 |
9th ANNUAL
JAMES RIVER
FILM FESTIVAL
APRIL 1-7, 2002
Virginia’s Festival for the Independent-Minded |
ALL ADMISSIONS FREE
UNLESS NOTED; DONATIONS ENCOURAGED
|
 Investigative
Poetry with Ed Sanders
VCU Cabell Library, Special Collections and Archives, 4th floor, 1:00
p.m.
Ed Sanders achieved fame in the ‘60s as a poet, editor, activist
and leading force of The Fugs, a satirical folk-rock band. In commemoration
of the 34th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination,
Sanders will focus on the counterculture and its links to the civil rights
movement by reading selections from 1968:
A History in Verse, a book-length poem mixing memoir, anecdote
and research about that fateful year. To Sanders, poetry is a means of
investigating the world around us – “Investigative poetry harkens
back to the ancient times when poets recorded history,” he says,
for “poets take part of the responsibility for describing the time-track
of civilization.” Presented in conjunction with the VCU English Club.
Seating is limited. [Featured Guest]
 Homecoming
Virginia Union University, Ellison Hall, Wall Auditorium, 3:30 p.m.
Producer/director Charlene Gilbert in Homecoming
(1998, 56 min.) manages to not only to chronicle her own Georgian roots,
but those of some million-odd African-American farmers nationwide circa
1910, reduced to 18,000 nationwide in the mid-1990s. Remarkably, in the
Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction eras, tens of thousands of blacks,
despite the cruel circle of sharecropping and prejudice, managed to purchase
over 15 million acres between 1865-1910. The years subsequent to 1910
have taken a monumental toll on the black ownership of family farms –
victim to the depression and drought of the ‘20s and ‘30s, and
repeatedly denied benefits and loans by the U.S. Department of Agriculture,
the Farm Security Administration and local credit institutions. Yet still
in some families, as in Ms. Gilbert’s, the family acreage, tilled
with love and diligence by a cousin named Warren, is the setting of a
“homecoming.” Homecoming
was produced for the Independent Television Service in association with
the National Black Programming Consortium. Ms. Gilbert will answer questions
after the screening. Introduction by Martin Jones from New Millenium Studios.
Visit the Homecoming
website.
[Featured Guest]
Berkeley
in the ‘60s
VCU Trani Building (the new Life Sciences Building), Room 155, 7:00
p.m.
Produced and directed by Mark Kitchell, Berkeley
in the ‘60s (1990, 117 min.) spans a decade of pivotal
social and political issues – from the late ‘50s HUAAC fallout
to the civil rights movement, Vietnam and the subsequent radicalism of the
Black Panthers and Weather Underground. Although the interviews are enlightening,
the power of this documentary lies in its compiled actual footage –
shot by Agnes Varda, Lenny Lipton, Will Vinton and countless others. Funded
by 1,000 contributors, with a score by Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, Gil Scott-Heron,
Jimi Hendrix and Allen Ginsberg, it is perhaps one of the best-balanced
documentaries on social protest in recent decades. Janet Maslin in The
New York Times called it “a potent blast from the past,” while
The San Francisco Examiner said it “deserves to be seen by anyone
interested in a better America.” Introduction by Michael Jones, who
teaches film studies at VCU and Randolph Macon, with a post-screening discussion
led by guest Ed Sanders – poet, activist,
and founder of the now legendary band, The Fugs. |
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