Life > April 17, 2008

By Kevin Koehler | Contributing editor

Winston-Salem’s RiverRun Film Festival returns for its 10th year next week, bringing to town a big buffet of film for the area’s curious movie lovers. The festival kicks off on April 23 and will screen over 90 diverse works before wrapping up five days later.

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“I hope people go see things they wouldn’t normally see. That’s what’s most exciting about a film festival for me at least,” RiverRun Program Coordinator Mary Dossinger said. “Just show up and go to a movie, not even looking to see what’s playing. It’s always really fun and it might be bad, but you never know, you might find next favorite film ... Go out on a limb; try something new.”

There will be plenty of opportunity for such cinematic exploration, as most of the selections are off-the-beaten path films that are hard to see outside the festival. The wide variety of movies playing include short and feature lengths, of nearly every genre from drama to comedy to documentary, both foreign and domestic in origin.

RiverRun will begin with a special screening of Phoebe in Wonderland, which is fresh from the Sundance Film Festival.

The film revolves around a troubled 9-year-old girl who has a new world opened to her through a school production of Alice in Wonderland.

It stars, among others, Felicity Huffman, Patricia Clarkson and Bill Pullman, who will attend the festival for a public conversation April 24 and receive a 2008 Master of Cinema award. Pullman is an accomplished actor, but you may know him best for his role as President Whitmore in the alien-invasion blockbuster Independence Day (“We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!”).

Also appearing for a conversation and Master of Cinema award will be Pam Grier, a Winston-Salem native who starred as Foxy Brown in the iconic 1972 blaxploitation flick of the same name and can be seen on television’s The L-Word today.

“Her influential career broke new ground for black women in the film industry, and her roles showed women around the world that they could be both fiercely independent and beautiful,” RiverRun Executive Director Andrew Rodgers said.

The festival will additionally host talks with renowned septuagenarian documentarian Les Blank (Burden of Dreams) and director John Dahl (Rounders).

Among the more unique screenings will be the 1933 version of Alice in Wonderland, a rare archival print never released for home video, and the silent 1925 Phantom of the Opera, which will be accompanied live by the Alloy Orchestra of Cambridge, Mass.

As the key May 6 North Carolina primary election approaches, two politically relevant documentaries will be screened.

I.O.U.S.A. takes a plain-spoken look at the national debt. Secrecy examines critically the government practice of classifying political documents.

The RiverRun staff looked at over 1,000 films, in conjunction with a review board comprised of various community members, to find the best titles for the 2008 festival.

“It’s tough having this massive list of films and trying to see them all,” Dossinger said.

“We try to pick just really great films that people from Winston and throughout the area would really like.”

The process takes nearly an entire year. “We’ve already had people e-mail us asking about submissions for next year,” she said.

Tickets to screenings can be bought online, by phone, at the Stevens Center on Fourth Street or the campus of North Carolina School of the Arts.

VIP Passes to all festival events are available for $300.