Filmmaker Melody C. Roscher, writer and director of “Bird in Hand,” filmed in and around Richmond (Photo by Julianne Tripp Hillian)
Two islands, oceans apart. Two periods of time in and around 9/11. A judicial hero, familial revelations and a whole lot of shaking going on at Révéler. These experiences took place within the kaleidoscopic 14th annual Richmond International Film Festival, Sept. 23-28 at venues across the city.
The lineup included Richmond-raised filmmaker Melody C. Roscher’s “Bird in Hand” (not named for the 1980s Shockoe Slip fern bar), filmed in and around Richmond, that garnered an armload of festival hardware. The recognitions include the Grand Jury Prize for Best Rising Star Director, the Audience Award for Best Feature, the Best Actor in a supporting role for James Le Gros, Best Actress Award in a supporting role for Christine Lahti and Best Ensemble Cast.
Also of local interest, a long-awaited documentary, “The Judge: Character, Cases, Courage,” about the life and legacy of U.S. Federal Virginia Eastern District Court judge Robert R. Merhige Jr. During his 31 years on the bench, as biographer Lynn Darling describes, he became “one of the most active and controversial federal judges in the nation.”
Director Robert Griffith and co-producer Al Calderaro approach the subject with respect but don’t shy away from Merhige’s most difficult decision, involving crosstown busing to integrate public schools.
The film also focuses on Merhige’s judgments in civil rights issues, in particular allowing women to attend the University of Virginia, and pertaining to the kepone chemical disaster and the Dalkon Shield suits, which set precedents for later industrial and environmental cases. Merhige believed in courts as a great leveler guided by what was right and fair. I wrote about the film while it was in production.
Jason Mullis’ regionally filmed short “Myth of the Ghost Kingdom” took the festival’s Best Local Film recognition. Professional caregiver Abbie (Ingrid Alli), while clearing out her deceased mother’s house, discovers that she is adopted. The unraveling of her past takes her to adoption researchers Tracy (Katrinah Carol-Lewis, associate artistic director of Richmond’s Firehouse Theatre) and Heath (Toney Q. Cobb, a veteran actor, director and producer) and to a revelation with Miles (D.L. Hopkins, an actor of stage and screen).
Director David Usui’s splendid documentary “Been Here Stay Here” delivers an intimate portrait of endangered Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay.
Usui spent two years visiting Tangier from New York before picking up a camera. He wove Tangier’s stories in a narrative manner. His cinematography and technique reminded me of Terrence Malick; with moments of reflective silence; images of the play of light on the water, skies clear and storm troubled; and a mixture of 1970s footage that helped fill in some of the island’s history and its race against inundation. The accompanying music of James William Blades complements the visuals.
The 346-acre island, a mile wide and 3 miles long, once held five villages, but the waters eroded all but Tangier itself. This speck of land achieved worldwide attention when longtime mayor James “Ooker” Eskridge, a waterman descended from generations of them, went on record saying he didn’t believe climate change came from human interference. His receiving a phone call from then candidate Donald Trump made headlines. And attracted Usui’s attention.
For this screening, a problem in the early going due to projection ratio size blocked subtitles needed for comprehending the Tangier accent. Centuries of isolation from the mainland caused a way of speaking that linguists today regard as close to speech patterns of 17th- and 18th-century Cornwall, England, and blended with Viginia’s Tidewater dialect.
The film emphasizes the resilience of the Tangier people; their pride of place and abiding faith keep them from leaving. In this determination, they resemble islanders of the distant Pacific Ocean, also adjusting to rising waters, and who remain due to “social bonds, ways of being, spirituality and stewardship of place.”
What becomes clear is that whatever our accent or beliefs, we are all on Tangier Island, and it’s our only home, called Earth. Perhaps this is one reason the audiences received the film with hearty applause. And it won the festival’s Best Virginia Film award.
“The Summer Book” is adapted from the novel of the same name by Swedish-speaking Finnish author, painter, illustrator and comic strip creator Tove Jansson. A luscious narrative observation of family and nature on a small island in the Gulf of Finland, the film featuring Glenn Close and directed by Charlie McDowell concerns the responsibilities of connections to family and the land.
The film concerns the ties between an illustrator father, his young daughter and grandmother, who for more than 40 years have spent the summer at a remote cabin on a small island.
The three are contending with grief from the mother’s death and the grandmother’s advancing age and frailty. These are complicated but endearing people. The grandmother is Glenn Close, whose dramatic profile looks as though hewn from the rock of the land for which the character feels a passionate affinity.
Here, too, are moments of silence and reflection, but also sounds of wildlife, the wind. The moody waters of storms and twinkling sunlight are characters of their own. Our connection to the characters is built with poignant scenes of few words. The music, by Hania Rani, is also an important part of the story, as is the use of vintage recordings of nostalgic tunes.
A still from “Eastern Western” (Image courtesy El Jinete Films)
Also delving into the importance of family, community and place is “Eastern Western,” through the experience of Eastern European immigrants arriving into the late 19th-century U.S. West.
These are big-sky, broad vistas of John Ford and “Lonesome Dove” territory, delivered in a poetic and elegant manner by directors Biliana and Marina Grozdanova. If can catch up to the film, find the widest screen you can, though there are also a number of small, intimate moments, plus a boisterous river crossing by horses and wagon — filmed, Biliana Grozdanova says, in one take. “We had many one-take miracles throughout the movie. There was a lot of improv and relying on cinema magic, but in the end I think we pulled it off.”
Another pair of films were connected by location and time: New York, around the critical days leading up to and after 9/11.
“Taste the Revolution” went into film cans 25 years ago. Rather than being dated, two-time Academy Award winner director Daniel Klein’s faux documentary feels relevant even today.
And it’s convincing. When seeing the brief bits of trailer that played before the features, I thought “Taste” involved some never heard of but recently discovered post-colonial African leader.
This is the kind of film you might expect from Christopher Guest, as in “Spinal Tap.” “Taste” is played as a straight comedy of manners — pertaining to a youth movement dedicated to “Killing the Apathy of Society” (KAOS, coincidentally the nemesis force in the 1960s espionage comedy series “Get Smart”).
Yes, there is humor particularly as we get to know individuals and their varied reasons for joining KAOS, from the sincere to the flippant. Free beer is important.
Mahershala Ali as the dynamic Mac Laslow is the fulcrum of the story. This is Ali’s first leading film role. He went on to “House of Cards” and won Academy Awards for “Green Book” and “Moonlight” (and RIFF’s Founders Award). The young, charismatic Black man ignites a crusade for … something.
But soon after the film wrapped, 9/11 occurred, and the taste of the film seemed to go bad.
Then, when Klein sent Ali a clip from the film, he urged for its release. With Colin Trevorrow (“Safety Not Guaranteed”/“Jurassic World”) as an executive producer, and also in the movie, “Taste” got pulled off the shelf, edited, presented now, and is seeking distribution.
This look back also seems to look forward to various movements and events. Director Klein cites the Shepard Fairey poster of Obama (and Obama himself), Occupy Wall Street, the Fyre Festival and numerous other cultural touchstones.
“Taste,” set during the summer of 2001, ends ominously where begins “The Martyr of Gowanus,” an otherwise serious study by writer and director Brian Meere of an ordinary Brooklyn-dwelling fellow, Gavin, portrayed by Sawyer Spielberg (son of Steven and Kate Capshaw). Gavin is severely affected by the attacks on the Twin Towers.
Unlike “Taste,” which looks like archival footage, director Brian Meere blends real images from those fateful days with the narrative with an emotionally jarring result.
Both films remind us of the distance between then and now when the media speculates about the missing Washington, D.C., intern Chandra Levy and expresses alarm about shark attacks. Hand-held devices for communication and videoing are not ubiquitous, televisions are clunky, computers boxy, and at one point Gavin’s search for information about 9/11 presages “doom scrolling.”
A highlight of the film, prior to that September morning, is a “rat race” in which a bar bet pits Gavin in a dash alongside … a rat. The film received the festival’s Indy Spirit award.
These films in part deal with modern anxiety, and the festival offered a documentary dealing with the issue of having issues, “The Anxiety Club.” The entree for director Wendy Lobel is how comedians like Marc Maron and Joe List deal with their various syndromes. List humorously recounts his roster of idiosyncrasies, then explains that when on stage, he’s in control. Tiffany Jenkins is followed through her own therapy sessions and relents to repeatedly writing — like Bart Simpson on the chalkboard — and speaking about her fears, primarily for her young children.
Two brief films raised existential questions. “To Be” is a take by McLean Fletcher (recently seen in Virginia Repertory Theatre’s “Murder on the Orient Express”) on the renowned “Hamlet” monologue set against a life of isolating routine.
It took 143 film crews on seven continents (including Antarctica) to create “Humanity,” an entry for the 48-Hour Film Project. Richmond-based director Will Sidaros wanted to make an optimistic film, no matter the given prompt. The logistically challenging effort yielded a swift-moving, world-circling telephonic fable, when a single question arrives on everyone’s device.
See the full roster of 2025 RIFF award winners.
