RiverRun International Film Festival

At a glance

The 11th RiverRun International Film Festival will begin Wednesday and run through April 29 in venues throughout Winston-Salem, three days longer than past festivals.

Here's what you need to know:

The films

The festival will show 108 films -- 37 feature-length and 71 short movies -- from 26 countries. The relish and Winston-Salem Journal staff watched all but five of them. Our reviewers gave the films mostly high marks. But, of course, all the festival films had already been screened by the festival staff before we got our eyes and ears on them; only the very best of nearly 1,000 entries made it to the festival.

Capsule movie reviews are on pages 8-15. Reviews of the short films will be in the Journal Sunday, and all the reviews are online at www.journalnow.com.

For a schedule of screenings, see pages 6 and 7.

The competition

Eight films will compete in the RiverRun narrative feature competition: Heart of Fire, Il Divo, Mommy is at the Hairdresser's, Rumba, Three Monkeys, Treeless Mountain, Tulpan and A Woman in Berlin.

Eight films will compete in the documentary feature competition: Art & Copy, Food Inc., Football Under Cover, Guest of Cindy Sherman, Kalinovski Square, Rocaterrania, Unmistaken Child and Waveriders.

Most of the short films being shown at the festival will also be part of the competition. The Midnight Shorts and Saturday Morning Cartoons will not compete.

The films will be judged by a jury of filmmakers, industry professionals and academics. Regular movie-goers will get to vote for the BB&T Audience Awards. The awards will be presented at 7 p.m. April 26 at UNCSA-Main before the screening of Shall We Kiss?

Parties

The festival will begin Wednesday with the opening-night premiere of (500) Days of Summer at 7 p.m. at the Stevens Center, 7-9 p.m., $15, followed by the opening-night gala at Reynolda House from 9 p.m. –Midnight for a recession-busting $15. There will be hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar. Cocktail attire is required.

A Friday Night Speakeasy will be 9 p.m.-1 a.m. April 24 at the Millennium Center. This year's "centerpiece party" will have a 1930s theme, in a nod to hard times. Admission is another recession-fighting $5 or free with three cans of food for the Second Harvest Food Bank.

Why should parties end with the weekend? Keep on kicking up your heels at Guy Noir's Noisebox, set for 8 p.m. April 27 (a Monday) at 6th & Vine, 209 W. Sixth St. Following the screening of Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio With the Red Shoes at 7 p.m. at UNCSA-Main, Polecat Creek will perform. (Polecat Creek is scheduled to be on Keillor's radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, in May.) There will be hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar. Admission is $10.

Emerging Master

Ramin Bahrani, the Winston-Salem-born director of Man Push Cart and Chop Shop, will receive RiverRun's first Emerging Master award after the screening of his latest film, Goodbye Solo (4 p.m. April 25), which was shot in and around Winston-Salem (see story on page 16). The screening and presentation will be at the Main Theatre in the film complex at UNCSA. Local playwright and screenwriter Angus MacLachlan will moderate a Q&A with Bahrani. Tickets are $15. Goodbye Solo will also be screened at 4:30 p.m. April 26 at UNCSA-Main.

Visiting filmmakers

Some of the filmmakers who will grace our fair city during the festival include Jennifer Lynch, the director of Surveillance; Marc Webb, the director of (500) Days of Summer; and Ayat Najafi and David Assmann, the directors of Football Under Cover. Richard Clabaugh, the director of Eyeborgs, lives here and will be here throughout the festival.

Stay tuned. There may be more.

N.C. ties

Several feature films at the festival have N.C. connections.

Herb and Dorothy Vogel, who amassed an incredible art collection on their postal-worker and librarian salaries, are donating art to 50 museums across the United States. The Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro is the N.C. recipient. You can see their story, Herb and Dorothy, at 7 p.m. today for free at the Weatherspoon as part of Revolve Film and Music Festival's monthly screening (335-5770), or next Thursday and April 26 at Reynolda House during RiverRun.

Goodbye Solo was shot around Winston-Salem by Ramin Bahrani (see story on page 16).

Matt Barr, a professor of filmmaking at UNC-Greensboro who lives in Winston-Salem, made the documentary, With These Hands: The Story of an American Furniture Factory, about the closing of the last U.S. Hooker factory in Martinsville, Va.

Eyeborgs, described as a work in progress, was shot by a local filmmaker, Richard Clabaugh, almost entirely in Winston-Salem.

Late-night

If you're a night owl, then stroll over to The Garage on Seventh Street for some scary stuff and some love stories.

I Sell the Dead, a tribute to 19th-century horror stories, will be at The Garage at 11:30 pm. April 24 and at 9 p.m. April 25, $10.

A program of late-night shorts, Love & Obsession, will be at The Garage 9 p.m. April 24 and 11:30 p.m. April 25. Regular prices.

Over at UNCSA-Main, Eyeborgs, a work in progress about Big Brother-style surveillance, will be shown at 9:15 p.m. April 27. $10.

Family-friendly fare

The Saturday Morning Cartoons, animated short films, 10:30 a.m. April 15 at the Stevens Center and 11:30 a.m. April 26 at UNCSA-Gold, are safe bets for the entire family. And what a deal! Tickets are $8 for adults, $1 for children 18 and under.

In Saving Luna, a lonely killer whale gets separated from her pod and interacts with the locals in a remote Canadian fjord. It's showing 2 p.m. April 25, UNCSA-Main, and 9 p.m. April 28, UNCSA-Gold. Regular prices.

The closing-night film, the 1928 Harold Lloyd classic, Speedy, was nominated for best director in a comedy picture. With accompaniment by the Alloy Orchestra, this silent film tells the story of Harold "Speedy" Swift and his fatal attraction to baseball games. Showing 7 p.m. April 29, UNCSA-Main, $25.

Other films suited to most ages include Unmistaken Child about the search or a Tibetan Buddhist holy man/boy and Sita Sings the Blues, an Indian epic with a feminist spin.

Tickets

Tickets for individual films and events cost from $8 to $25, and students get a $2 discount with proper identification. Fifty all-access passes are $350 each.

You can buy tickets at the Stevens Center, 405 W. Fourth St., at www.riverrunfilm.com and by phone at 721-1945.

During the festival, a second box office will be at the ACE Cinemateque Complex at the UNC School of the Arts, 1533 S. Main St., for walk-up sales only.

Tickets for films at Reynolda House and The Garage will go on sale one hour before the shows. For more information, visit www.riverrunfilm.com or call 724-1502.

Tickets for many screenings sell out, so festival officials recommend that you buy them in advance.

Parking

Free parking for all films at RiverRun's primary venue, the UNCSA film village, is in the parking lots of the Southeast Gateway YWCA, Talecris and Novant Health, 1300 S. Main St. Free shuttle buses will run every few minutes between the parking lots and the UNCSA campus, starting 45 minutes before the first screening of the day and ending 45 minutes after the last screening. You cannot -- repeat cannot -- park on campus. We took the shuttles last year, and it was effortless. Try it; you'll like it.

Parking for the festival headquarters, 500 W. Fourth St., and the Stevens Center, 405 W. Fourth St., is available on Fourth, Spruce and Marshall streets (get your quarters ready) and in the Cherry/Marshall streets parking garage.

For screenings at The Garage, 110 W. Seventh St., and the Millennium Center, 101 W. Fifth St., parking is available on the streets and in the parking garage at Liberty and Fifth streets.

There is plenty of free parking at Reynolda House, 2250 Reynolda Road.