THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 1, 1996 TAG: 9604010102
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
The Virginia Festival of American Film will be downsized because of budget woes.
Renamed the Virginia Film Festival, the annual event at the University of Virginia will run for three days instead of four, and its budget will be cut by more than half, from about a half million dollars to under $200,000, said Richard Herskowitz, director of programming.
The number of events will drop from 55 to about 30, organizers said.
Run every October by the university's Division of Continuing Education, the festival has gained national recognition. Using seed money provided by Albemarle County residents Patricia Kluge and John Kluge plus additional state funds from the Virginia Film Office, the first film festival took place in 1988.
State funding ended in the wake of Virginia's 1990 fiscal problems, but corporate sponsorship and university dollars helped pick up the slack. The idea was to have the university's contributions decrease while the festival increased its outside funding, said Sondra Stallard, acting dean of the continuing education department.
``I think there was a hope at that time that we could become a Sundance (Film Festival),'' Stallard said, adding that Charlottesville just didn't have the location to make that a reality. The 15-year-old Sundance film festival is held in Utah and run by actor Robert Redford.
``The goal for the (Virginia) festival was to raise private funds and to sustain itself,'' she said. ``Unfortunately, this has just never materialized
Festival officials have said the event lost $70 in 1994 and ran either a slight surplus or slight deficit for the previous three years. Financial results from last year's festival could not be determined, the Daily Progress of Charlottesville reported Sunday.
The festival now will become part of the College of Arts and Sciences. In its new form, the festival will integrate the shorter program with a year-long set of course offerings, according to Herskowitz.
``The festival itself will be the centerpiece of what will be a community of film studies courses,'' Herskowitz said. ``I think it's going to be an improvement.''
As part of the downsizing, 1995 festival director Hugh Southern, a former manager of New York City's Metropolitan Opera, will not return this fall, university officials said. Bob Chapel, chairman of U.Va's drama department, will direct the film studies program and oversee the festival.
Festival officials also announced that this year's theme will be ``Wild Spaces, Endangered Places,'' focusing on the role of landscapes in film.
Concurrent with this year's theme, the festival will focus on westerns and road movies, especially the ``female road movie,'' Herskowitz said. Movies to be shown include ``Thelma and Louise,'' ``Vagabond'' and films directed by John Ford, Terrence Malick, Michelangelo Antonioni and Werner Herzog. by CNB