SUNDAY, April 4

Friday, April 2

Independent Classic:
"Our Daily Bread"
When veteran Hollywood director King Vidor ("The Crowd") failed to interest the studios in his story of a Depression-era couple who inherit a farm and establish a utopian, cooperative community, he decided to make it out-of-pocket. Perhaps no other feature film of the times captured the economic plight of the migrant laborer and the unemployed urbanite as 1934’s "Our Daily Bread." Now considered a classic of the independent cinema, the film is remembered for its triumphant finale as the farmers divert a river through miles of culverts to save their crops, and their new lives, from ruin. Guaranteed to get you up out of your seat with a shovel and pick in hand! Introduction by Michael Jones, who teaches Cinema Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Art History Department. (With Karen Morley and Tom Keene, 1934, B&W, 74 mins.)  Plant Zero, 2 p.m. Free Admission.

Governor’s School for the Arts Screening
The Digital Video Senior Seminar at the Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School isn’t just about technology and equipment – it’s also about ideas, storytelling and self-expression. Beginning with a group project to learn the basics, the students progress to individual works. Now in its third year, the program’s enrollment has tripled under the guidance of instructor Todd Raviotta, an MFA candidate in Filmmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University. This showcase features a mix of individual and group projects followed with a Q&A session with student filmmakers and Raviotta.  Plant Zero, 4 p.m. Free Admission.

Virginia Film Office Reception
Enjoy light fare and beverages and meet guest directors Mel Stuart ("Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," "Wattstax") and John O’Brien ("Nosey Parker," "Vermont is for Lovers") at this reception sponsored by the Virginia Film Office.  Plant Zero, 6-7:30 p.m. Free Admission.

The James River Film Festival
Juried Competition Finalists

Co-sponsored by:
The Virginia Commission for the Arts
The Virginia Film Office
Martin Jones Films
New Millennium Studios

Finalists and winners of the national juried competition of short films and videos will be screened and introduced by this year’s jury of local filmmakers, film professionals and film educators. More than 80 submissions in documentary, experimental, animated and narrative modes were screened with the jury awarding up to $2,000 in cash prizes. Beginning this year, the JRFF makes the biennial competition an annual event, and we are proud to welcome the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Virginia Film Office, Martin Jones Films and New Millennium Studios as co-sponsors. Always entertaining and sometimes provocative, the competition provides a chance to catch what’s happening in film circles nationwide and right here in Virginia. Introduction by the jury: Pat Doyen, Robert Ellis, Megan Holley, Jere Kittle, Ted Salins and Jim Stramel.  Plant Zero, 8 p.m. Admission $5.

Congratulations to the Finalists:
$750	Amy Mike Hoolboom - 16:00 min. Amy looks at old photos of herself.
$500	Closer to Heaven Diane Bonder - 15:00 min. Using the weather as a metaphor for the stages of grief, Closer to Heaven is a good-bye poem and homage to my dad. Shot on super-8 and optically printed.
$250	A Sixty Second Tragedy Dane Webster - 1:30 min. A silent film actor has a little problem remembering his lines.
$250	Super-8 Mom David Ellsworth - 4:51 min. In contrast to most American families during the late 1960's and early 1970s, my mother, not my father, shot all our family's home movies. My intent was to focus on her work as a personal aesthetic document (both hers and mine) that transcends the sentimentality often present in works that use home movies. I wanted to make a piece that looks at her filmmaking on several different levels simultaneously.
$250	Where is There Room? Sonali Gulait, Byron Karabatsos & Antonio Paez - 7:50 min. Where Is There Room is an experimental narrative of an Indian woman's journey to find relief after her mother's death. The film blurs the boundaries between fiction and documentary to convey a mood of loss and longing; it relies less on conventional narrative structure to tell the story of a woman coming to terms with the death of her mother, and more on the abstract relationship between images and sounds.
	Andaluz Karen Aqua & Joanna Priestley - 6:00 min. A traveler's love letter to Andalusia, this animated film is an homage to the culture, landscape, and architecture of southern Spain. Inspired during a residency in a small village in Spain, animators Aqua & Priestley spent 3 years creating this collaborative film.
	Beat Box Philly Warren Bass & Liz Goldberg - 4:40 min. Beat Box Philly is an animated cityscape that explores the neighborhoods, polarities, popular associations and visual rhythms of the streets of Philadelphia. The film is set to the tune of mouth generated 'beat-box' sounds by performance artist Edward Snyder.
	Bob's Circle Mark Scalese - 30:00 min. At the age of 37, Bob Billbrough lives on his own for the first time in his life. Through a government-funded program for people with disabilities, he hires support staff to help him live independently. Bob relishes his freedom from group-homes and institutions, but he also discovers that there are hidden costs to being on his own.
	Transmissions Matthew Payne - 13:14 min. A boy becomes sick after listening to an audiotape discovered at a car wreck. A routine afternoon walk triggers a lyrical exploration on the pervasive nature of electronic media and its connections to race, religion, capitalism and post 9/11 anxieties.