37th Annual VIRGINIA FILM FESTIVAL Oct 30-Nov 3, 2024

37th Annual VIRGINIA FILM FESTIVAL October 30-November 3, 2024

News & Press

Digital Media Gallery Opens Nov. 6 & Adrenaline Mentor Added

by JennyM on October 15, 2015

Virginia Film Festival and Second Street Gallery To Open Digital Media Gallery on November 6

DMG To Feature Exhibit Of Video Projection Art and Experimental Films From U.Va. Cinematography Students And Students From Light House Studio

Festival Officials Also Announce Addition of Filmmaker Omar Naim As Mentor for Adrenaline Film Project

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA – October 15, 2015 — The 2015 VFF Digital Media Gallery (DMG) will return to the Second Street Gallery, inside the City Center for Contemporary Arts, beginning on Friday, November 6.

The Virginia Film Festival, set for November 5-8, is presented by the University of Virginia and the Office of the Provost and Vice Provost for the Arts.

The DMG, which will host a First Friday reception on November 6 and remain open throughout the month of November, will feature video projection art and experimental films by acclaimed filmmaker Kevin Everson’s intermediate and advanced U.Va. cinematography students, and local students from the award-winning Light House Studio. The DMG will also feature the debut of a new film by celebrated video artist Lydia Moyer, an associate professor at U.Va.

Second Street Gallery will host the DMG alongside Beyond Classification, a group exhibition of contemporary photography and video by women artists from Egypt who offer multiple perspectives on current political and social conditions in Egypt, as well as diverse strategies for communicating about those conditions in photography and video. Beyond Classification will open to the public prior to the Film Festival with a reception on Friday, October 23 from 5:30 PM-7:30 PM, artist talk at 6:30 PM.

Beyond Classification and the Digital Media Gallery are both free and open to the public.

The Digital Media Gallery will be open from Tuesday through Saturday from 11:00 AM through 6:00 PM through November 20. During the Festival weekend, the DMG will feature extended hours, staying open until 7:30 PM on Saturday, November 7 and Sunday, November 8.

Festival officials also announced today that award-winning writer and director Omar Naim is joining this year’s team of mentors for the 2015 Adrenaline Film Project, the VFF’s popular 72-hour guerilla filmmaking competition. Naim joins fellow mentors including Charlottesville native and Adrenaline co-founder Jeff Wadlow, acting coach Leigh Kilton-Smith, and Charlottesville-based filmmaker Derek Sieg. Omar Naim made his feature debut in 2004 with the science-fiction thriller The Final Cut (2004), starring Oscar winners Robin Williams and Mira Sorvino. The film premiered in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, and won Naim the Best Screenplay prize at the Deauville Film Festival that same year.

Naim also directed Dead Awake (2010), with Nick Stahl, Amy Smart, and Rose McGowan, as well as films for PBS.  As a writer, Naim has penned screenplays for Oscar-winning producers, including Dan Jinks & Bruce Cohen (American Beauty) and Ed Saxon (Silence of the Lambs).  Naim graduated with a BFA in film from Emerson College in Boston. His student thesis film, Grand Theater: A Tale of Beirut, was a Student Academy Award Finalist. He was raised in Lebanon, Jordan, and Cyprus by a journalist father and actress mother.

For information about how to apply to be part of the 2015 Adrenaline Film Project, visit virginiafilmfestival.org/adrenaline.  Submissions are due by 5:00 PM on Friday, October 16. We will notify selected participants on Friday, October 23.

The 2015 DMG is made possible by the generous support from the University of Virginia Arts Council and The A/V Company and is part of the Virginia Film Festival’s Community Outreach & Education Program.

The 2015 Adrenaline Film Project is presented by Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company and supported by U.Va. Arts Council, Resolution Rentals, U.Va. Robertson Media Center, and Virginia Production Alliance.

For more information on the Digital Media Gallery, and Adrenaline Film Project, and to get information on, and buy tickets for the 2015 Virginia Film Festival, visit www.virginiafilmfestival.org.

For more information on Beyond Classification, visit http://www.secondstreetgallery.org/index.php/exhibitions/detail/beyond-classification.

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