Richmond’s French Film Festival fêtes 25 years of cinema.
The 2016 festival at the Byrd Theatre in Richmond.
Photos courtesy of the Richmond French Film Festival
Inside Byrd Theatre.
Drs. Peter and Francoise Kirkpatrick teach a masterclass at the 2016 festival.
The Richmond French Film Festival is sponsored by the film studies departments at VCU and the University of Richmond.
Richmond’s French Film Festival, which celebrates its 25th anniversary March 30 – April 2, is the brainchild of two local French literature and culture professors who already knew a thing or two about navigating cross-cultural partnerships when they first conceived the idea in fall 1992. The inaugural festival was held just a few months later. Drs. Peter and Françoise Kirkpatrick were originally hoping to draw students to their fledgling film studies programs at VCU and the University of Richmond, respectively. Twenty-five years later, the festival has achieved an international reach and additionally draws cinéastes from across the U.S. to celebrate and enjoy contemporary French cinema. (Last year, festival passholders came from 42 different states.)
In the early years, Peter remembers hauling theater seats down from Baltimore and screwing them into the floor of the old Biograph Theater near VCU with a group of volunteers. In 1996, the festival moved to Carytown’s Byrd Theatre. Organized as a non-profit and serving as an exemplar of public/private university partnership, the festival is still run by the Kirkpatricks, aided by a team of 40 student volunteers. Despite the fact that in 2016 nearly 22,000 film lovers passed through the turnstiles at the Byrd (which seats 1,400), Peter says, “We started the festival for academic purposes. We had no idea it would develop like it has.”
This year’s line-up of feature films includes Au Nom De Ma Fille (In My Daughter’s Name), about a father’s 27-year quest to bring his young daughter’s killer to justice; The Ride, about the Lakota Sioux tribe’s annual 300-mile pilgrimage to commemorate the massacre of their ancestors at Wounded Knee; and Adopte Un Veuf (Adopt a Widower), a whimsical tale about a lonely man who offers lodging to three young Parisians and finds his drab existence quite transformed. In all, 14 films and documentaries will be shown during the festival. Preview events and talks will be held March 27-29 in the Ukrop Auditorium at the University of Richmond’s Robins School of Business, including “Science and Technology: Creating New Visual and Cinematic Experiences” as well as the “Interplay of Music on Screenwriting, Cinematography and Editing.”
The festival affords a more intimate, close-up feel than larger international festivals like Toronto and Sundance, which are primarily focused on finding distribution deals for the films being screened. “We provide a cinematic experience in a cinematic palace made to show films like these,” says Peter. “The directors and film technicians who travel here from France are engaged with our public. They’re in Carytown mingling, having coffee, talking about film with the people they meet.”
Tickets are available at the Byrd Theatre box office 30 minutes before each screening (Note: lines form well in advance). Single-film tickets are $15 and VIP passes offering full access are also available for $115 ($105 for faculty and $65 for students). FrenchFilmFestival.us
