After a night spent on the coziest sofa in all of Appalachia, we headed up early to the top of a university parking deck, parked beneath a sign that read “No Parking / No Loitering,” and lined up the shot—my director and me, just the two of us that morning to grab a...
With his flair for visual storytelling, director Wong Hu helped redefine the martial arts genre of 1960s Chinese cinema, weaving together refined storytelling with dynamic action sequences. During the period, in a bid for more creative freedom from the political strife at the time and to fulfill his inner ambitions, Hu moved his production over...
Welcome to Virginia, motherland of presidents, a craft beer mecca, and in recent years, a burgeoning home for major motion pictures and television series. Virginia has always been a low key place for the film industry to come knocking when it needed a location. Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" was shot right here in the River City, along with the...
Jeff Goldblum is life; the air we breathe, the water we drink. His genre-defining performance in "Jurassic Park" as mathematician-turned-American hero Ian Malcolm, introduced a generation of teenagers in the 1990s to concepts like chaos theory, and the art of lounging casually with your shirt open; bringing sexy back when Justin Timberlake was...
It’s easy to forget that safety is a luxury, but Richmond filmmaker Jen Lawhorne is prepared to compel us to remember. Her new documentary, “Fata Morgana,” made in partnership with two African refugees, is meant to reveal and examine the hardships and transition process of the African refugee, the global refugee crisis, and what Lawhorne...
"Stand-up is survival. For me that's jazz, that's what I have to do." It is hard to overstate the impact that Robin Williams had on just about every aspect of comedy since he broke the scene in the mid-1970s. His sheer energy, razor-sharp wit, ability to morph his persona into characters both known and unknown, and genre-defining stand-up shaped...
Anger, frustration, sadness, heartbreak. The air in the theater felt heavy. It was as if you could feel the emotions of the audience dance around you from one side of the room to the other. These were the powerful reactions from the crowd following the Institute for Contemporary Art's recent screening of Say Her Name: The Life and Death of Sandra...
In search of something more rough and real, Pilipino director Lino Brocka’s 1975 docudrama, “Manila in the Claws of Light,” is steeped in social realism in its depiction of the lower-class struggle of a young twenty-something named Julio (Bembol Roco). The film follows Julio into the seedy underbelly of Manila on a search for his lost love,...
My summer Monday night tradition for the past several years: drive to my mom’s and make dinner with my grandmother, crack a bottle of wine, plant on the couch by 8 p.m. and glue our faces to the TV to watch 25 men battle over one lucky lady (I’m a purist, I don’t watch The Bachelor. The Bachelorette is where it’s at.) My grandmother and I will...
To kick off the summer, VCU's Institute for Contemporary Art is premiering a free film series to showcase local and national filmmakers in conjunction with their current exhibition, Declaration. Launching today and running year-round, the ICA Cinema Series will offer free movies at the arts center's auditorium once a month along with...
