Virginia Film Festival

Film: Georgia O’Keeffe: The Brightness of Light

Paul Wagner is an Academy and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker whose films have premiered at Sundance, Toronto, Telluride and Rotterdam and broadcast on PBS. His documentaries include Miles of Smiles/Years of Struggle, about the Pullman porters who formed America’s first black labor union and Out of Ireland, the history of Irish emigration, featuring Liam Neeson and Gabriel Byrne. Recent documentaries include Good Work: Masters of the Building Arts, co-produced with the Smithsonian Institution, and Black in Blue, about the Black football players who broke the color line in southern football in the 1960s. Paul’s dramatic feature Windhorse, released by New Yorker Films, was filmed secretly in China and Nepal and won Best American Feature and Best Director at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. Paul teaches screenwriting and directing at the University of Virginia.

Film: Georgia O’Keeffe The Brightness of Light

Roxana Robinson is the author of seven novels, three story collections, and the biography Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life. Four were New York Times “Notable Books”. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Best American Short Stories and The New York Times. She has received fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. She won the James Webb Fiction Award from the USMCHF and the Maine MPWA Fiction Award (twice). Her novel Cost was shortlisted for the Dublin Impac Award and was named one of the five best fiction books of the year by the Washington Post. Sparta was named one of the 10 best books of the year by the BBC. Robinson was twice a finalist for the NBCC Balakian Award, and received the Barnes and Noble “Writers for Writers Award.” A former president of the Authors Guild, she teaches in the MFA Program at Hunter. Her most recent work is the novel Leaving.

Film: Georgia O’Keeffe: The Brightness of Light

Elizabeth Hutton Turner is a professor of Art History at the University of Virginia and former UVA Vice-Provost for the Arts. Prior to her move to the University, Turner served as senior curator and art historian at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. Among the numerous exhibitions she organized at the Phillips were “Georgia O’Keeffe: The Poetry of Things” (1999), and “Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction” (2009). Turner has served as an advisor, panelist, consultant, and board member for a number of organizations including The Calder Foundation, the College of Arts and Sciences at Howard University, and the NEH.

In January 2013, after completing her term as UVA Vice Provost for the Arts, Beth was the inaugural Vice President for Collections and Curatorial Affairs at the Terra Foundation for American Art.  Current writing projects include the definitive study of “The Unexpected Georgia O’Keeffe in Charlottesville” and “Alexander Calder: a biography of objects.” She is the lead consultant on Georgia O’Keeffe: The Brightness of Light.