Bill Murray is part of the star-studded cast in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, which will screen at Morven on the opening night of the Virginia Film Festival. Publicity image.
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 include actress Martha Plimpton, appearing in conjunction with a screening of her new film Mass. Playwright and actor Jeremy O. Harris will accept the VAFF’s 2021 American Perspectives Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinema. (Harris made headlines earlier this week when his Slave Play, nominated for 12 Tonys , including Best Play, did not win a single award.) During the festival, he will be awarded for co-writing the dark comedy Zola, and his extensive work with HBO. On the local front, former Roanoke Times reporter Beth Macy will discuss the Hulu limited series “Dopesick,” based on her book about the opioid crisis in central Appalachia, and produced by Michael Keaton.
Kielbasa says that inclusivity has always been essential to the mission of the festival, and program manager Chandler Ferrebee confirms that at least 50 percent of the VAFF films are directed by women or people of color. Ferrebee points to Flee, an animated documentary produced by Riz Ahmed, and Jane Campion’s western, The Power of the Dog, starring Kirsten Dunst and Benedict Cumberbatch, as two must-see movies. (Another Cumberbatch film, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, will also be screened during the festival.)
New this year are COVID protocols that combine standard practice with community policies: guests will be tested, masks are required for everyone at indoor venues, and proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test will be needed to attend The Paramount Theater events. In addition, the Paramount will feature open captions for screenings and ASL interpreters during stage conversations.
A returning favorite are the drive-in movies at Morven, which include the opening night feature The French Dispatch from Wes Anderson, plus a Halloween night showing of the cult classic, The Addams Family.
The full program will be posted online at 10am September 30, and tickets will be available beginning at noon on Tuesday, October 5, through virginiafilmfestival.org, by calling (434)924-3376, or in person at the UVA Arts box office.
For Brighter Together, visual artist Jeff Dobrow took the small screen to the big screen by displaying his work on several UVA architectural icons, such as the Rotunda (above). The series finale is May 14 and 15 at UVA Chapel.
Photo courtesy of subject
Of all the changes COVID has brought to the arts world, one of the most significant has been to big-screen entertainment. Charlottesville theaters and moviemakers have done their best to adapt, whether it’s drive-in film festivals or rent-a-theater evenings, but the pandemic has undeniably sped up the trend of people consuming entertainment alone and on decidedly smaller screens.
Jeff Dobrow, a visual and technology artist based in Charlottesville, has given a lot of thought to this. “We are so used to consuming amazing experiences in small ways,” he says. “Our laptop screen is 17 inches. That’s our new world.”
He argues that it doesn’t have to be that way. Brighter Together, Dobrow’s ongoing series of visual shows through UVA Arts, is his solution to the small-screen problem. Since late March, Dobrow has been using projection mapping technology to display a variety of images on various buildings on Grounds, starting with the chapel and concluding on May 14 and 15 with Madison Hall. The intended result is to inspire both awe and hope—awe at the dazzling, enormous images transforming iconic architecture, and hope about the ability to safely draw crowds of art lovers together in the same space.
Creating such larger-than-life projections may seem like a daunting task, but it’s business as usual for Dobrow, who’s been working in technology since he was a teen. (“It’s been my entire life, since I started programming computers for RadioShack in 1983.”) Much of his early career was devoted to the commercial side of the field, but he says that one day he woke up, “did a 180,” and immersed himself in the arts instead.
Dobrow had been living and working in Charlottesville for several years when UVA Arts reached out to him about the Brighter Together project. “I’ve known Jody [Kielbasa] for probably five or six years,” he says. Back in 2017, he and Kielbasa, UVA’s vice provost for the arts, had “chatted about the bicentennial”—an event that heavily utilized projection mapping on the Rotunda, displaying a visual history of the building—“but that was not my kind of show.” When Dobrow gave up commercial art, he also shifted away from chronological storytelling in his visuals, opting for more loosely conceptual work. His style didn’t mesh with the bicentennial’s, but it proved to be perfect for Brighter Together.
True to form, Dobrow consciously chooses not to tell a story with his work on these buildings—either of the university at large or of the pandemic year. “I didn’t want to create a piece that contemplated…the horrible reality [of 2020],” he says. “We’ve had enough of that. Let’s dance, let’s have some fun.”
Fun doesn’t begin to describe the sublime projections. Some of the images are recognizable and taken from the animal kingdom, like a tiger prowling across the surface of the chapel or a butterfly visiting flowers on the Rotunda—a decidedly more peaceful image than the bicentennial’s flaming Rotunda, itself a callback to the disastrous real-life fire of 1895. Other Dobrow images, rippling and morphing shapes and patterns, are less rooted in reality. Everything is connected by different selections of EDM music that can be heard at each of the Brighter Together events.
Dobrow identifies these soundtracks, and how they interact with the visuals, as the most important relationship in his artwork, aside from the relationship between the art and the building onto which it’s projected. For Brighter Together, he enlisted the help of Red Flower Lake, a local husband-and-wife group. The duo’s otherworldly tunes pair nicely with Dobrow’s trippy visuals, creating a product that might be commonplace at a music festival, but is considerably more remarkable when projected onto UVA’s historic buildings.
Projection mapping is still a new art form, particularly in the U.S. “It’s huge in the rest of the world and has been for years,” says Dobrow. “Like most things in the United States, our first exposure to it was…through revenue-generating advertising.” He’s advocating for it to become a more accepted medium, both for patrons of the arts and for aspiring creators. “A huge part of what I do is education, especially for at-risk kids. No one has heard of [projection mapping], but a lot of it is accessible.”
Not only is the concept relatively recent, Dobrow says it’s also constantly in flux thanks to continual technological improvements—or, in his words, “basically everything that’s going to turn us into Terminator 2.” It’s already incredible, he stresses—the GPU technology he’s used for Brighter Together enables the images to interact with the music in real time—and it’s becoming more advanced by the day. He contrasts the canvas and brush process of traditional painting with the more complex world of projection mapping. “With technology, we are experiencing things we didn’t think we could do.”
What Dobrow wants to emphasize most—and what’s hardest to convey in a newspaper article—is the sheer magnitude of his projects. He says the creation of his projections often gives him small-screen fatigue, hunched over “my little laptop for endless periods of time…but when I go and put it back on the building, it’s huge. It’s everything. The transformation hits me every time.”
Brighter Together is a partnership between The Division of Student Affairs, UVA Arts, and the office of the Provost and Vice Provost for the Arts with generous support from the AV Company.
The Centerpiece Film of the 2019 Virginia Film Festival is Harriet, starring Zackary Momoh as John and Cynthia Erivo as Harriet Tubman. Credit: Glen Wilson / Focus Features
Oscar buzz abounds among the spotlight films screening at the 32nd Annual Virginia Film Festival, from the opening night feature, Just Mercy, starring Michael B. Jordan, to writer-director Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story with Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda and Ray Liotta. VAFF Director and UVA Vice Provost for the Arts Jody Kielbasa also announced appearances from guest programmers: artist Federico Cuatlacuatl, filmmaker Michelle Jackson, filmmaker and programmer Joe Fab, film scholar Samhita Sunya, artist and scholar Mona Kasra, and Washington Jewish Film Festival director Ilya Tovbis.
Music fans will get an exclusive look at the Bruce Springsteen concert film Western Stars, and actor, writer, and director Ethan Hawke is coming to town to reflect on his career and screen the 2007 film Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, in which he stars alongside the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Ann Dowd known for her role as Aunt Lydia in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” will participate in a discussion following Dismantling Democracy, a political documentary she narrates.
Senior guest programmer Ilana Dontcheva says a synergy emerged among the submitted films, resulting in a new sidebar featuring women writers and directors, and director Wanuri Kahiu will be at the screening of her film, Rafiki (a love story between two women that was banned in 2018 in Kenya), for a conversation about her career and the creation of the Afrobubblegum Movement.
The Virginia Film Festival takes place October 23-27; tickets will go on sale to the public at noon on Monday, September 30. More information can be found at virginiafilmfestival.org.
Vice Provost for the Arts and Director of the Virginia Film Festival, Jody Kielbasa, announced the lineup for the 2018 Virginia Film Festival at Tuesday's press conference. Tickets go on sale to the public on Monday, October 8.
By Adriana Wells
The Virginia Film Festival (VAFF) returns to Charlottesville this fall with a lengthy list of standout films and special guests for its 31st annual festival, to take place November 1 through 4.
Highlights of the event will include a tribute to the late actor Orson Welles, led by Welles’ friend Peter Bogdanovich. Other guest speakers include Menace II Society co-director Allen Hughes, Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz, and Martin Luther King III.
This year’s festival opens November 1 with Green Book, the story of a 1960s friendship without barriers. The film is inspired by the true story of gifted pianist Don Shirley and his hired bouncer Tony Lip; Lip, who is white, must guide Shirley, who is black, through the segregated Deep South via safe houses mentioned in a guidebook.
Green Book isn’t the only film on the list to embrace difference and diversity. James Madison’s Montpelier and the University of Virginia to present, once again, a “Race in America” series, which aims to explore issues and perspectives relevant to the history of the area. The series includes a screening of the documentary Charlottesville, which looks at what the events of August 11 and 12, 2017 imply about modern America.
After the screening, Martin Luther King III will deliver a community address.
Other films embrace the LGBTQ+ community, such as Good Manners, a fairytale that festival programmer Wesley Harris describes as a “Brazilian lesbian werewolf horror movie. You’re welcome.”
Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma—a look inside the life of domestic worker Cleo and the family she cares for in the midst of Mexico’s intense political climate—is the centerpiece of this year’s festival.
The lineup also includes 15 films from all over the world; each has been submitted for consideration in the 2019 Academy Awards’ “Best Foreign Language Film” category. One of these, also a VAFF spotlight film, is Colombia’s Birds of Passage, in which members of the Wayuu tribe, the ethnic group indigenous to Colombia’s Guajira Peninsula, gets into the drug trade.
Jason Reitman’s The Front Runner closes the festival on November 4. It’s a timely political piece that centers on Gary Hart’s brief political career of the late 1980s, blurring the lines of what remains personal as accusations fly.
Tickets are on sale at noon on Monday, October 8, both online and in-person at the UVA Arts Box Office at 109 Culbreth Rd. Monday through Friday, noon to 5pm.
Director Jody Kielbasa introduces his ninth film festival.
Staff photo
In the wake of the August 11-12 events, the 30th Virginia Film Festival harkens back to its earlier days when it had a theme every year. This year, it’s morphed into a sub-theme of “race in America” in partnership with Montpelier, according to festival director Jody Kielbasa.
Previously announced director Spike Lee had been asked to attend back in the spring. A few days after a white supremacist invasion put Charlottesville on the hate map, Lee called and said he’d be here, says Kielbasa, and he’ll be screening his documentary, 4 Little Girls, about the 1963 bombing of a church in Birmingham.
“That was domestic terrorism,” says Kielbasa. “They didn’t label it then.”
Kielbasa’s old friend William Macy, star of Showtime’s “Shameless,” will be on hand to screen his new film, Krystal.
Festival stalwart/producer Mark Johnson will bring his latest offering, the new Alexander Payne film Downsizing, the third time a Payne movie will open the festival, following The Descendants in 2011 and Nebraska in 2013. It stars Matt Damon and Kristin Wiig.
“OJ: Made in America” filmmaker Ezra Edelman will be on hand, as will UVA alum Margot Lee Shetterly, who wrote the book that was made into the film Hidden Figures.
Christian Bale’s new movie, Hostiles, is the centerpiece film, and it stars Rosamund Pike and Wes Studi. Director Scott Cooper is a Virginia native and he’ll be here for a discussion at the Paramount.
The current era of “fake news” coincides with the 30th anniversary of Broadcast News, which will be followed with a discussion by legendary newsman Jim Lehrer and the Miller Center’s Wyatt Andrews.
Cult classic Harold and Maude will get the shot-by-shot treatment. And silent films by Alfred Hitchcock—The Lodger (1927)—and Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant on its 100th anniversary will be accompanied with live music by Matthew Marshall and the Reel Music Trio.
The festival features foreign films that it’s virtually impossible to catch around here, and fans of Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke will get to see his latest, Happy End, among the 10 or so currently confirmed.
The festival runs November 9 to 12, and tickets go on sale Friday, September 29.
It’s the time of year C-VILLE editorial staffers dread most: landing on the final names for our Power Issue, followed by the inevitable complaints that the list contains a bunch of white men. Sure, there are powerful women and people of color in
Charlottesville. But when it comes down to it, it’s still mostly white men who hold the reins—and a lot of them are developers. The good news: that’s changing. (And we welcome feedback about who we missed, sent to editor@c-ville.com.)
If you’re looking for a different take on power, skip over to our Arts section, where local creative-industry leaders share their most powerful moments (grab some Kleenex!) on page 46.
1. Robert E. Lee statue
More than 150 years after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, he continues to be a divisive figure—or at least his statue is. The sculpture has roiled Charlottesville since a March 2016 call (see No. 2 Wes Bellamy and Kristin Szakos) to remove the monument from the eponymously named park.
As a result, in the past year we’ve seen out-of-control City Council meetings, a Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces, a City Council vote to remove the statue, a lawsuit and injunction to prevent the removal and the renaming of
the park to Emancipation.
The issue has turned Charlottesville into a national flashpoint and drawn Virginia
Flaggers, guv hopeful and former Trump campaign state chair Corey Stewart, and Richard Spencer’s tiki-torch-carrying white nationalists. Coming up next: the Loyal White Knights of the KKK July 8 rally and Jason Kessler’s “Unite the Right” March August 12.
You, General Lee, are Charlottesville’s most powerful symbol for evoking America’s unresolved conflict over its national shame of slavery and the racial inequity still present in the 21st century.
Spawn of the Lee statue
Jason Kessler
Before the statue debate—and election of Donald Trump—Charlottesville was blissfully unaware of its own, homegrown whites-righter Jason Kessler, who unearthed Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy’s offensive tweets from before he took office and launched an unsuccessful petition drive to remove Bellamy from office, calling him a “black supremacist.” Since then, Kessler has slugged a man, filed a false complaint against his victim and aligned himself with almost every white nationalist group in the country, while denying he’s a white nationalist. The blogger formed Unity and Security in America and plans a “march on Charlottesville.” Most recently, we were treated to video of him getting punched while naming cereals in an initiation into the matching-polo-shirt-wearing Proud Boys.
SURJ
The impetus for the local Showing Up for Racial Justice was the seemingly unrelenting shootings of black men by police—and white people wanting to do something about it. But the Lee statue issue has brought SURJ into its own militant niche. Pam and Joe Starsia, who say they can’t speak for the collective, are its most well-known faces. The group showed up at Lee Park with a bullhorn to shout down GOP gubernatorial candidate Corey Stewart, interrupted U.S. Representative Tom Garrett’s town hall and surrounded Kessler at outdoor café appearances on the Downtown Mall, shouting, “Nazi go home!” and “Fuck white supremacy!”—perhaps unintentionally making some people actually feel sorry for Kessler.
2.City Council
Not all councilors are equally powerful, but together—or in alliances—they’ve kept the city fixated on issues other than the ones citizens normally care about: keeping traffic moving and good schools.
Mayor Mike Signer. Photo by Eze Amos
Mike Signer
Mayor Signer took office in January 2016 in what is widely seen as a step to higher office. He immediately riled citizens by changing the public comment procedure at City Council meetings. A judge determined part of the new rules were unconstitutional, but some council regulars say the meetings do move along much better—at least when they’re not out of control with irate citizens expressing their feelings on the Lee statue. Signer called a public rally, sans permit, to proclaim Charlottesville the capital of the resistance. And despite his vote against removing the statue, he’s not shied away from denouncing the white nationalists drawn to Charlottesville like bears to honey.
Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy. Photo by Eze Amos
Wes Bellamy
Most politicians would be undone by the trove of racist, misogynistic and homophobic tweets Bellamy made before he was elected to City Council. As it was, they cost him his job as an Albemarle County teacher (a post from which he resigned after being placed on administrative leave) and a position on the Virginia Board of Education. But he fell on the sword, apologized and acknowledged the “disrespectful and, quite frankly, ignorant” comments he posted on Twitter. Perhaps it helped that Bellamy, at age 30, is a black male leader, has real accomplishments and has dedicated himself to helping young African-Americans. Despite his missteps, he is the voice for a sizable portion of Charlottesville’s population.
City Councilor Kristen Szakos. Photo by Elli Williams
Kristin Szakos
Szakos raised the topic of removing the city’s Confederate monuments several years before she teamed up with Bellamy, and she was soundly harassed for her trouble. When she ran for office, she called for town halls in the community and bringing council to the people, and she’s always demonstrated a concern for those who can’t afford to live in the world-class city they call home. She announced in January she won’t be seeking a third term in the fall.
City Councilor Kathy Galvin. Photo by Christian Hommel
Kathy Galvin
Galvin, an architect, envisions a strategic investment area south of the Downtown Mall, and her job will be to convince residents it’s a good deal for them. Council’s moderate voice, she, along with Signer, were the two votes against removing the Lee statue.
City Councilor Bob Fenwick. Photo by Chiara Canzi
Bob Fenwick
Even before losing the Democratic nomination June 13 with a dismal 20 percent of the vote, Fenwick was always the odd man out on council. His moment in the sun came earlier this year when he abstained from a split vote on removing the Lee statue, lobbied for pet causes among his fellow councilors and then cast his vote in the “aye” side, joining Bellamy and Szakos. That vote did not yield the groundswell of support he might have imagined from the black community. And although he leaves council at the end of the year as a one-termer, there are those who have appreciated Fenwick’s refusal to join in lockstep with the rest of council, and his willingness to call out its penchant for hiring consultants without taking action.
Coran Capshaw. Photo by Ashley Twiggs
3. Coran Capshaw
Every year we try to figure out how to do the power list without including Capshaw. But with his fingers in pies like Red Light Management (Dave Matthews, Sam Hunt); venues (the Pavilion, Jefferson, Southern and, most recently, the Brooklyn Bowl); Starr Hill Presents concert promotion and festivals such as Bonnaroo; merchandise—earlier this year, he reacquired Musictoday, which he founded in 2000; restaurants (Mas, Five Guys, Mono Loco, Ten) and of course development, with Riverbend Management, we have to acknowledge this guy’s a mogul. There’s just no escaping it.
In local real estate alone, Capshaw is a major force. Here are just a few Riverbend projects: City Walk, 5th Street Station, C&O Row, the rehabbed Coca-Cola building on Preston and Brookhill.
True, he fell from No. 7 to 11 on this year’s Billboard Power 100, but in Charlottesville, his influence is undiminished. And now he’s getting awards for his philanthropy, including Billboard’s Humanitarian of the Year in 2011, and this year, Nashville’s City of Hope medical center’s Spirit of Life Award.
UVA’s Rotunda. Photo by Karen Blaha
4. UVA
In January, UVA President Teresa Sullivan announced her summer 2018 retirement, and directed the Board of Visitors to begin the search for a new leader to rule Thomas Jefferson’s roost, the top employer in Virginia with its state-of-the-art medical center, a near-Ivy League education system and a couple of research parks teeming with innovative spirit.
Charlottesville native venture capitalist James B. Murray Jr., a former Columbia Capital partner of Senator Mark Warner, was elected vice rector of the Board of Visitors, and will take the rector-in-waiting position July 1, when Frank M. “Rusty” Connor III begins a two-year term as rector.
And lest we forget, the UVA Foundation recently purchased the university a $9 million 2015 Cessna Citation XLS—an eight-seat, multi-engine jet—to haul around its highest rollers.
Jaffray Woodriff. Photo by Eze Amos
5. Jaffray Woodriff
As the founder of Quantitative Investment Management, a futures contract and stock trading firm with experience in plataforma trading, Woodriff has landed at No. 28 on Forbes’ list of the 40 highest-earning hedge fund managers in the nation, with total earnings of $90 million. His troupe of about 35 employees manage approximately $3.5 billion in assets through a data science approach to investing.
Woodriff, an angel investor who has funded more than 30 local startups, made headlines this year when he bought the Downtown Mall’s beloved ice skating rink and announced plans to turn Main Street Arena into the Charlottesville Technology Center, which, according to a press release, “will foster talented developers and energized entrepreneurs by creating office space conducive of collaboration, mentorship and the scalability of startups.”
Demolition of the ice rink is scheduled for 2018, so there’s time yet to lace up your skates before you trade them in for a thinking cap.
Keith Woodard. Photo by Amy Jackson
6. Keith Woodard
Some might argue that Woodard’s power stems from the unrelenting complaints of people who are towed from his two downtown parking lots. But it’s the real estate those lots sit on—and more. The owner of Woodard Properties has rentals for all needs, whether residential or commercial. The latter includes part of a Downtown Mall block and McIntire Plaza. He was already rich enough to invest in a Tesla, but Woodard is about to embark on the biggest project of his life—the $50 million West2nd, the former and future site of City Market. Ground will break any time now, and by 2019, the L-shaped, 10-story building with 65 condos, office and retail space (including a restaurant and bakery/café) and a plaza will dominate Water Street.
Will Richey. Photo by Amy Jackson
7. Will Richey
When you talk about Charlottesville’s ever-growing restaurant scene, one name that seems to be on everyone’s tongue is Will Richey. The restaurateur-turned-farmer (his Red Row Farm supplies much of the produce in the summer for the two Revolutionary Soup locations) owns a fair chunk of where you eat and drink in this town: Rev Soup, The Bebedero, The Whiskey Jar, The Alley Light, The Pie Chest and the newest addition, Brasserie Saison, which he opened in March with Hunter Smith (owner of Champion Brewery, which is also on the expansion train, see. No. 9). Richey’s restaurant empire seems to know no bounds, and we’re excited to see what else he’ll add to his plate—and ours—in the coming years.
Rosa Atkins. Photo by Eze Amos
8. Rosa Atkins/Pam Moran
The superintendents for city and county schools have a long list of achievements to their names, with each division winning a number of awards under their tenures.
This month, Atkins—the city school system’s leader since 2006—was named to the State Council of Higher Education, but she’s perhaps most notably the School Superintendents Association’s 2017 runner-up for national female superintendent of the year.
Pam Moran. Photo by Amy Jackson
Moran, who has ruled county schools since 2005, held a similar title in late 2015, when the Virginia Association of School Superintendents named her State Superintendent of the Year, which placed her in the running for the American Association of School Administrators’ National Superintendent of the Year award, for which she was one of four finalists. This year, she requested the School Board continue to fund enrollment increases for at-risk students, making closing learning opportunity gaps a high priority.
Hunter Smith. Photo by Amy Jackson
9. Local beer
Throw a rock in this area and you’ll hit a brewery. For one thing, the Brew Ridge Trail is continually dotted with more stops. And new breweries in the city just keep popping up: Reason Brewery, founded by Charlottesville natives and set to open next month on Route 29 near Costco, is the latest. Other local additions include Random Row Brewery, which opened last fall on Preston Avenue, and Hardywood, based out of Richmond, which opened a pilot brewery and taproom on West Main Street in April.
And local breweries are not just opening but they’re expanding: Three Notch’d and Champion both opened Richmond satellite locations within the last year (that marks Three Notch’d’s third location, with another in Harrisonburg). And what pairs better with good drinks than good eats? Champion is adding food to its Charlottesville menu, and its brewers are enjoying a Belgian-focused playground at the joint restaurant venture Brasserie Saison.
Another sure sign that craft beer is thriving is the Virginia Craft Brewers Guild’s annual beer competition, the Virginia Craft Beer Cup Awards, which is the largest state competition of its kind; this year, 356 beers in 24 categories were entered. And Charlottesville is the new home of the organization’s annual beer showcase, the Virginia Craft Brewers Fest, which is moving from Devils Backbone Brewing Company to the IX Art Park in August. Host of the event, featuring more than 100 Virginia breweries, will be Three Notch’d Brewing Company, which is expanding its brewing operations from Grady Avenue into a space at IX, set to open in 2018.
Amy Laufer. Publicity photo
10. Amy Laufer
With 46 percent of the vote in this month’s City Council Democratic primary and nearly $20,000 in donations, Laufer also had a lengthy list of endorsements, including governor hopeful Tom Perriello and former 5th District congressman L.F. Payne.
Laufer, a current school board member and former chair and vice chair of the board, is also the founder of Virginia’s List, a PAC that supports Democratic women running for state office. If she takes a seat on City Council, keep an eye out for the progress she makes on her top issues: workforce development, affordable housing and the environment.
Khizr Khan. Photo by Eze Amos
11. Khizr Khan
Khan launched the city into the international spotlight when he, accompanied by his wife, Ghazala, took the stage on the final day of the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and harshly criticized several of then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s policies, including his proposed ban on Muslim immigration.
“Donald Trump, you’re asking Americans to trust you with their future,” Khan said. “Let me ask you, have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy. In this document, look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of the law.’”
Khan could be seen shaking a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution at the camera—his face splayed across every major news network for days thereafter. At the convention, he discussed the death of his son, Humayun, a UVA graduate and former U.S. Army captain during the Iraq War, who died in an explosion in Baqubah, Iraq.
Khan also spoke before hundreds at Mayor Mike Signer’s January rally to declare Charlottesville a “capital of the resistance,” and Khan and his wife recently announced a Bicentennial Scholarship in memory of their son, which will award $10,000 annually to a student enrolled in ROTC or majoring in a field that studies the U.S. Constitution.
John Dewberry. Photo by Eze Amos
12. John Dewberry
Even though he doesn’t live around here, he’s from around here, if you stretch here to include Waynesboro. Dewberry continues to hold downtown hostage with the Landmark Hotel, although we have seen some movement since he was on last year’s power list. After buying the property in 2012, he said he’d get to work on the Landmark, the city’s most prominent eyesore since 2009, once he finished his luxury hotel in Charleston, South Carolina. That took a few years longer than anticipated—these things always do—but earlier this year Dewberry wrangled some tax incentives from City Council, which has threatened to condemn the structure, and on June 20, the Board of Architectural Review took a look at his new and improved plans. One of these days, Dewberry promises, Charlottesville will have a five-star hotel on the Downtown Mall.
13. Andrea Douglas
The Ph.D. in art history, who formerly worked at what’s now UVA’s Fralin Museum of Art, always seemed like the only real choice to head the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, and since it opened in 2012, she’s made it an integral part of the community. The heritage center is far from self-sustaining, but a $950,000 city grant, a fundraising campaign and Douglas’ steely determination keep the historic school—and its place in the city’s history—firmly in the heart of Charlottesville. And Douglas can get a seat at Bizou anytime she wants—she’s married to co-owner Vincent Derquenne.
Paul Beyer. Photo by Ryan Jones
14. Paul Beyer
Innovation wunderkind Beyer ups the stakes on his Tom Tom Founders Festival every year. The event began six years ago as a music-only festival, but has morphed into a twice-a-year celebration of creativity and entrepreneurism. The fall is dedicated to locals who have founded successful businesses/organizations, while the week-long spring event continues to draw some of the world’s biggest names in the fields of technology, art, music and more. This year’s spring fest, which added a featured Hometown Summit that drew hundreds of civic leaders and innovators from around the country to share their successes and brainstorm solutions to struggles, was the biggest yet: 44,925 program attendees, 334 speakers and 110 events.
Lynn Easton and Dean Porter Andrews. Photo by Jen Fariello
15. Easton Porter Group
We know them as local leaders in the weddings and hospitality industry (Pippin Hill Farm & Vineyards is often the site of well-to-do weddings, with some totaling in
the $200,000s, we hear), but now the Easton Porter Group has its sights set on a much bigger portfolio: Its goal is to secure 15 luxury properties in high-end destinations in the next 10 years. In 2016, the group, owned by husband-and-wife team Dean Porter Andrews and Lynn Easton, landed on Inc. magazine’s list of the 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the nation.
Their latest project is to our north, with the renovation of the Blackthorne Inn outside of Washington, D.C., in Upperville, Virginia. The historic hunt-country estate, which is being transformed into a boutique inn featuring luxury-rustic accommodations, fine dining and wine, is projected to open in spring 2018.
The Easton Porter Group’s other businesses include Red Pump Kitchen on the Downtown Mall, as well as Cannon Green restaurant and the Zero George Hotel Restaurant + Bar in Charleston, South Carolina.
16. EPIC
Equity and Progress in Charlottesville made a poignant debut earlier this year, shortly after the death of former vice-mayor Holly Edwards, who was one of the founders of the group dedicated to involving those who usually aren’t part of the political process. It includes a few Democrats no longer satisfied with the party’s stranglehold on City Council, like former mayor Dave Norris and former councilor Dede Smith. The group has drawn a lot of interest in the post-Trump-election activist era, but its first two endorsements in the June 13 primary, Fenwick and commonwealth’s attorney candidate Jeff Fogel, did not fare well. The group still holds high hopes for Nikuyah Walker as an independent City Council candidate, and despite the primary setback, says Norris, “We may not have won this election, but we certainly influenced the debate.”
Dr. Neal Kassell. Courtesy photo
17. Dr. Neal Kassell
UVA’s Focused Ultrasound Center, the flagship center of its kind in the U.S., has had a banner year. The use of magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound technology to treat tremors has moved from the research stage to becoming more commercialized for patient treatment. And we can thank Kassell, founder and chairman of the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, for placing our city in the neurological pioneering sphere.
Two months ago, the Clinical Research Forum named the center’s use of focused sound waves to treat essential tremor (the most common movement disorder) instead of requiring invasive incisions, as one of the top 10 clinical research achievements of 2016. And it can’t hurt to have someone as well-known as John Grisham in your corner. He wrote The Tumor, and the foundation, which works as a trusted third party between donors, doctors and research, distributed 800,000 copies.
Kassell is the author of more than 500 scientific papers and book chapters, and his research has been supported by more than $30 million in National Institutes of Health grants. In April 2016, he was named to the Blue Ribbon Panel of former vice president Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative.
18. Jody Kielbasa
Since Kielbasa came to town in 2009, he has continued to steer the Virginia Film Festival toward an ever-expanding arts presence in not only our community, but statewide as well. Last year’s festival featured more than 120 films and attracted big-name stars, including director Werner Herzog and Virginia’s own Shirley MacLaine. And Kielbasa expanded his own presence locally, as he was appointed UVA’s second vice provost for the arts in 2013, which places him squarely in the university’s arts fundraising initiatives. Last year there was talk of a group of arts sector powerhouses forming to lobby the city in an official capacity to gain more funding for local arts initiatives—no surprise that Kielbasa was among those mentioned.
