A 34-year-old filmmaker from Winston-Salem will be the first recipient of the RiverRun International Film Festival's "Emerging Master" award, the festival announced yesterday.
Ramin Bahrani, the director of the critically acclaimed films Man Push Cart and Chop Shop, will receive the award at this year's RiverRun festival, which will run from April 22 to April 29.
"We've given our ‘Master of Cinema' award to a number of actors over the years, and it's been kind of conspicuous to us that we haven't given it to a director," said Andrew Rodgers, the director of RiverRun. "Additionally, I've wanted to be able to give awards to emerging talent, people at the beginnings of their career. And this year we decided to marry the two."
The lineup for this year's festival will include 37 feature films and 63 shorts from 26 countries. The films were announced yesterday at a launch party held at the Reynolda House Museum of American Art.
The festival will open with a screening of the romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer by director Marc Webb, who will attend. The festival will run for eight days, concluding with a screening of Speedy, a 1928 silent comedy starring Harold Lloyd, with musical accompaniment by the Alloy Orchestra.
Bahrani's latest film, Goodbye Solo -- which was shot in and around Winston-Salem -- will be screened during the festival. The festival will also include other films with North Carolina ties. "We've got more local films than we ever have before, showcasing a lot of new local talent," Rodgers said.
One is a rough cut of Eyeborgs, a science-fiction film by local filmmaker Richard Clabaugh that was shot largely in Winston-Salem. Three films by UNC Greensboro faculty members are included: the feature-length documentaries Rocaterrania and With These Hands: The Story of an American Furniture Factory, and the short film Sapsucker. Casting Session, a short film by Austin Jennings, an alumnus of the UNC School of the Arts, will also be shown.
In 2008, the festival drew more than $72,000 in ticket sales, up from $52,174 in 2007. Rodgers estimated that between 11,000 and 12,000 people attended the festival in 2008.
"We had a phenomenal year last year in terms of attendance, awareness and industry prestige," he said. "We're coming off the strongest year the festival has ever had."
Last May, he said, he decided to be conservative in his estimates for 2009, cutting the budget by 15 percent across most categories. And in October, he revised the budget further with additional cuts based on the way the economy was slipping.
Some sponsors have bowed out of this year's festival, but others have taken their places, he said. Between sponsors and grants from such organizations as the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County and the Millennium Fund, Rodgers said, the festival is already 99 percent of the way to its income goal for 2009 of $368,860.
"It's entirely possible we'll see lower ticket sales because people's pocketbooks are hurting," he said. "We're prepared for that. But we know that in economic downturns, film attendance is something that typically goes up.
"We have a lot of great movies this year, and I think people can really appreciate what we're showing."
■ Tim Clodfelter can be reached at 727-7371 or at tclodfelter@wsjournal.com.
■ A complete list of the films that will be featured in this year's festival can be found online at www.journalnow.com. Tickets to most screenings will be $8. For more information or to order tickets, go to www.riverrunfilm.com or call 724-1502.
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