Tag: VAFF

Categories
Arts Culture

The making of Taking

Shot on 16mm film in Charlottesville, Danny Wagner’s For the Taking fuses a homegrown heist plot with a cast of varied acting experience. Image courtesy of VAFF.

Danny Wagner knows he’s a baby in the modern movie biz.

The young filmmaker has worked as a production assistant for major television studios on shows like “Young Sheldon” and as a production coordinator on multiple feature films. But he says he’s still “not there yet” when it comes to making it in Hollywood.

Wagner’s own first feature film, For the Taking, could be the break he’s been looking for. The movie will premiere at the Virginia Film Festival on Sunday.

“The Virginia Film Festival is the first film festival I ever knew, and getting to have our world premiere there is in some ways a climax,” Wagner says. “Its reputation is prestigious, but it also gives movies like ours that are made in the area a chance to shine in a larger venue.”

Wagner, a Charlottesville native and UVA grad, has filmmaking in his blood. Both his parents are documentarians, and he began learning about producing movies when he was “in the single digits.” 

The single digits wasn’t so long ago for Wagner—he graduated from UVA in 2018—and his passion for cinema has persisted over the past two decades. He found his voice as an actor in school productions and at Live Arts, and while the university doesn’t have a film department or offer a filmmaking major, Wagner cut his teeth in the media studies department with a film theory concentration and by taking on internships. A work-study he completed with casting and production agency arvold. was particularly enlightening, he says.

“That was an amazing way to understand the film scene not just in Virginia, but along the East Coast and Eastern Seaboard,” Wagner says. “I made a reel of the actors they had in big projects—‘House of Cards,’ ‘Turn,’ and others—and all the talent they had helped cultivate in Virginia really opened my eyes.”

Wagner says For the Taking, a 77-minute heist flick, was a happy accident of the 2020 pandemic. The emerging filmmaker and then-Los Angeles resident was forced back to his hometown of Charlottesville when work dried up. Staying in touch with other industry folks in Virginia, New York, L.A., and beyond, he hatched an idea: Write a script about a guy down on his luck and forced into a caper, cast two unknowns as lead actors, bring in more experienced thespians to guide the newbies, and film the whole thing in rustic 16mm.

The result is an eccentric movie with a raw edge that Wagner believes he was only able to capture using a couple guys new to the silver screen.

“I got really excited about the idea of capturing their little idiosyncratic mistakes to create natural moments,” the filmmaker says. “And I think the natural occurrences make you feel excited for them to succeed. It has been a long, rocky process to get it finished, but it does live by that principle—a spontaneous, authentic, and organic set of characters.”

Wagner also sees For the Taking’s homemade quality as a plus in modern distribution. Could he move the film over to YouTube at some point? Cut the whole thing up and turn it into TikToks? Take it on the road and show it outdoors on projectors? He’s open to anything if it means more people see his movie.

“For the Taking has only taken my money so far, but everyone who has worked on this film has equity in it, and if the film succeeds, we all succeed,” Wagner says. “We all see it as a stepping stone, and I am really happy with what we made. It’s breezy, authentic, and heartfelt. I think there’s an audience for it.”

For the Taking

October 29 | Culbreth Theatre | With discussion

Categories
Arts Culture

They’re back!

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.

Categories
Arts Culture

Cast your eyes on the 2020 Virginia Film Festival

The Virginia Film Festival features a drive-in screening of the vegan-friendly documentary Gunda, an American-Norwegian documentary film that follows the daily life of a pig, two cows, and a one-legged chicken,  and reveals these animals to be capable of emotion, consciousness, and even free will. Image courtesy of VAFF.

Unprecedented, unexpected, insane…we could go on, but after months of living in a world with coronavirus, a presidential campaign, and a series of transformative social justice movements, well, you get the idea.

To combat it all, we’ve been baking, we’ve been Zooming, we’ve been sitting six feet apart at social gatherings.  We’re ordering takeout, enjoying a cocktail (or five!), and streaming entertainment—a lot. During this strangest of autumns, movies have provided distraction, affirmation, education, and so much more.

Despite having to rethink audience participation, the Virginia Film Festival is a beacon of normalcy at a time when nothing feels normal. Gone are the tightly packed movie houses of previous years, but the quality programming and insightful guests remain the same. The pivot to virtual screenings gives everyone a front-row seat, and a return to drive-in movies offers a nostalgic connection to a bygone era.

We will miss the smell of popcorn, the collective laughter and tears, crawling over legs to the middle seat, and even that guy at the Q&A session who just won’t quit. But the time is still right for the 33rd annual Virginia Film Festival. Stay safe, promote peace. And I hope to see you sitting next to me next year.

Categories
Arts Culture

PICK: 9 Pillars Hip Hop Music Video Showcase

Stage to screen: For the second year in a row, the Virginia Film Festival is screening works by local hip-hop video directors and rappers during the 9 Pillars Hip Hop Music Video Showcase. Curated by Cullen “Fellowman” Wade, who compiles a wide variety of styles within the genre, the showcase connects some of the most prolific creative work in the community to a broader audience. The lineup of eight music videos includes King Gemini’s “Play Me,” directed by Ty Cooper; J-Wright ft. Scottii’s “Memories,” directed by Kidd Nick; and Damani Harrison’s “One For George,” directed by Harrison and Eric Hurt. A discussion with filmmakers follows the screenings. Virtual access pass required.

Through 10/25, $8-65, content becomes available October 21 at 10am. virginiafilmfestival.org.

Categories
Arts Culture

Wisdom and love: Eduardo Montes-Bradley composes a tribute to Alice Parker

When Melodious Accord, Inc., reached out to Charlottesville-based documentarian Eduardo Montes-Bradley and asked him to craft a film about the life of musician and composer Alice Parker, Montes-Bradley knew he had to meet Parker before he said yes.

He headed up to Boston, and the two drove together to Parker’s 17th-century New England cottage home, where Montes-Bradley pulled out his camera and asked her to describe her earliest memory. Parker told him of sitting on the floor by her mother as she played the piano. It sounded to Montes-Bradley like a picturesque description of an early 20th-century postcard.

“There is something absolutely magical about this person,” Montes-Bradley says. “I felt that I was running into my own grandmother. I felt enveloped by wisdom and love…when I saw her through the lens, I thought, ‘this is it. This is the person. This is my next movie.’”

The evening scene that Montes-Bradley shot in his very first meeting with his 95-year-old subject is cut throughout his latest film, Alice: At Home with Alice Parker, which will be shown at the festival beginning October 21. It’s the director’s latest in a long documentary career that took him from Buenos Aires to the University of Virginia’s Heritage Film Project.

Pinning Alice together is the music. Normally, Montes-Bradley doesn’t share his work until it’s finished, but this time he collaborated with Parker for her expert advice on the film’s score. He uses Parker’s own voice and compositions for most of the soundtrack, with the exception of a haunting underscore that is voiced by her late husband, Tom Pyle.

Pyle died in the ’70s, leaving Parker to raise five children alone. Around the time, Parker parted ways with her longtime mentor, conductor Robert Shaw.

“I believe that Alice Parker becomes Alice Parker when she traumatically detaches herself from the shadow of these two amazing men,” Montes-Bradley says. “She becomes the fabulous woman she is in a time of change in the world, and in America, with regards to women’s rights.”

The documentary was shot in February, meaning that Montes-Bradley pieced the work together in isolation. That unique process lends the film a warm kind of intimacy. Every shot of Parker’s gentle hands and gleaming eyes are proof of the connection Montes-Bradley found with her during this strange spring.

“I think what saved me from going insane during this quarantine early period was precisely my relationship to this subject,” Montes-Bradley says. “In the basement of my house in Charlottesville when I started editing…I had my conversations. The rest of my conversations with her, most of them happened in quarantine, with me in the basement and Alice on the screen.”

Parker is a prolific composer of everything from hymns to operas, and she set music to the words of everyone from Martin Luther King Jr. to Emily Dickinson. Alice reminds viewers that beyond the impact these works hold for the American choral scene, Parker is still a relatable human.

“The time that I took to do this, and the possibility to go deeper into those connections, allowed me to understand where she was coming from and the importance of her work, the relevance of her work,” Montes-Bradley says. “She connects us through music to some of the literary works of the first half of the century.”

Categories
Arts Culture

Real to reel: Director Nicole Kassell discusses bringing ‘Watchmen’ to life

Nicole Kassell will be in conversation with VAFF Program Manager Chandler Ferrebee, available for streaming beginning October 21 at 10am. Photo courtesy of VAFF

HBO’s hit series “Watchmen” presents a universe where high fantasy collides with horrible reality, a world where an alternate world replete with superheroes and interdimensional creatures shifts to a very real American atrocity. Building on the 1985 graphic novel Watchmen, writer/executive producer Damon Lindelof (“Lost”) has crafted a frequently askew viewing experience around the 1921 Tulsa massacre, a brutal incident of racial violence.

Having previously collaborated with Emmy-winning director (and former Charlottesville resident) Nicole Kassell on his series “The Leftovers,” Lindelof hired her to direct the “Watchmen” pilot, “It’s Summer, and We’re Running Out of Ice.” Kassell wisely approached the series’ often arcane events with an abiding goal: verisimilitude.

“I think that’s especially why Damon had brought me onboard,” Kassell, 48, says, “because as wild as the scenario goes, I keep it grounded. Number one is keeping the performances totally grounded in realism.”

The show’s excellent ensemble cast, headed by Regina King, must “fully believe the world around them,” she observes.

Lindelof worked closely with every facet of the production. “He sees everything, from production design to key props, before it goes on screen,” says Kassell. “And especially with this one because there was so much inventing of new things.” The two collaborators had a “lot of dialogue,” she says, “because we’re all working together to create a new and interesting world and a new language.”

The “Watchmen” pilot also required Kassell to pursue another kind of realism. The episode opens graphically on a true-life American tragedy: the racist destruction of Tulsa’s African American Greenwood district. Their depiction of this historically neglected 1921 atrocity is likely its first-ever dramatization, and Kassell felt an unstinting commitment to do it justice.

She thoroughly researched the event, using Tim Madigan’s book The Burning as her primary source. When location scouting began, her very first stop was Tulsa’s Greenwood community. “It was essential to me that we started there, to go to the Greenwood Cultural Center and talk to people, and stand on the street where the Greenwood Theater was, and take in that history,” she says.

Kassell describes the two days of filming the sequence as “definitely intense.” It was meticulously designed in preproduction, “and most importantly,” Kassell says, “we really worked to inform the cast and the crew of exactly what we were doing. Because so many of us were learning about this [event] for the first time from the screenplay.

“It was essential to me that we were not taking it lightly or in vain or just for dramatic purposes…to treat it with the utmost respect. It was very powerful and very harrowing and disturbing. But everybody involved, whether they were playing the perpetrator or the victim, we were all there working together for a cause.”

That intensity created a bond on location. “The gift was really to see, in-between takes, background actors sitting, chatting, laughing together, and these were people that had just been fighting during the take a moment before.”

No stranger to Virginia, Kassell spent “half my childhood” in Charlottesville, she says, and has been a guest at the Virginia Film Festival in the past. She was here in 2004 with her breakout film The Woodsman, starring Kevin Bacon.

Proud that the enormous viewership of “Watchmen” has inspired discussions of key issues like race, Kassell was initially excited that the series was “just giving a place for people to talk about these issues.” Now, she notes, “so much more has happened that is causing the conversation, which is invaluable that it’s happening.”