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James River Filmmakers Forum
The James River Filmmakers Forum is an RMIC program designed to bring together area filmmakers and others interested in independent filmmaking for an evening of film screenings and discussion. We are seeking filmmakers to present their films and participate in the forum. If you are interested, please contact Jeff Roll, touchstone35@gmail.com
There are no format restrictions (small gauge vintage film to digital video) and no time restrictions (short form to full length...eventually). The program f eaturing a discussion forum at the end of each program.
Who is invited to attend the forum?
- DirectorsWritersEditorsSpecial FX techniciansFilm score musiciansActors
- Last, but not least, indie film buffs
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Next Forum – May 2, 2010
6:00 pm, Location: Balliceaux, 203 N. Lombardy St., Richmond , VA
Admission $3
Featuring the following filmmakers and their films:
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February 7, 2010
7:30 pm, Location: Balliceaux, 203 N. Lombardy St., Richmond , VA
Featuring the following filmmakers and their films:
Megan Holley - Squashing Ticks (short film)
Based in Richmond, Virginia, Megan Holley was named one of Variety’s "10 Screenwriter’s to watch" in 2005. Her screenplay, Sunshine Cleaning, was a 2003 winner of the Virginia Governor’s Screenwriting competition and was later made into a film starring Amy Adams, Emily Blunt and Alan Arkin. Sunshine Cleaning screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008 and made its theatrical release in 2009. Megan has several other feature film projects in development and is currently writing a television pilot for Showtime.
Todd Raviotta - directors montage
Todd has been making movies in Richmond since 1998. In addition to teaching and editing, Raviotta has been producing short films under the banner of Natural Science Productions including Mediated: The 21st Century Lifestyle, music videos, dance films, documentaries and several art installation videos. In 2006 Raviotta completed his first 35mm film project At the River which went on to screen both nationally and internationally. Todd now has a short film in development and a feature length script in the works.
Jeff Roll - La Mere Vipere – First Command (music video)
Jeff is an award-winning photographer turned experimental filmmaker. Jeff met James Parrish and Mike Jones of the Richmond Moving Image Co-op in 2001; who encouraged him to start shooting in Super 8 to submit to their Flicker program. After several films in Super 8, he decided to try his hand at digital video. First Command is the second music video he has shot for the Richmond band La Mere Vipere. The treatment was co-written by Jeff and LMV frontman Dan Trice along with cinematographer, Fabian Rush. Jeff's production company, Warped Theory Productions, launched in early 2008 is producing experimental shorts and music videos.
Necole Zayatz - The Objective Case of WE
Necole Zayatz is a multimedia artist who currently lives in Richmond, Virginia. Her single channel video work has been shown internationally at such venues as the European Media Arts Festival, and the Media Art Friesland Festival. She earned her MFA from Alfred University's Electronic Integrated Arts program in 2007. To date she is a doctoral student at Virginia Commonwealth University in the Media, Art, and Text Program and teaches digital printmaking at the VCU Painting and Printmaking Department.
Eric Miller - Taste The Blood of Frankenstein (Part One)
Eric Miller, having finished the motion picture MARK OF THE DAMNED, is still alive. And his dream of telling the complete story of the AMPLIFIED WORLD has forced him to produce a second motion picture, a short movie titled TASTE THE BLOOD OF FRANKENSTEIN Part One. He can also boast that MARK OF THE DAMNED has slipped it's terrible fingers into the hearts and minds of those brave soles who have taken the Insomniacs oath with Mr. Lobo on Cinema Insomnia and into the unsuspecting viewers who have stumbled into Count Gore De Vol's dungeon on Creature Feature. These narratives (and those yet to come) that Mr. Miller is powerless to keep to himself, where so many weird events that may affect live humans, illustrate Mr. Miller's peculiar take on danger and how one lives in a world of danger. Evidently Mr. Miller has stepped out of phase as it were and is now a man hopelessly beyond. It should be noted that Mr. Miller is totally incapable of normal conversation. Eric Miller's condition may not be evident to Eric Miller. |
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October 11, 2009
8:00 pm, Location: Balliceaux, 203 N. Lombardy St., Richmond , VA
The following filmmakers presented their works:
Leigh Hagan & Michael Hagan (West Grace Productions) Directors Montage
Leigh and Michael Hagan are an award winning director/producer team (respectively). After getting their professional starts in D.C., these RVA natives have been writing, directing and producing since 2007 after relocating back to Richmond. Leigh and Michael have participated in Richmond's 48 Hour Film Project all 3 years and have received several awards and accolades under their production name, West Grace Productions. Their recent feature length documentary, Loosen My Tie, premiered at The Byrd Theater this August and has appeared on The Documentary Channel. Leigh is currently a full-time editor at Dreams Factory and Michael is a full-time commercial producer and produces a video podcast for VCU Rams basketball, www.vcuramnation.com.
Ben Rinehardt - Williamsdale
Ben Rinehardt is a local filmmaker currently attending Virginia Commonwealth University. His latest piece, Williamsdale, is about an old house that has been in his family for over two hundred years. In the personal documentary he explores the different generations of people that have come through the house as well as his own relationship to the house within its large history. After graduating college, he is hoping to continue his career in the filmmaking industry and potentially direct more short and possibly feature length films along the way.
Hassan Pitts - Fleeting
Hassan Pitts has come recently to video work and is interested in fashioning images around absorption , sensation, movement and gesture. Currently he splits his time examining issues of masculine gestures of the everyday and themes of transience, both emotional and physical. Hassan recently graduated with an MFA in art from VCU and will present a short video piece entitled Fleeting. Fleeting is a meditation on the tenuous nature of innocence. Hassan draws upon notions of found footage, home movies and perspective as inspirations in constructing this experimental piece.
Mitchell Foster - Society in Rotation
Mitchell Foster graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University's film production program in May 2009. Most of Mitchell's films focus on outsiders views of society. Society in Rotation is a short film inspired by Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle. 16mm celluloid was bleached by hand and then captured at various stages of degradation.
Brian Bear: The Witch is Dead and Survival of the Fetish ( animated shorts )
A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University's Kinetic Imaging program, Brian is an aspiring animator hoping to become professional. Working extensively (but not exclusively) in Adobe Flash, Brian has made quite a few complete short films such as Give Me Shelter, A Doodle in Need, and Survival of the Fetish, as well as some music videos for local artists including Zombie Cowboys by Reverend DRay and the Shockers, and The Witch is Dead by Celeste Starchild. You can check out most of his projects at www.brianbearanimation.com.
Jacob Dodd - Darkness There
Jacob A. Dodd is an award-winning independent filmmaker who creates short films in 35mm and 16mm. In 2007, Dodd completed a personal film about his Italian grandmother, titled Nunna Mia e la Barca, which was well received in numerous festivals. Dodd is originally from Kittanning, PA. He graduated from Ithaca College earning a BFA in film, photography and visual arts and a minor in art history. Dodd received his MFA in photography and film from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2007. His work has been recognized by the Athens International Film + Video Festival, Big Muddy Film Festival, Rosebud Film & Video Festival and the James River Film Festival. Dodd works full time at VCU as an adjunct assistant professor and department coordinator of technology. His short film titled Darkness There explores Edgar Allan Poe's dark romanticism through the fictional blending of Poe's life and stories with authentic historical artifacts. |
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May 31, 2009
The following filmmakers presented their works:
Ron Smith - trailer for My Blue Star : The Life and Times of Hasil Adkins
Richmond based Ron Smith has worked in video production for over fifteen years with clients including Bill Clinton , the Dalai Lama and Hank Williams III. He is currently working on an MTV reality show on West Virginia folk artist Jesco White.
Jennida Chase - The Why Cheap Art? Manifesto
Electronic artist Jennida Chase primarily works with film, video, sound, animation and photography. She received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and just completed her MFA from VCU. Born out frustration and a desire to reclaim reality, her work largely exists within a realm of imagined emotional space where defiance and absurdity revolutionize mundane facts. The work operates under the continuous supposition that another world is possible.
Dustin Glasco - Strange Things In History Part 1 : Loch Ness,
Strange Things In History Part 2: John Wise, and
Strange Things In History Part 3 : Dixie Goat Man
Dustin is a director and editor who has worked on a number of independent film projects in and around the Richmond area. With Strange Things In History, he has perfected an avant-garde style that blends philosophy, sociology and crypto zoology to create a groundbreaking statement about the human condition and man's place in the universe, while at the same time educating people about the wonders of creatures like the Loch Ness Monster.
Fabian Rush - DWAM
As a life long storyteller, Fabian has discovered his true path as a filmmaker. Equating moving images with religion, he seeks catharsis by looking deep within himself, exploring his dark side, then displaying his findings in his horror movies (a tangible representation of his anxieties). He is currently working on his second feature length movie Pantheon Black. And after many stressful months of production, he began having the horrific nightmares that would eventually inspire this latest short film. DWAM is a surrealistic journey into the mind of a psychotic woman with a parasite fetish. The film documents her experiences through disturbingly intimate moments, then concludes when she becomes aware of her true destiny. DWAM is Fabian's attempt to tell a horror story without the use of violence or death.
Paul Hugins - As Of Yet Untitled: The Movie
Paul is an undergraduate film student at Virginia Commonwealth University and has been passionately in love with film ever since he can remember. This passion for film has been instrumental in shaping who he is as a person and today his thoughts rarely turn away from the thoughts of making movies. During his time at VCU Film, Paul's found he had a natural curiosity for making both live action and 2-D animation films and hopes his future career might encompass both. "As Of Yet Untitled: The Movie" is an experimental film done for class work that allowed him to play around with the idea of using different film formats and actually comment on the nature of filmmaking itself. Set to graduate from VCU this upcoming December, Paul is looking forward to developing a career in filmmaking.
Anne Schermerhorn - Rain Rain
Anne is a recent graduate from VCU’s Film Department. Anne’s focus in experimental film making stems from her abstraction of personal stories. With “Rain Rain”, a camera-less animation, the story started as a meditation on driving home late summer nights as the roads fill with frogs. Throughout Anne’s career at VCU, and while working as an animator on “The Grist of Gossip Mill” for Dry Spell Productions in Melbourne Australia, she has been bringing nontraditional materials to the screen in a collage fashion. Other films she has created include “Garden Sister” (2007), shown at the VCU Student Film Festival in 2007, and VideoSlam08’s “john so arbitrary”. Anne will continue to make experimental shorts and a documentary next year while in Yongin, Korea.
Tim Ashworth - Director's Montage
Tim has been making films for 18 years. Currently in production on “The Garden”, Tim is interested in films that are dreamlike, visually inventive and narratively experimental. Tim started his production company, Perception Productions, several years ago. |
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 February 15, 2009
The following filmmakers presented their works:
Fabian Rush - Clip from Pantheon Black
Pantheon Black is the second feature-length movie from writer/director/actor Fabian Rush. Written in late 2004, the movie's production has been a long and difficult undertaking in that it was shot entirely against a green screen, and all of the sets are computer generated. Such an approach was necessary because this futuristic sci-fi horror film takes place in deep space, and the movie's budget would not allow for the construction of a practical space station. Upon completion in 2009, the movie will tour the film festival market and seek worldwide distribution.
Corry Chapman - XXX
We are both healthcare professionals who make short movies for fun. We recently started Unnamable Films and plans to make a short movie every 2-3 months for the next two years, at which point we plan to shoot a longer short film or a feature-length movie.
Our movies are meant to be different, usually funny, and not boring. They also showcase the talented people working in the arts in the DC area.
XXX is meant to be funny. The first half is a satire of an adult film. The second half is a more surreal art film. Both halves are absurd, which makes it -- we hope -- amusing. Any deeper meaning is left up to the viewer to figure out. As long as the audience is not bored, we have done our job well.
Jeff Roll - Open Space Vol. 3
Jeff is an award-winning photographer turned experimental filmmaker. Jeff met James Parrish and MIke Jones of the Richmond Moving Image Co-op in 2001; who encouraged him to start shooting in Super 8 to submit to their Flicker program. After several films in Super 8, he decided to make "hybrid films," editing footage from Super 8 and digital video together. Open Space Volume 3 is the third and last chapter of his experimental sci-fi trilogy involving how humans interact with a puncture in the space-time continuum. Jeff's production company, Warped Theory Productions, launched in early 2008 producing experimental shorts and music videos.
Alfred Shapiro - Canal Boat
Canal Boat (B+W Super 8) exposed 2003 spliced 2009. Kanawha and Haxall canals along the River District Canal Walk in Richmond, VA.
The photographer's direct control over the moment of exposure makes Super 8 ideal for time-lapse. Electronics can offer single frames at a predetermined interval; a home movie camera with a single frame trigger allows me to preserve each image at the instant I choose. Any shifting scene invites animation. I was attracted to the boat because of its size and predictable path.
Jere Kittle - 2 works, untitled
Jere explores the small film format through narrative, documentary and conceptual short films. Her current works are experimental and focus on creating color and texture interactions within a perceived framework of motion and time using mixed media applied directly to Super 8 film stock.
Michael Jones - Les Taches de Souvenir
Mike is one of the founders of the James River Film Festival and is the president of the Richmond Moving Image Co-op. He teaches film history at Virginia Commonwealth University and Randolph-Macon College. Les Taches do Souvenir is a film that hasn't been screened in many years. It is Super 8 with audio track.
Matt Siegel - Three Nights at Ground Zero
Matt Siegel divides his time between RVA and NYC. He is a reluctant filmmaker, ex-musician, writer, artist, gadget freak and maintains a healthy collection of firearms and herbal teas. Three Nights At Ground Zero is based on the personal experiences of two volunteer rescue workers at the World Trade Center during the week of 9/11. This "unintentional documentary" was secretly shot on an array of different formats and equipment by rescue workers, all while avoiding the NYPD, the FBI and the United States Army.
The film transitions from still images to moving pictures, culminating in a video shot underneath the ruins of the World Trade Center by an anonymous firefighter.
We were all searching for our own role in the events of 9/11. It is the intent of the filmmaker to help provide closure to those who wanted to be part of the rescue effort at Ground Zero, but were unable to do so. |
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