VCU news

This year’s Southern Film Festival will be held Sept. 10–12 and will feature four movies centered around the theme of Southern musical traditions and stereotypes.

The theme of the festival will be “Screening Southern Music: Exploring Musical Traditions & Stereotypes in Popular Film.” It will open Thursday, Sept. 10, with a keynote lecture on Disney’s “most notorious” film, “Song of the South,” followed by two days of movies and discussions at a variety of venues.

“This year’s films highlight the rich musical traditions in the South, including Appalachian, jazz, folk and gospel sounds,” said festival organizer Emilie Raymond, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of History in the College of Humanities and Sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University. “However, while celebrating this music, the films often use stereotypical characters and imagery about the South, and the festival seeks to explore this tension.”

The festival will also include two live musical performances by The Hot Seats and the VCU Black Awakening Choir. “We are very excited to showcase their talent,” Raymond said.

The festival is presented by VCU, in association with the College of Humanities and Sciences, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the VCU Humanities Research Center, and co-sponsored by the Art Deco Society of Virginia, Virginia Opera, as well as VCU’s Department of History, Department of English, Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, and VCU’s Division of Student Affairs and Office of Multicultural Student Affairs.

All events are open to the public and free unless otherwise noted.

Thursday, Sept. 10

Kathy Merlock Jackson, keynote lecture: “‘You Can’t Run Away from Trouble’: Song and Story in Disney’s ‘Song of the South.’”

Time: 6 p.m.

Location: The Depot, 814 W. Broad St

Walt Disney’s first combined live-action/animated film is also known as the company’s “most notorious film” for its portrayal of subservient blacks and paternalistic whites on a Georgia plantation. Kathy Merlock Jackson, Ph.D., will discuss how the film, relegated to the Disney vault for the past 25 years, portrays Uncle Remus’ tales through songs such as “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” and characters such as Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox.

A reception will be held at 5:30 p.m. at The Depot, immediately before Jackson’s talk.

Friday, Sept. 11 

“Heart o’ the Hills” (1919; 87 minutes) 

Time: 6:30-9 p.m.

Location: Leslie Cheek Theater, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 200 N. Boulevard 

Starring the renowned Mary Pickford, this silent film is a lively drama of family tensions, set amidst a battle over coal resources in the highlands of Kentucky. The Hot Seats will accompany the film with a live musical performance that showcases their particular blend of Appalachian old-time music, bluegrass, ragtime and good old rock and roll. A panel discussion will follow.

Admission: $8 (VMFA and Art Deco Society of Virginia members $5); free for VCU faculty, staff and students with valid VCU ID presented at ticket desk. 

Co-sponsored by the Art Deco Society of Virginia, as part of its Art Deco Weekend. Immediately after the film, join Art Deco members at Grandstaff & Stein Book Sellers, Richmond’s own speakeasy located in Shockoe Bottom (2113 E. Main St.), for Prohibition-era cocktails, including “the Mary Pickford.”

Saturday, Sept. 12 

“King Creole” (1958; 116 minutes)

Time: 10 a.m.

Location: Sticky Rice, 2232 West Main St. 

Stars Elvis Presley as an aspiring nightclub singer in the shady underworld of the French Quarter in New Orleans. Presley received a 60-day deferment from the U.S. Army to make the movie, which was filmed on location. Highlights include Presley’s hit songs “Trouble” and “Hard-Headed Woman.”

Admission: $8, includes breakfast buffet; drinks available for purchase.

“Porgy and Bess” (1959; 139 minutes) 

Time: 2 p.m.

Location: Grace Street Theater, 934 W. Grace St. 

Based on the 1935 opera of the same name by George Gershwin and the novel “Porgy” by the white author Dubose Heyward, “Porgy and Bess” tells the story of a legless beggar (Sidney Poitier) and his quest to win the love of the sultry and self-destructive Bess (Dorothy Dandridge). Set in the poverty-stricken neighborhood of Charleston’s fictional Catfish Row, the film was largely denounced for its portrayal of African Americans even as it propelled Poitier and Dandridge into box office sensations and renewed interest in the Gershwin hits “Summertime” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” The film is currently not in circulation, and an archival copy will be shown.

Introduction by Raymond and talk-back with Christopher Brooks, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at VCU. Co-sponsored by the Virginia Opera.

“We Shall Overcome” (1989; 58 minutes) 

Time: 5 p.m.   

Location: Grace Street Theater, 934 W. Grace St.

This documentary film narrated by Harry Belafonte traces the sources of the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” from the Sea Islands of South Carolina to the 1963 March on Washington. A live musical performance by the VCU Black Awakening Choir will follow the film. 

About VCU and the VCU Medical Center

Virginia Commonwealth University is a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research. Located in downtown Richmond, VCU enrolls more than 31,000 students in 222 degree and certificate programs in the arts, sciences and humanities. Sixty-seven of the programs are unique in Virginia, many of them crossing the disciplines of VCU’s 13 schools and one college. MCV Hospitals and the health sciences schools of Virginia Commonwealth University comprise the VCU Medical Center, one of the nation’s leading academic medical centers. For more, see www.vcu.edu.