Month: November 2014

Podcaster Sean McCord talks with Mitch Levine, director, writer, producer moderator, and festival consultant. In addition to all those hats, Mitch brought a short film that he directed, In Confidence, based on a short play developed at the world-renowned Actors Studio. In Confidence screens at 12:30 on Saturday, Nov. 8, at the Downtown Mall Regal 1 before the feature Karate Tango. For more information visit the Virginia Film Festival web site.

Producers and writers Giorgio Litt and Thom Canalichio and star Richard Warner talk to CPN’s Sean McCord about their short film Waking Marshall Walker, an exploration of life’s possibilities when all otherwise seems lost. The film screens as part of the Short Narrative Films program on Sunday at 1:30 PM in the PVCC Dickinson Center. For more information visit the Virginia Film Festival web site.

Connor Hurley is the director of Skook, a film about a woman whose boyfriend leaves her to join the Occupy Wall Street movement. When she returns to spend the holidays in Schuykill County, Pennsylvania, and unexpectedly falls in love. Hurley talks with Sean McCord about how the film got made and what it means to him and his generation. Skook screens Sunday at 12:30 pm at the Downtown Regal.

Jeff Preiss is the director of Low Down, a feature about the life of a 1970’s era jazz pianist who puts his heroin addiction and music ahead of his daughter. The film is based on the memoir of the same name as Amy-Jo Albany. Preiss talks with Sean McCord about why he made the picture and what he loves about making movies.

Virginia native Christopher C. Rogers is the co-creator of Halt and Catch Fire, a television show that captures the rise of the PC era in the early 1980’s. Rogers talks with Sean McCord about how the show went from idea to airing on AMC. The pilot will screen tonight at 7:30 pm at the Downtown Regal followed by a discussion.

In 2006, four young African-American lesbians in a gay-friendly neighborhood of New York City are violently and sexually threatened by an aggressive man on the street. They react in self-defense, stabbing the persistent man, warranting charges and court convictions. Director Blair Dorosh-Walther and producer Giovanna Chesler talk about their film “Out in the Night” with CPN’s Sean McCord. Together they take a look at the lives of the four women convicted of manslaughter and the media circus that surrounded the “Gang of Killer Lesbians.” The film will be shown Saturday November 8th at 5:00 p.m. at the Regal 1 theater on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall. For more information visit the Virginia Film festival web site.

Documentary filmmaker and musician Beth Harrington talks about her film “The Winding Stream”, a look at the original Carter Family and how they transformed to the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle. Johnny Cash makes one of his last appearances in the film, mere weeks before his death. This is a story about music, family, and with deep roots in Virginia. The film will screen at the Dickenson Center at Piedmont Virginia Community College on Saturday at 7:45 pm.

Documentary filmmaker Richard Robinson speaks with Sean McCord on his film Song of the Cicadas. Based on an idea from David Rothenberg’s Bug Music, Song of the Cicadas explores the metaphors evoked in comparing the incarceration of American Political Prisoner Timothy Blunk (Resistance Conspiracy Case) with the 17 year period spent underground of the Magicicada. Filmed in an historic prison during a Cicada emergence, Song of the Cicadas forms a poetic critique on the politics of incarceration and the surveillance aspects of media.

Documentary filmmaker Eduardo Montes Bradley speaks with Sean McCord on his films on poet Rita Dove and civil rights pioneer Julian Bond. Montes Bradley’s documentaries on the pair “confronts the audience with a unique opportunity to observe the 20th century through the eyes of two of its key witnesses.” They will screen Saturday at 1:00 at the Downtown Regal and will be followed by a discussion with Bond and Dove.

University of Virginia fourth year student Alex Rafala talks with Sean McCord about his film Farewell Old Stringy, a short film made in Charlottesville that tells the story of a funeral for an imaginary friend. How do short films like this get made? Alex clues us in. His work will debut on Sunday at 1:30 at the Dickinson Center at the Piedmont Virginia Community College.

Actor Paul Wilson talks with Sean McCord about how his participation in Big Stone Gap helped him and his brother Patrick Wilson reconnect with a Southwest Virginia ancestor. Big Stone Gap screens tonight at the Paramount Theater.

Writer and Director Damian Lahey speaks with Sean McCord about his film The Heroes of Arvine Place. The feature is about a recently widowed man who has to juggle many difficult things including two kids, overdrawn credit cards, a pair of dysfunctional sisters, and a chronically defective car. The film will screen Saturday, November 8, 2014 at the Downtown Regal followed by a discussion with Lahey, editor Craig Moorhead, and actress Celia Dusinberre.