Back story: 20 years of stars, screenings and survival at the Virginia Film Festival

Nov 1

We take it for granted every fall that Charlottesville will be awash in cinema, and like clockwork, this year the 20th Virginia Film Festival opens November 1.

But that wasn't always the case, and for much of its history, the year-to-year survival of the festival was far from a sure thing.

Worries plagued the enterprise at the beginning. Chief among them: how does a university without a major film studies program come to host a film festival, and could it– or should it– continue to draw the star-studded lineup it produced its first year?

"It's almost like it was born fully grown," says festival director Richard Herskowitz, who was running Cornell's film society in 1988, but who remembers seeing festival materials from Virginia. "They made a splash in the film world immediately."

When the festival launched in October 1988, organizers had locals doing double takes. As if by some special effect, Robert Altman, Ossie Davis, and Nick Nolte all appeared in Charlottesville. Norman Mailer joined Jerzy Kosinski and William Kennedy on a screenwriter's panel. Locals Sissy Spacek, Ann Beattie, and former local Earl Hamner lent their star power to the event, as did Hollywood producers Samuel Goldwyn Jr. and Mark Johnson.

That first festival premiered two films destined to become classics: Child's Play– which spawned the whole Chuckie-the-killer-doll empire– and Mystic Pizza, which launched the career of Julia Roberts.

Beyond that bit of movie history, those four days in '88 launched another classic Charlottesville tradition: the festival itself.

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