A still from “Ornette Coleman: Made in America,” among the works scheduled for the 31st annual James River Film Festival, March 19-23 (Image courtesy James River Film Festival)
It’s baa-aack.
The 31st James River Film Festival, running March 19-23 at venues as municipal as the Richmond Public Library and as palatial as The Byrd Theatre, once again offers the event’s staple of intriguing programming.
There’s a documentary about artist Georgia O’Keeffe, an independently produced film called “The Love Witch,” an homage to Richmond’s semi-native son Edgar Allan Poe, and a showcase of animated commercials curated by artist and animator Janet Scagnelli; Justin Black’s short film “All Forward!” dives into the training of James River guides; and the sixth festival appearance of musician Gary Lucas provides the soundtrack to director Tod Browning’s way-ahead-of-its-time 1932 film “Freaks.”
And that’s not even the highlights.
“Who’d’ve thunk it?” the festival’s director, Mike Jones, reflects wryly on its longevity. The Virginia Commonwealth University instructor of film history observes, “Some of us weren’t even past 30 years old when we started this thing.”
Artist Georgia O’Keeffe leads the roster, the subject of a new documentary by Paul Wagner, “The Brightness of Light,” which will screen at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 19, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Reynolds Lecture Hall (tickets are $8). He and producer Ellen Wagner will also discuss the film. O’Keeffe is generally known for her early days in bohemian New York with photographer Alfred Stieglitz and her later Santa Fe years as a kind of founding mother of modern art in the United States, along the way becoming an icon of second-wave feminists. She also built Virginia connections; in the summers of 1912-16 she took classes for art teachers and taught courses at the University of Virginia. Actress Claire Danes provides a voice for O’Keeffe, and actor Hugh Dancy (also Danes’ husband) narrates.
Images courtesy Janet Scagnelli
Speedy from the 1950s and 1960s Alka-Seltzer commercials and jazzy, sharp line-drawn musicians playing for Philip Morris are among the cavalcade in an hourlong showcase of animated product promotions at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, March 23 (tickets are $8), at the VMFA. Artist, animator and historian Janet Scagnelli assembled the presentation; her art is currently on display at Artspace for the “Sacred Objects” exhibition, which continues through March 22. Her film compilation is a sequel of sorts: She presented a similar omnibus of creative commercialism at the first JRFF, but this is a refreshed program.
Scagnelli created animation for MTV in its early days and for “Sesame Street,” and ran her own New York studios. “Back then, there were all kinds of small studios all over town, driven by the advertising industry," Scagnelli says. “These were shops with no staff, so they’d say, ‘We need two or three people,’ and you’d go in for a project.”
She studied at the State University of New York at Binghamton, and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. “I realized I could make more money in animation than with art history,” she recalls. Her specialty involved rendering for commercials, shorts, features and independent films. She also became interested in preserving collectable animation cels for clients, some of whom purchased art at auction from Sotheby’s and Christie’s.
Scagnelli notes how commercials have changed over the years. “In the ’50s, you have these housewives in dresses with tiny waists and high heels who are having some problem until this authoritative guy in a suit enters with the product to solve whatever it is,” she says. Some of the ads feature a soundtrack provided by finger-snappable bebop. “Which was forward-thinking for the time,” she says. “Using jazz was like using rap or hip-hop in a commercial today.”
Then came the next decade’s influences of psychedelia and the impact of artist Peter Max (read more about him in this 2013 Richmond magazine Q&A). These commercials, besides jangling in some memories, are also an anthropological examination of the period in which they were made. The compilation stops at the beginning of the computer animation era. “There’s this wacko one with Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny,” she says. “You’d think it’s done with computer, but it’s not.”
Additional JRFF programming includes a screening of the 1986 documentary “Ornette: Made in America” by Shirley Clarke about saxophonist Ornette Coleman. The film visually emulates Coleman’s free-form jazz performance structure. The event will be hosted at 9 p.m., Friday, March 21, at the Grace Street Theater (tickets are $8).
In the way the JRFF comes together, subthemes appear by happenstance, and this year’s version is in the category of horror and the phantasmagorical.
A still from “The Love Witch” (Image courtesy James River Film Festival)
That subject premieres in a wild way at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, March 20, at Studio Two Three (tickets are $8), with Anna Biller’s “The Love Witch.” Basically, Biller made the whole thing, even the costumes. This ain’t “Bewitched,” though it’s set in a period similar to the show, and the texture and color may remind you of those times. Picture in your mind a witch movie made by Samantha Stephens’ brunette cousin Serena.
At the Richmond Public Library Main Branch at 12:30 p.m., Friday, March 21, is a free program including a screening of the 1928 film, “The Fall of the House of Usher” by French director Jean Epstein. He mashes two of Poe’s macabre short stories, including “The Oval Portrait,” for his dark, moody surrealist take.
A double “drive-in” feature at The Byrd includes screenings of two Mario Bava films on March 22. At 5 p.m., catch “Hercules in the Haunted World,” a prepsychedelic Technicolor swords-and-sandals romp starring the mighty slab of a man, a three-time Mr. Universe, Reg Park, and the villain everyone loves to hate, Christopher Lee (whom many may recognize from “The Lord of the Rings” films). At 7 p.m., “Lisa and the Devil” stars Elke Sommer as the woman who encounters, well, Ole Scratch, portrayed by Telly Savalas (who, like his 1970s TV detective alter ego, Kojak, enjoys a lollipop through most of the film). “These are popcorn movies,” Mike Jones says, “something you can bring the family to.” Guest critic and Bava biographer Tim Lucas will appear live on the big screen to answer audience questions for both films. Tickets to each film are $8 or $15 for both.
A still from “Freaks” (Image courtesy James River Film Festival)
On March 22 at 9 p.m. at The Byrd Theatre, the evening culminates with a screening of “Freaks,” accompanied by Gary Lucas, (tickets are $12). Jones relates how MGM was so repulsed by the “Freaks” that the studio didn’t add a soundtrack. He recounts that his father experienced the film as a kid and said it was the scariest he’d ever seen. “But really what it is, is a warm compassionate film about the recognition of humanity in everyone,” Jones says. It’s also the film that originated the pop culture chant, “One of us, one of us.” Though it may be missing a soundtrack, it is a picture with sound, and surtitles will be shown for viewers who aren’t able to clearly hear all the dialogue. In the sometimes curious way the JRFF folds inside itself, Jones says the percussionist in Lucas’ band was a drummer for Ornette Coleman.
And there are festivals inside the festival, including selections from the touring Ann Arbor Film Festival; a presentation by filmmakers of Appalshop, which since 1969 has documented the culture of eastern Kentucky and greater Appalachia; and, to top it all off, on the evening of March 23, Shop Two Three hosts the Silent Music Revival with the series founder, Jameson Price. SMR started in 2006 as a monthly event, now seasonal, and it has featured more than 100 Richmond bands performing the soundtracks to obscure films.
OK, you freaks of cinema, go see some movies.
For the full 2025 James River Film Festival schedule, visit jamesriverfilm.org.
