagerly, even by the standards of collective farmers, and is always ready to help others and work for little or no reward. Solzhenitsyn, himself a former gulag prisoner and author of The Gulag Archipelago, depicts Matryona as one who gives of herself regardless of the ruling ideology of the current regime. She does not need to be a high-ranking church official, nor a devout communist, to live a life of service; Solzhenitsyn shows us that a person’s inherent goodness is not connected to her surroundings, status, or any other earthly considerations.
John Borden Evans's show, "John Borden Evans: Blue Moon" is on view at Les Yeux du Monde art gallery through November 11. Photo by Martyn Kyle
In the early hours of February 1, John Borden Evans was out for his regular run through Walnut Creek Park when he paused to memorize the landscape before him.
He noticed how the setting moon hung low and bright in the sky, how the moonlight radiated through striated clouds to bathe the mid-winter trees, grass, and distant mountains in a certain ether.
It was a singular scene—the moon in the sky was both a blue moon and a super moon, and it had gone through a total eclipse the night of January 31. Evans, a landscape painter, knew he wanted to capture it for a large piece he’d started with an “O” in the center. He figured it would eventually become some sort of celestial body.
Measuring seven feet wide and more than four feet tall, “Blue Moon” is one of the works currently on view in “John Borden Evans: Blue Moon” at Les Yeux du Monde art gallery.
Visitors to the gallery will see his “usual stuff,” says Evans, “paintings from the last three years that…go together because they’re a little bit wacky” in their incorporation of “imaginative elements” into central Virginia landscapes—things like imaginary stars, rainbow-coated woolly sheep, and whirls of light around a blue moon.
Evans, who lives on the border of Walnut Creek Park, usually starts a piece by writing something on the painting surface, then builds a picture with paint until it fits with one of the views he’s seen around the park. The views change constantly with the season, the time of day and quality of light, with new growths and recent deaths in the immediate flora and fauna—there’s always something new to see, or something familiar to see anew.
Most mornings, after his run, Evans loads his supplies into his truck, drives out to the view he’s working from, leans the painting against the parked truck, and gets to work.
“I paint like an abstract painter, worrying about texture and color and composition, and thick paint versus thin paint,” says Evans. “The landscape is just my means of exploring those same things.”
“All my paintings, almost all of them, are [set] just within walking distance of my house,” says Evans. “It’s endless, endless different landscapes and compositions. It’s amazing what’s there, right outside my back door.” —Erin O’Hare
First Fridays Openings
First Fridays is a monthly art event featuring exhibit openings at many downtown art galleries and additional exhibition venues. Several spaces offer receptions.
The Bridge PAI 209 Monticello Rd. “The People’s Portrait Project,” featuring Edward Miller’s portrait sculptures celebrating the individuality of Charlottesville residents. 5:30-9:30pm.
Chroma Projects 103 W. Water St. “Ruminant,” featuring prints of Tim Michel’s local and Maine landscapes that translate natural patterns into a consideration of the dynamicsimultaneity of time; and “Documenting Fall and Winter,” featuring highly discerning, articulated botanical watercolors by Lara Call Gastinger. 5-7pm.
CitySpace Art Gallery 100 Fifth St. NE. An exhibition of work by BozART Fine Art Collective. 5:30-7:30pm.
C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. MainSt., Downtown Mall. “Spirit of the Blue Ridge,” featuring 2-D and 3-D works on canvas, paper, and sculpted paper by Flame Bilyue. 6-8pm.
Dovetail Design + Cabinetry 309 E. Water St. “The Doors of Our Future,” an exhibition of work by ACAC preschoolers on kitchen cabinet doors. 5-7pm.
Firefly Restaurant & Arcade 1304 E. Market St. An exhibition of oil and watercolor paintings of landscapes by Ryan Arnold. 4-7pm.
McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. In the Sarah B. Smith Gallery, “Mi Selva Natal,” an exhibition of wildlife photography by Manuel Sanchez, who grew up in the rainforest of the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica; in the Downstairs North Hall Gallery, “Collected Works on Paper,” a layered collection of acrylic, collage paper, and mixed media that creates movement between what is concealed and what is seen, by Lisa Macchi; in the Downstairs South Hall Gallery, “Fired Earth,” Carol Grant’s ceramic vessels that evoke a sense of landscape in flux; in the Upstairs North and South Hall Gallery, “On the Threshold,” a group show of work by UVA sculpture and post baccalaureate students. 5:30-7:30pm.
Milli Coffee Roasters 400 Preston Ave. Ste. 150. “Memory and Place, A Study of Light and Color” featuring ink, watercolor, oil, and pastel works by Joey Laughlin. 7-10pm.
Roy Wheeler Realty Co. 404 Eighth St. NE.An exhibition of work by Susan Patrick. 5-7:30pm.
Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. In the main gallery, “All The Time I Feel Like Crying,” an exhibition of work by Sandy Williams IV, including sculpture, film, and text that highlight the arbitrary nature of systems and explores the plurality that informs our concept of time; in the Dové Gallery, “siren x silence,” paintings by Madeleine Rhondeau. 5:30-7:30pm.
Spring Street Boutique 107 W. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Almost Realistic,” featuring acrylic and mixed media paintings by Philip Marlin. 6-8pm.
Studio IX 969 Second St. SE. “Home is a Foreign Place,” featuring work by Dymph de Wild, who asks questions about where one belongs. 5-8pm.
Top Knot Studio 103 Fifth St. SE. “Keep It Like A Secret,” mobile photography by Chelsea Hoyt. 5-8pm.
VMDO Architects 200 E. Market St. “Sketches,” a multimedia show of work by the firm’s architects. 5:30-7:30pm.
Welcome Gallery 114 Third St. NE. “Language of the Land,” featuring oil paintings by Anna Bryant that speak of regional symbols that are distinctive to our area. 5-7:30pm.
WriterHouse 508 Dale Ave. “World Horizons,” an exhibition of Judy McLeod’s paintings on paper that combine gouache, watercolor, cut papers, crystals, and wax. 5-7pm.
Other November Shows
Art Box 5784 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. A show of paintings by Amy Shawley Paquette and photography by Tom Paquette. Opens November 10.
Annie Gould Gallery 121B S. Main St., Gordonsville. A holiday show featuring paintings, jewelry, photography, sculpture, textiles, and other unique gift items from more than 25 artists and artisans. Opens November 9, 5-7pm.
Buck Mountain Episcopal Church 4133 Earlysville Rd., Earlysville. “Native Botanicals,” featuring Judy Rodgers’ watercolor and colored pencil works on hotpress paper.
Create Gallery at Indoor Biotechnologies 700 Harris St. “Faces at Work,” an exhibition of Blake Hurt’s 40 small oil-on-canvas portraits of people who work at 700 Harris St.
Crozet Artisan Depot 5791 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. “Light, Color, & Clear Space,” an exhibition of blown glass art by Pat Ryan. Opens November 10, 3-5pm.
Fellini’s Restaurant 200 Market St. “Italian Memories,” an exhibition of watercolors by Linda Abbey.
The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA 155 Rugby Rd. “Reflections: Native Art Across Generations”; “Excavations: The Prints of Julie Mehretu”; “Unexpected O’Keeffe: The Virginia Watercolors and Later Paintings”; “Camera Work: American Photography of the Early 20th Century”; “Highlights from the Collection of Heywood and Cynthia Fralin”; and “Oriforme” by Jean Arp.
Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection 400 Worrell Dr. “Freshwater Saltwater Weave,” a series of glass works by contemporary urban-based Arrernte artist Jenni Kemarre Martiniello; “Beyond Dreamings: The Rise of Indigenous Australian Art in the United States,” revealing the ways in which, since 1988, Indigenous Australian artists have forged one of the most globally significant art movements of our time; and “Experimental Beds,” in which Judy Watson removes the whitewash from concealed histories.
Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “John Borden Evans: Blue Moon,” an exhibition of Evans’ otherworldly landscapes, through November 11; and “Annie Harris Massie: New Paintings,” opening November 17, 5-7pm.
Louisa Arts Center 212 Federicksburg Ave., Louisa. “Rhythm and Light,” featuring 2-D and 3-D works by amateur and professional artists. Through November 16.
Shenandoah Valley Art Center 122 S. Wayne Ave., Waynesboro. “A Photographic Aggregation,” an exhibition of work by Steve Ashby, who uses the medium of photography to examine chance. Opens November 3, 5-7pm.
Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian-Universalist 717 Rugby Rd. “Winneba, Ghana,” a show of photography by Alpha Barry, Sara Gondwe, Sarah Cargile, and Don and DeTeasa Gathers, who traveled to Winneba with the Charlottesville Sister Cities delegation earlier this year. Opens November 4, 12:30pm.
Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch co-star in the Live in HD series' Frankenstein on Halloween night at the Paramount.
Look alive:What better time to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s misunderstood monster than Halloween? Frankenstein received high-def attention in the filming of Danny Boyle’s adaptation at London’s National Theatre in 2011. In this electrifying resurrection, shown as part of the Live in HD series, Benedict Cumberbatch stars as the infamous doctor and Jonny Lee Miller as his deformed, childlike creation—one who has a bone to pick with his cruel community.
Wednesday 10/31 $11-15, 7pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 979-1333.
Hell in India is one of the films that Samhita Sunya selected for the Virginia Film Festival's Middle Eastern and South Asian Sidebar.
Samhita Sunya will go to great lengths to see a film on a big screen.
The cinema scholar has attended 7am screenings in theaters. When the weather’s nice and the sky is dark, she’ll set up a screen and a projector in her yard and watch from a lawn chair. Two years ago, she traveled hundreds of miles to New York City just to see a screening of the Urdu-language film, Jago Hua Savera (Day Shall Dawn).
Directed by A.J. Kardar, Jago Hua Savera is, on the surface, the story of a fisherman who dreams of owning his own boat on the Meghna River in Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan); more deeply, it’s the story of a poor community exploited by loan sharks. Considered by many critics to be an important work of Pakistani cinema and of humanist cinema in general, the film was banned not long after its release in 1959. At the time, director Kardar and his screenwriter, leftist poet and author Faiz Ahmad Faiz, were identified as communist enemies of Pakistan’s military dictatorship.
Samhita Sunya, assistant professor of cinema in UVA’s department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures, selected seven films for the 2018 Virginia Film Festival’s Middle Eastern and South Asian sidebar. Photo courtesy subject
For decades, Jago Hua Savera was thought to be lost forever. Sunya says it was through the painstaking efforts of the family of the film’s producer, Nauman Taseer, that prints of the black and white film were located in archives around the world and restored ahead of the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.
It is a film worth traveling for, but thanks to Sunya’s efforts, it’s screening on Sunday as part of the Virginia Film Festival’s Middle Eastern and South Asian Sidebar, for which Sunya curated seven films across two thematic clusters.
The three films in the Letters of Love comedy cluster are playful films from a region that Western audiences too often associate with authoritarianism, violence, war, and other horrors; the four films in the Rites of Remembrance cluster deal with displacement, each meditating on the past, on presence, and possibility.
Sunya, an assistant professor of cinema in UVA’s department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures since 2016, accepted the position at UVA in part because of the Virginia Film Festival (the promise of an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema helped, too). While in graduate school at Rice University, she worked as a projectionist and a film festival assistant for Rice Cinema, a small “but exuberant” theater that proved to Sunya that the interesting research conducted in academic and critical film circles can be translated for any public audience.
“Some films can be very much like the experience of reading a novel. Other films can be very much like going to a concert,” says Sunya. “Historically, what’s interesting to me about cinema—and this doesn’t necessarily mean that every film does this—is that it’s the first time that you have the possibility of huge audiences simultaneously watching the same thing across great geographic distances.”
Sunya focuses her academic lens on the prolific circulation of Hindi language films outside of India, particularly across the Middle East and Central Asia in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, considering why and how these films were popular among, as she says, “non-diasporic audiences in the period of the Cold War,” and what implications the emergence of global cinema may have had on Cold War politics.
She wants VAFF audiences to see the true variety of films in Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures and to disprove stereotypes—not all Iranian cinema is poetic, just as Indian cinema isn’t all Bollywood. She also notes that blockbuster films, from many countries, rarely make it to big screens in other parts of the world. Jago Hua Savera is one example, and all three films in Letters of Love have officially screened in the U.S. only once before, when Sunya previewed them at Yale University last April.
Sunya grew up in Houston, spent significant time in Bombay, and lived and taught in Beirut before coming to Charlottesville. She finds that Charlottesville is “a strikingly…multilingual place,” with “significant communities of people who speak Hindi, or Urdu, or Arabic, Persian, Turkish,” and she’s noticed that many folks in the city seem unaware of that diversity.
“Part of this endeavor is to cultivate spaces for many different kinds of audiences to come together,” says Sunya about her reasons for selecting these films.
Another “is to say that, maybe these films are not so ‘foreign’ in a sense,” says Sunya, because people in our town speak the languages of these films. The films all have English subtitles, but Sunya means languages in a broad sense—if you don’t speak Turkish, perhaps you understand the language of An Indian Father‘s gangster comedy. You may not speak Arabic, but you might speak musical comedy as seen in Hell In India. And if you don’t speak Arabic, English, or French, go see Road to Kabul anyway, because it’s highly possible you speak stoner comedy.
Now Playing
Samhita Sunya, assistant professor of cinema in UVA’s department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures, selected the following seven films for the Virginia Film Festival’s Middle Eastern and South Asian Sidebar:
Hell in India
An Egyptian military band goes to secure the release of a kidnapped ambassador. Thursday, November 1. 8:45pm, Newcomb Hall Theatre
Road to Kabul
After a trip to Amsterdam doesn’t go as planned, a group of friends searches for one of their own.
Saturday, November 2. 7:15pm, Violet Crown Cinema
An Indian Father
A stressed-out gangster falls in love with his yoga teacher.
Saturday, November 3. 2pm, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema
In The Last Days of the City
A filmmaker struggles to find inspiration for a film, until friends send him footage from around the world.
Friday, November 2. 3pm, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema
Oblivion Verses
The elderly caretaker of a remote morgue discovers the body of an unknown woman killed in a protest.
Saturday, November 3. 11am, Newcomb Hall Theatre
Looking for Oum Kulthum
An Iranian woman living in exile seeks to capture the life of a legendary singer.
Saturday, November 3. 4pm, Newcomb Hall Theatre
Jago Hua Savera (Day Shall Dawn)
A banned humanist cinema masterpiece once thought to be lost forever, it tells the story of a poor Bengali fisherman.
Governor Ralph Northam says the New York Strip he recently enjoyed at Prime 109 was the “best piece of meat I’ve ever had.” Photo by Amy Jackson Smith
Where was the best steak of Governor Ralph Northam’s life? Right here in Charlottesville.
Northam was in town to speak at the inauguration of James Ryan as president of the University of Virginia, and joined me afterwards for dinner. Given the occasion and guest, I chose Prime 109, which opened last month in the former Bank of America building on the Downtown Mall. From my prior visits, the new steakhouse seemed worthy of the celebration: a spectacular space with food to match. Indeed, our steaks were extraordinary.
But, what makes the steaks so good? Sure, the chefs are part of the answer. It’s the same talented team that runs the acclaimed pizzeria Lampo. The answer really begins, though, with someone who does not even work at Prime 109—their meat supplier, Ryan Ford. For years, Ford has been working on a problem he first encountered while running a butcher shop selling Virginia meat. In short, Virginia has an abundance of great cattle, but no easy path from farm to table.
Ford’s solution is Seven Hills, a Lynchburg meat company he launched in 2015 that instantly became the commonwealth’s largest independent slaughter facility. Ford’s mission is to connect Virginia farmers who care about the quality of their product with consumers who care about where their food comes from. The key is “vertical integration,” Ford says. Instead of processing cattle and returning meat to farms, like some facilities do, Seven Hills buys cattle from farms and handles all the rest: processing, aging, packaging, and distribution.
Relieved of the burden of sales and distribution, farmers can focus on what they do best. “Let the farmers farm,” says Ford. Also benefiting are customers, who have greater access to Virginia beef than ever before. Seven Hills sources only from farms that meet its high standards, and its humane, state-of-the art facility allows it to trace everything it sells back to the originating farm.
Ford’s hope is that this can change the way we eat beef. He envisions a Virginia where consumers expect to know where their meat comes from, whether they’re buying it at the supermarket or ordering it at a restaurant, and even grow to learn which farms they like best. Northam is on board. “As I travel the commonwealth, I see folks making it a priority to know where their food is coming from,” said Northam. “This benefits everyone—prioritizing local farms helps our economy, and customers become better educated about their food choices.”
Prime 109, which buys all of its beef from Seven Hills, is on board too, buying entire animals at a time. This, Ford says, is unheard of among steakhouses, which generally buy pre-fabricated cuts of bestsellers. In a typical 800-pound animal, classic steakhouse cuts comprise just 10-20 percent of the meat. What to do with the rest?
Cue Ian Redshaw, winner of this year’s Best of C-VILLE award for Best Chef. Determined not to waste a thing, he breaks down whole sides of beef and finds uses for it all: roasts, braises, terrines, stocks, burgers, sausages, and more.
As a dinner guest, Northam, whom I had met briefly a few times before, could not have been more pleasant. He grew up on a farm on the Eastern Shore, and nine months as the commonwealth’s most powerful man have done nothing to his affable, aw shucks demeanor. “Hi, I’m Ralph,” he would introduce himself to servers. On being governor, he told me, “It’s almost surreal that I am doing this.”
We sat at the chef’s counter, a marble bar perched beside the open wood-fired grill where we watched Redshaw cook. The concept for the food is familiar steakhouse dishes, enhanced. Unlike many steakhouses, Prime 109 is doing some serious cooking, with a team of cooks who have been head chefs of other top kitchens, including Lampo, Tavola, and Pippin Hill.”
Take Northam’s wedge salad. Iceberg lettuce rests beneath Bayley Hazen blue cheese, pickled onions, confit tomatoes, and beef bacon made from the bellies of beef that’s been dry-aged for 200 days. In a riff on buttermilk dressing, Prime 109 creates an herb dressing from kefir (house made fermented milk), tart and creamy. “Delicious,” Northam said. “Could be a meal unto itself.”
In our Oysters Rockefeller, Northam was thrilled to find Tangier Island oysters. “I am biased, but it’s hard to beat oysters from the Eastern Shore,” said Northam, who once worked on a construction crew that built the runway for Tangier Island’s airport, and after his term hopes to resume growing oysters himself. Covered in sautéed spinach and then broiled, the oysters were topped with a fonduta made by applying nitrogen dioxide to a blend of raclette cheese, cream, and nutmeg. Dehydrated shallots added crunch and punch.
Tangier Island oysters made another appearance in a showstopper of a side, a special that evening: “Oysters and Pearls” stuffing. First, oysters were cooked sous-vide and emulsified, and the resulting liquid was poured over pieces of bread made from Prime 109’s Parker House roll dough, drizzled with beef marrow drippings. Whole smoked oysters were then stirred into the stuffing, and the whole thing was baked and topped with Osetra caviar. “Really nice,” said Northam.
Then there were the steaks. Prime 109 offers meat that’s been dry-aged—a process that tenderizes the beef and concentrates flavor. Meat ages better if hung in very large pieces or as a whole side, which Seven Hills does at its facility and Prime 109 continues at the restaurant for optimal aging. This is a costly process, in part because of the labor, but also because of the weight loss. A 16-ounce dry-aged steak might have been 18 or 20 ounces before aging. Buying whole carcasses and butchering meat in-house allows Prime 109 to cut costs, and pass on savings to guests.
To be sure, this does not mean the steaks are cheap. Prices per steak currently range from $24-86, and toppings are extra. But it does mean that Prime 109 can afford to offer a unique product that, to my knowledge, is available at no other steakhouse: Virginia heritage beef, aged for 60 days or more. As one friend described the experience: “Expensive but underpriced.”
Can you really taste the difference? As a barometer to compare with other steakhouses, Northam chose a classic cut, New York Strip. The verdict? “Best piece of meat I’ve ever had,” he said.
I asked Redshaw to choose mine, and my reward was a 200-day-aged picanha, topped with an indulgent blend of burgundy truffles, onions agrodolce made with fish sauce, house chimichurri sauce, béarnaise, and demi-glace. Oh my. “That looks like a work of art,” Northam said. Tasted like one, too. The toppings might have overwhelmed a lesser steak, but the long dry-aging gave the meat a concentrated, earthy flavor that, like a good blue cheese, held up well. Though I often enjoy steak unadorned, this was one of my best steak experiences in memory.
As governor, Northam considers it part of his job to be an ambassador for Virginia. “We have really been trying to promote farm-to-table,” says Northam. Prime 109 could be his chief of staff.
The Ballad of Shirley Collins is one of many don't-miss documentaries at this year's Virginia Film Festival. Photo courtesy VAFF
At a festival that offers more than 150 films, highlighted by selections that have awards buzz and super-special guests, it can be difficult to choose wisely (and, with the way the VFF tickets sell, quickly). Here are five under-the-radar documentaries that rose to the top of our list, and are well worth your time.
Key changes
Whether or not you agree that Mumford & Sons ruined the genre, folk music has undeniably gone through enormous changes in the past decades—many of them thanks to innovators like Shirley Collins, who helped pioneer the shift from traditional to contemporary during the English folk revival of the 1960s and ’70s. British documentaryThe Ballad of Shirley Collins studies a similar shift in Collins’ career, juxtaposing some of her most famed classics alongside the creation of her first album in 38 years. As is the case with all music documentaries, the tunes are just as important as the story. In addition to a talk with the film’s directors and producers, the event features live music from Charlottesville’s Ned Oldham and Jordan Perry, a duo whose alt-country, electronic stylings truly bring folk into the 21st century.
Saturday at 7:45pm. Violet Crown.
Not a drop to drink
When it comes to pollution, few forms are as extensive and hard to ignore as a tainted water supply. West Virginia’s capital, Charleston, known for its industrial infrastructure, made headlines in 2014 for a chemical spill that left up to 300,000 people without clean drinking water, a tragedy chronicled in the documentary Still Life. The nation was shocked when a Freedom Industries facility released crude chemicals into the Elk River, but residents of Charleston and its surrounding counties were no strangers to unethical and irresponsible practices of corporations. Charlottesville native Johnny Saint Ours directed this documentary that takes a personal approach, focusing on the ways in which individual lives were affected or put on hold by the unnatural disaster. A discussion with Ours, along with producer Nana Agyapong, follows the harrowing film. Vivian Thomson, a retired UVA environmental science professor, moderates.
Saturday at 5pm. Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.
Collision of color
Black and Blue tells the story of Nate Northington, an unsung hero of the civil rights movement. When the African American football player joined the Kentucky Wildcats in 1967, he broke a major color barrier as the first black athlete to compete in the Southeastern Conference. This documentary details the incredible true story of Northington’s tumultuous journey through an all-white environment, spurred on by the memory of a fellow black athlete and friend whose plans to play alongside him were cut short in an unforeseen accident. Along with director Paul Wagner, Wilbur Hackett, and Paul Karem—one a fellow black athlete, the other an advocate for athletes’ rights, and both subjects of the film—will all participate in a discussion moderated by Claudrena Harold, a UVA professor of African American and African studies and history.
Friday at 6pm. Vinegar Hill Theatre.
Cultured creativity
There’s more to M.I.A. than just catchy hip-hop tracks. The artist everyone knows by her three-letter moniker and energetic, politically charged tracks like “Paper Planes” and “Go Off” has lived under three identities in her life—Mantangi/Maya/M.I.A.—and the documentary of the same name seeks to capture each phase. From being a daughter of the resistance in civil war-torn Sri Lanka to finding both physical and creative refuge in the U.K. to her birth as a musician, the brilliant, brash artist’s voice has been shaped over multiple continents and a life’s worth of experience. This documentary compiles the musician’s personal videos, filmed during the past 22 years, as a means of explaining the unique circumstances that made M.I.A. one of the most singular and important voices in hip-hop.
Saturday at 8:30pm. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.
Highest education
Whether a conversation focuses on solving climate change, curing cancer, or perfecting artificial intelligence, it seems like “the next generation” is always referenced. But how well equipped is the next generation to tackle such enormous projects? The documentary Science Fair seeks to provide an answer, tracking nine bright high school students from across the globe as they progress through the eponymous competition while at the same time dealing with issues that come with growing up. Though the prestigious “best in fair” hangs over each competitor’s head, this story is less about the contest and more about the young minds involved, giving an impressive, reassuring window into the lives of some of the geekiest teens on Earth. A discussion follows the film with Charlotte and Emily Keeley, two associates of the Boston Consulting Group, and Curry school professor Jennie Chiu. The panel is moderated by Matthew Shields, a science teacher at Charlottesville High School.
We gather in the dark to see better in the light. Revelation and apprehension, moral suasion and informed reflection . . . cinema expands our knowledge, clarifies our thinking and moves us to action for our own sakes and our neighbor’s. Opening our eyes, it opens our hearts—or just our mouths to laugh out loud.
Always topical, always surprising, by turns invigorating, agitating and just plain funny, the Virginia Film Festival takes over Charlottesville theaters each fall with a hometown-curated selection of buzz-generating new films and history-making oldies, attracting cinemaphiles, cinematographers, the clued in and the merely curious. All told, it’s an intense four days—and it’s coming right up.
Set for November 1-4 on big screens all around the city, the 31st annual Virginia Film Festival will center on 150 films, locally produced to internationally acclaimed, including a tribute to one of the art form’s most innovative and intriguing figures, Orson Welles.
“Our 2018 program is highlighted by a selection of some of the most talked-about films on the current film festival circuit,” said Jody Kielbasa, director of the Virginia Film Festival and Vice Provost for the Arts at the University of Virginia, “including many that have vaulted to the top of the current major award season conversations.”
When the closing credits roll, the talk will begin. Over 100 industry guests from around the world (including director, writer, actor and producer Peter Bogdanovich, director and producer Allen Hughes, and Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz) will join local thinkers and shakers for Q-and-A’s, galas, parties and general geekdom with an engaged, let’s-change-the-world edge.
Opening Night Drama America’s racial tensions, ever festering and newly inflamed, will be examined from a number of angles this year, starting on November 1 at 7:00 p.m. at the Paramount Theater with Green Book, the dramatic feature debut of director Peter Farrelly.
Inspired by the true story of Jamaican-American jazz and classical pianist and composer Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) and New York bouncer Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), who chauffeured Shirley on a tour in 1962, the film takes its name from a segregation-era travel guide written to help African-Americans manage the legal roadblocks, dangers, and soul wearying degradations of the Jim Crow South.
Martin Luther King III on Charlottesville Charlottesville’s own recent racial ignominy is the focus of Charlottesville, a documentary about the Unite the Right rally in August 2017 that asks “How could this happen in modern America?”
Martin Luther King III, son of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, will address the community following the film’s national premiere on Saturday, November 3 at
4:00 p.m. at the Paramount. King will then take part in a discussion moderated by UVA Center for Politics director Larry Sabato.
“Martin Luther King III has dedicated his life to carrying on the cause to which his father dedicated, and ultimately gave his life,” Kielbasa says. “We are proud to be working with our friends and partners at the UVA Center for Politics to share this powerful documentary and to be part of a conversation about how we can and must move forward together in our ongoing effort to create the kind of world Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned for us all.”
Roma Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, where he’d gone to support striking sanitation workers. Before his death he’d planned a March on Washington on behalf of the poor.
This year’s Centerpiece Film, Roma, Saturday, November 3 at 8:30 p.m. at the Paramount, is director Alfonso Cuarón’s semi-autobiographical tale of one such member of this often forgotten, overlooked and taken for granted class of people, a live-in housekeeper caring for four school-aged children in Mexico City in 1970.
An examination of family dynamics,Mexican social matters, and the passage of time, the film is Mexico’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film in the 2018 Academy Awards.
A Little Laughter Variety calls The Favourite, a period comedy concoction about two cousins vying for the favor of Queen Anne in early 18th century Britain, “a perfectly cut diamond of a movie.” Kielbasa calls it “a stunning film” and “an incredibly fun watch” about which there is “tremendous Oscar buzz.” Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’s dark and bawdy comedy with a lesbian love triangle stars Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz, and may be seen on Friday, November 2 at 7:00 p.m. at the Paramount.
Before the talkies the movies were already funny. Ben Mankiewicz and Peter Bogdanovich will screen and discuss the latter’s critically-acclaimed documentary The Great Buster, a look at the life and career of silent film icon Buster Keaton, on Saturday, November 3 at 11:00 a.m. at St. Anne’s-Belfield School.
Orson Welles A collaboration of sorts between two celebrated directors, living and dead; a controversially received, late period attempt at a “new kind of film”; and two context-setting documentaries—par for the course for the Virginia Film Festival, where intellectually enticing deep dives are just part of the fun.
When Orson Welles died in 1985 with his quasi-autobiographical film, The Other Side of theWind,still unfinished, his good friend Peter Bogdanovich vowed to complete the project.
Nearly a half century after production began, Bogdanovich has fulfilled his promise, editing and assembling hundreds of hours of Welles’ raw footage to recreate what he envisaged: a satire of Hollywood’s golden age, and a film-within-a-film starring one Hollywood legend as another one attempting a comeback.
Bogdanovich will introduce They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, Morgan Neville’s new Netflix documentary about Welles’ final directorial efforts, on Saturday, November 3 at 6:30 p.m. at the University of Virginia’s Culbreth Theatre.
He will present The Other Side of the Wind itself on Sunday, November 4 at 12:00 noon at the Paramount, then discuss the film and its original director in a conversation moderated by Ben Mankiewicz.
Welles’ experimental docudrama F For Fake, which puzzled fans and critics upon its release in 1973, will be shown at Vinegar Hill Theatre on Friday, November 2 at 3:15 p.m. A discussion with director Allen Hughes, who chose the film and for whom Welles was a major influence, will follow.
On Thursday, November 1 at 7:30 p.m. Vinegar Hill Theatre will show The Eyes of Orson Welles, a new and very personal tribute by director Mark Cousins based on Welles’ own drawings and sketches.
Allen Hughes Allen Hughes and his twin brother Albert started young and worked fast. The two Detroit boys produced their first homemade films at age 12, dropped out of high school to direct music videos for hip hop artists like Tupac Shakur at 18, and premiered Menace II Society, the first major motion picture rooted in hip hop culture, at the Cannes Film Festival when they were only 20.
Allen Hughes will present Menace II Society on Friday, November 2 at 8:30 p.m. at Vinegar Hill Theatre. On Saturday, November 3 at 7:00 p.m. at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Hughes will screen and discuss The Defiant Ones, his popular HBO docu-series about the unlikely and often contentious partnership between music moguls Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine.
Christoph Waltz German-Austrian actor Christoph Waltz won Academy Awards for Inglourious Basterds in 2009 and Django Unchained in 2012. Academy Award-winning producer Mark Johnson will interview Waltz and show highlights of his work in A Tribute to Christoph Waltz on Saturday, November 3 at 1:00 p.m. at the Paramount.
“Our audiences will not only have the chance to hear from someone who is clearly one of the leading actors working today, but also one who is at the very top of his game, and whose star is still on the rise,” Kielbasa said. “He is truly one of the most interesting and talented actors of his time, and brings a sense of originality to every role that makes it nearly impossible to imagine anyone else in it.”
National Geographic Beginning a new partnership with National Geographic, the Festival will present a trio of documentaries, including Science Fair (Thursday, November 1 at 6:00 p.m. at UVA’s Newcomb Hall Theatre), a chronicle of nine high school students from around the globe competing for honors at the International Science and Engineering Fair.
Two former fair winners will join Charlottesville High School’s Matthew Shields, founder of the internationally acclaimed science club BACON (Best All-around Club of Nerds), for a panel discussion after the screening.
Free Solo (Saturday, November 3 at 2:15 p.m. at St. Anne’s-Belfield School) follows rock climber Alex Honnold, as he pursues a lifelong quest to scale Yosemite’s 3,000-foot El Capitan—alone, and without a rope.
In Into the Okavango (Sunday, November 4 at 11:00 a.m. at the Culbreth), National Geographic photographer Neil Gelinas accompanies researchers on an expedition to the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana to discover why the Okavango River is drying up.
Biggest Little Farm Documentary director John Chester and his wife Molly, a chef and cookbook author, are the intrepid young couple at the heart of Biggest Little Farm (Saturday, November 3 at 3:45 p.m. at the Culbreth), the autobiographical story of how the Chesters ditched their two-bedroom Santa Monica apartment for a whole ‘nother ecosystem, fighting coyotes, insects and wildfires to establish a self-sustaining biodynamic farm outside L.A..
“It’s a feel-good film,” Kielbasa says, “a great story that will resonate here in our community, which is such a strong supporter of farm-to-table and sustainable living and locally sourced food.”
Family Day Film, fun and food (some of it no doubt of the sugar high inducing sort) is the bill of fare for Family Day on the Betsy & John Casteen Arts Grounds at UVA on Saturday, November 3 from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Five family-friendly shorts will be shown at 10:00 a.m., followed at 1:00 p.m. by Disney/Pixar’s 2017 hit Coco and a 90th anniversary viewing of Steamboat Willie, an eight-minute black-and-white cartoon which, in Kielbasa’s words, “really launched Mickey Mouse and the Disney Company.”
UVA faculty, students, and community organizations will lead arts-inspired workshops (some require pre-registration). As always, the Festival’s Young Filmmakers Academy will roll out the red carpet to premiere films by local school kids produced in collaboration with Light House Studio, and the Charlottesville Symphony will offer a musical instruments petting zoo.
Family Day is free and open to the public; complimentary and convenient parking will be available at the Culbreth Road Garage.
The Front Runner This year’s Closing Night Film, set for Sunday, November 4 at 7:30 p.m. at the Paramount, is a work with exceptional resonance in today’s political climate. Jason Reitman’s The Front Runner, starring Hugh Jackman, looks back at Gary Hart’s 1988 run for the Democratic presidential nomination, abruptly aborted after the press, following Hart’s own dare, uncovered evidence of an extra-marital affair.
The film’s stellar cast includes Vera Farmiga as Hart’s wife, J.K. Simmons as his embattled campaign manager, and Alfred Molina as famed Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee.
“Given everything that’s been happening with the press and our country and the world in the last two years, I cannot think of a more immediate and compelling subject than the three-week period when Gary Hart suddenly became the frontrunner in the presidential race and then his race imploded,” Kielbasa says.
“It has issues of personal character and judgment and the right to privacy, and it’s really an extraordinary film coming up a couple of days before the mid-terms.”
Resonance, relevance, range and power—thirty times now the Virginia Film Festival has brought the world to Charlottesville, entertaining and astonishing, giving pause for reflection, spurring action from resolve. Silence your phone and take a breath. Thirty-one is about to start.
It has Blue Ridge views and Starr Hill brews, and it has a treasured piece of Virginia history, Crozet does. And it’s ready for its close-up.
Quiet, lovely, and only a 15-20 minute drive from Charlottesville, the little town known for the railroad overpass, the old train depot, and the pizza joint National Geographic called the best in the world, is sprucing up, growing out, and enjoying a rising standard of living.
Situated alongside Route 250 and not far off I-64, “crow-zay” (sounds much better than “crah-zit’)is approximately 12 miles west of Charlottesville and 21 miles east of Staunton. Originally named “Wayland’s Crossing,” it was renamed in 1875 in honor of Colonel Claudius Crozet, the French-born civil engineer behind the construction of the Blue Ridge Tunnel (1850-1858) for the rail line connecting Charlottesville to Staunton.
Crozet covers a total area of 9.7 kilometers according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and has a median home value of $332,000. Its growing population of roughly 6,620 is a well-educated: 32 percent of its residents have earned a Master’s degree or higher, 27 percent have a Bachelor’s degree, and 19 percent have an Associate’s degree or have taken some college classes.
Crozet is also a youngish community, with a median age of 38 and a half. “Crozet is becoming a central hub for folks who work in Charlottesville, who want to be close enough to town but have all the amenities of Crozet,” says REALTOR® Angus Arrington IV with Real Estate III.
“I have been here 33 years,” says Roy Wheeler Realty Co. REALTOR® John Updike, marveling at the transformation he’s seen. “When I first moved here the only grocery store was the IGA” (now Crozet Market, with a bakery and deli). “If you wanted something else, you’d have to go into town to get it. I’ve watched Crozet develop over the years. The growth has been pretty amazing.”
“Back in the day I always said ‘Ten years from now Crozet is going to be a great place to live.’ Ten years has gone by pretty quick and I think what I said holds true. Whether it’s a drugstore or grocery store, most of what you need is now in Crozet. It has become a become a self-sustaining community.”
“Crozet is a beautiful area surrounded by mountain views,” says REALTOR® Greg Slater of Nest Realty, who moved to town in 2009. “It has a small town feel with all the benefits of community and the relationships caused by that environment. The schools are recognized as some of the best in the area and many choose Crozet for that reason. There are plenty of amenities as well in the form of outdoor activities and entertainment.”
“Crozet has three economic hubs,” notes REALTOR® Jim Duncan with Nest Realty: “Downtown, Old Trail Village, and the Route 250 corridor where Harris Teeter is.” Route 240 is busy as well.
Next door to each other on the original historic Three Notched Road are the entertainment marketing company Musictoday, founded and run by Dave Matthews Band manager Coran Capshaw, and one of the area’s first breweries, Starr Hill.
Downtown Crozet The tiny old downtown is where Bob and Karen Crum and their four children opened Crozet Pizza in 1977 in an old, unoccupied building they rehabbed themselves, serving gourmet pizzas back in the day when the usual options were pepperoni, sausage or cheese.
Today their daughter, Colleen, her husband Mike Alexander, and their three daughters, operate the restaurant that’s earned high praise from National Geographic, Fodor’s, Food NetworkMagazine and The Washington Post.
The oldest store in town is the Modern Barber Shop, a family-run business dating to 1933. Crozet Hardware first opened, albeit in another location, in 1949. Two doors down, Charlottesville coffee shop owners John and Lynelle Lawrence opened their Crozet Mudhouse in 2009.
Around the corner and down a block or so is the Crozet Library. Long housed in a 1923-vintage Chesapeake and Ohio Railway depot, charming but small, it relocated in 2013 to a new 18,000-square-foot facility with study rooms and conference spaces, a separate section for teens, and a fireplace lounge with rocking chairs and tall windows looking out to the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Today the old train station is the Crozet Artisan Depot, showcasing a collection of handmade arts, crafts and accessories by over 70 regional artisans. Sharing the space is the Tourism and Adventure Center run by the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention & Visitors Bureau.
Outdoors Some of Crozet’s most popular destinations from spring through fall are its orchards.
At Chiles Peach Orchard and Farm Market, the Chiles family first planted peach trees back in 1912, shipping the crop all over the country for commercial production. In 1974, when a bad freeze left them with so little fruit that the usual picking and packing routine wasn’t worth its while, they put an ad in the paper, set up a card table, scales and a cigar box, and hoped for the best. They sold out.
Local pickers have been welcome since, as what was meant to be a one-time, emergency measure became an annual April through November, pick-your-own-fruit tradition. Today they offer peaches, strawberries, sweet cherries, pumpkins and seventeen kinds of apples. Visitors will also find a frozen yogurt machine, an ice cream parlor, and numerous enticing fruit products.
Another old Crozet family lends its name to another old Crozet orchard, Henley’s. Joseph T. Henley, Sr. was the Commonwealth of Virginia’s first fruit inspector. In 1932 he purchased five acres of land and planted apple trees, gradually expanding his property to grow nectarines and peaches as well.
Henley’s Orchard has been in the family for four generations now, offering its fruit from mid-June till the end of October. Late-season apples are kept in cold storage and sold throughout the winter until April.
Fruit lovers enjoy healthy bodies, and healthy bodies love to move. Locals sports and recreation fans flock to the 520-acre, wheelchair-accessible Mint Springs Valley Park, with its beach, hiking trails, playgrounds and picnic shelters with grills.
Eight acres of water are stocked with sunfish, channel catfish, and largemouth bass, and U.S. Coast Guard-approved boats with electric motors (no gas) are welcome. The annual Crozet Running Trail 5K is held in Mint Springs each May.
The local YMCA makes its home in Claudius Crozet Park, which also features baseball and soccer fields, tennis courts, walking trails, a pool, and a dog park, and hosts the Peachtree Baseball program and the award winning Gators Swim Team. During the park’s annual Arts and Crafts Festival each fall over 120 jury-selected fine art and craft exhibitors sell handcrafted works.
Engaged couples seeking a picturesque setting for their weddings, are grateful for David and Ellen King, who moved to Virginia from Houston, Texas in 1995.
An avid polo player since 1980, David wanted a farm with twelve relatively flat acres for a polo field. Today their Crozet property contains both a polo field and King Family Vineyards, where eighteen different wines are currently for sale.
Field and weather conditions permitting, matches on Roseland Polo Field take place each Sunday at 1:00 pm from Memorial Day Weekend through early October. Gates open at 10:00 a.m. The matches are free and open to the public, and begin at 1:00 pm.
Crozet Real Estate All this good living attracts homebuyers, and Crozet is an officially designated Albemarle County growth area.
“Crozet has a good mix of existing and new communities,” Slater says. “There are a wide variety of housing opportunities. There are older communities with smaller homes, townhomes, villas, and single family detached homes, and there are opportunities in neighborhoods with HOAs, as well as more rural properties.”
“About 30 percent of the homes that sold this year were built before 2000. About 30 percent were new construction. The other 40 percent fall in between. So far this year the median price for closed home sales is $435,000. The low was $130,000 and there have been three sales in excess of $1 million.”
Growth has brought retail services as well.
Beginning in 2005, Old Trail Village introduced the popular New Urbanism model of living to Crozet: a walkable urban village with a Village Center consisting of 35 apartments and an array of locally owned shops and restaurants, plus an ACAC Fitness and Wellness Center and healthcare facilities.
Seasonal outdoor entertainment in the Village includes family movie nights, craft fairs, markets, festivals and other special weekend events.
Townhomes and single family homes starting at $464,900 ring the Center, and more are going up now—about 1,500 people currently make their home there, a figure that’s expected to triple once construction is finished.
Adjacent are the Old Trail Golf Club and the Kandi Comer Golf Academy, which offers private and group golf lessons for seniors, adults and juniors. Kandi herself has been recognized as one of the top instructors in Virginia by Golf Digest, and her Golf Academy is a Certified GolfDigest Clubfitter.
With all these amenities, it’s no wonder the Crozet community is truly multi-generational. “All demographics are attracted to the Crozet area,” Slater says. “It is not uncommon for family members to migrate into this area to be close to other family that has settled here.”
One option for older residents is The Lodge at Old Trail, a senior living community with rental apartments in the standard categories of Independent Living, Assisted Living and Memory Care. Just a short distance away from the Village’s shops and businesses, it boasts access to a pool, garden, fitness center, athletic fields, golf course, and miles of walking trails.
“Parents, kids, and grandparents canget together at the restaurants or the coffee shop, and see each other but go back to their own homes,” Updike says. “The grandparents are not in some place that feels like an institution they have to go back to. Old Trail has everything from babies to grandparents—to me that’s a great concept.”
Crozet Lore, Crozet Style Drivers passing by Old Trail in 2007 might have been astonished to see an ark and a number of rather non-native animals—elephants, camels, chimpanzees!—in a neighboring field. Comedy director Tom Shadyac was filming part of “Evan Almighty,” his 2007 take-off on the Biblical Noah’s Ark story updated to the 21st century, in 21st century Crozet.
The film bombed, but if cinematic glory proved elusive, Crozet had won some literary love, thanks to Rita Mae Brown’s Mrs. Murphy series. Brown set the popular feline mystery novels here, name-checking the town paper, the Crozet Gazette, and incorporating local businesses like Parkway Pharmacy, Crozet Tack and Saddle, and Over the Moon bookstore, all still operational today, into her plots.
The ark is gone, its inhabitants dispersed across the face of the earth, but the area today is graced with an abundance of better appointed domiciles, not to mention better weather and a lot less drama.
“We wanted a slower pace of life” says Jim Duncan, explaining why he moved his family to Crozet in 2002. “It’s been a great place to work, raise kids, coach soccer, ride a bike.” As an avid cyclist, Duncan raves about Crozet Trails, twelve miles of trails accessible by foot, bike or hybrid bike, “a phenomenal asset to Crozet,” he says. “I ride a road bike with a cycling club, and we ride every day of the week. The roads here are world class.”
A world class place to ride, not to mention the great views, rich community, and a relaxed pace of life. What does that sounds like? That sounds like Crozet.
The newly released Orson Welles film The Other Side of the Wind, starring John Huston, Welles, and Peter Bogdanovich, will be shown at the Paramount Theater on Sunday. Bogdanovich’s documentary on silent film star Buster Keaton, The Great Buster, screens at St. Anne’s-Belfield School on Saturday. Due to an injury, Bogdanovich will not appear in person, but he will participate in the scheduled discussions via Skype. Photo courtesy of VAFF
By Justin Humphreys
arts@c-ville.com
Decades ago, actor/writer/director/film historian Peter Bogdanovich promised his friend and colleague Orson Welles that, if Welles couldn’t finish his work-in-progress, The Other Side of the Wind, he would complete it for him. Now, Bogdanovich, at age 79, has beaten countless setbacks and fulfilled that promise.
Academy Award-winning editor Bob Murawski and co-producer Frank Marshall worked with a team to parse 100 hours of Welles’ unedited footage, shot decades ago by a mostly deceased crew. Marshall describes the process as, “a cross between a jigsaw puzzle and a scavenger hunt.” Together, they assembled a cohesive work respectful of its legendary creator’s vision.
The Other Side of the Wind stars John Huston as Jake Hannaford, a vile, macho director, trying to revive his faltering career with a counterculture movie. Bogdanovich co-stars as director Brooks Otterlake, Hannaford’s protégé. The highly anticipated film will be shown on Sunday at the Paramount Theater.
In addition, Bogdanovich’s new documentary The Great Buster, which chronicles comic genius Buster Keaton’s turbulent life and career, will screen on Saturday.
Ironically, Keaton was one of the few classic Hollywood giants Bogdanovich didn’t interview. “I missed him by about two months,” Bogdanovich says. “I was just trying to find him and he died.” Bogdanovich spoke with C-VILLE by phone from France.
C-VILLE: After so many failed attempts at finishing The Other Side of the Wind, how did the film finally coalesce?
Peter Bogdanovich: After [producer] Filip [Rymsza] got the two women, Beatrice Welles [Orson’s daughter] and Oja Kodar [co-author/star], to collaborate on the picture, everything else seemed to fall into place. Netflix stepped up to the plate and they’ve been just incredible, I mean extraordinary—better than any studio I’ve worked for. We went over budget and they didn’t even mention it.
You were heavily involved in the editing?
Oh, sure. [The film’s veterans] all were. We all had input. Bob did a very good job. It was a long process. …Everybody worked on it very hard, very diligently, very dedicated, with a lot of love there.
Many of the film’s participants are now gone. How did it feel being one of the last men standing and watching the finished product?
A little strange. I mean, here I am in my 70s, watching myself in my 30s. That was pretty odd. And I hadn’t seen much of the footage with me in it . . . So it was quite an experience, actually. I haven’t quite dealt with it fully.
What was it like being directed by Orson?
That’s interesting. Orson Welles created an atmosphere on the set—not for the crew, but for the actors—where you absolutely felt like you could do anything. You never felt like you shouldn’t do something, or shouldn’t try something, it was a very free atmosphere where you could do anything you wanted. He laughed a lot and made us laugh. He made it a fun set for the actors. [Meanwhile] the crew worked like dogs, like slaves.
They got along famously, [Huston] and Orson. It was great. You know the climactic scene between Huston and me, where I stick my head in the window? Huston wasn’t there for that scene. I played that scene with Orson. That’s why it’s so emotional. And Orson’s only direction to me in that scene was ‘It’s us.’
I sensed throughout the film that it was so much about you two. It was touching.
I haven’t let myself really go with it emotionally. I just watch it and say ‘It’s brilliant and Orson’s brilliant.’ And it’s the best performance I ever gave in a movie, or anywhere.
How did The Great Buster come about?
I had met Charles Cohen before, the producer, I don’t know where. And he asked me if I would like to do a documentary on Buster Keaton, and I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ And that was it.
It’s wonderful that Keaton was revered at the end of his life, after several rough decades.
Happily, the Venice Film Festival gave him that tribute, which allowed me, in the plot, to come back to the features at the end, which I thought was the one really good idea I had—to make it a celebration and come back to the features at the end rather than the middle.
What do you think is Keaton’s lasting genius as a filmmaker?
He always knew where to put the camera. He was a brilliant actor of comedy—extraordinary. He knew instinctively what to do.
What’s next for you?
I’m not quite sure. Paramount, out of the blue, asked to option The Killing of the Unicorn, the book I wrote about Dorothy Stratten, and they want to make a 10-hour series out of it. As far as features are concerned, the one I’m planning to do but I don’t know if I’ll do it next, because it’s a bit elaborate, is a comedy-drama-fantasy called Wait For Me, that I’ve been working on for 30 years. I think it’s the best thing I ever wrote.
The newly released Orson Welles film The Other Side of the Wind, starring John Huston, Welles, and Peter Bogdanovich, will be shown at the Paramount Theater on Sunday. Bogdanovich’s documentary on silent film star Buster Keaton, The Great Buster, screens at St. Anne’s-Belfield School on Saturday. Due to an injury, Bogdanovich will not appear in person, but he will participate in the scheduled discussions via Skype.
