For 33 years, the Virginia Film Festival has drawn throngs of filmmakers and moviegoers to Charlottesville and the University of Virginia, where they happily meet, mingle, fill theater seats and queue up for jam-packed days of discussions and live events.
But this is 2020, the year of the coronavirus pandemic, and, sadly, throngs of people pose a serious safety concern. For the festival – a program of the University – business as usual was not an option. Like UVA and like so many other organizations, the festival’s organizers had to adapt.
“Back in mid-March, when the University suspended in-person classes, we all hoped the pandemic was a short-term circumstance, something that would start to slow down over the summer,” festival director and UVA Vice Provost for the Arts Jody Kielbasa said. “But as the spring went on, it became increasingly clear that hosting large public events this fall would not be feasible.”
Accordingly, Kielbasa and his team began to craft one of the biggest plot twists in festival history: they were going virtual.
“The festival is something that the community looks forward to every year, and we didn’t want to lose that, even, or especially, this year,” said Kielbasa, noting that both his staff and the festival’s advisory board – a 28-member board of film industry veterans chaired by UVA alum and producer Mark Johnson of “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul” fame – were fully supportive of the move.
“In film, we are fortunate that we can still present art virtually, in a way that many other artists cannot,” he said. “So, we knew we needed to shift our thinking.”
Six months after beginning those initial conversations, Kielbasa and his team are ready to put on a virtual festival this week, beginning Wednesday and running through Sunday. It will feature more than 70 films offered online, along with discussions with actors, filmmakers and UVA faculty members, and – in a creative move – 10 drive-in movie screenings.