The 20th annual Alexandria Film Festival is off to a flying start.
In August and September, the film fest will showcase screenings of documentaries about gun violence and E. Jean Carroll, the former advice columnist who won a sexual assault and defamation trial against President Trump.
Patti North, the film festival’s founder and executive director, says that the festival doesn’t shy away from controversial topics.
“We’re looking for a good movie,” North told ALXnow in a recent interview. “The filmmaker has a point of view, and we don’t necessarily sanction every point of view.”
“Louder Than Guns,” a series of conversations about gun rights with Old Crow Medicine Show frontman Ketch Secor and journalist David Greene, will premiere Aug. 4 at 6 p.m. at the Lyceum (201 S. Washington Street). Tickets cost $15 per person. A conversation with the filmmaker will follow the screening.
“Ask E. Jean” will have its Alexandria premiere on Sunday, Sept. 27, at 6 p.m. at the Lyceum. Tickets cost $15 per person.
“The selection of these feature documentaries was very carefully made in honor of our 20th anniversary,” said Jill Ray, chair of the film festival’s executive committee. “They’re really stellar, outstanding examples of feature documentaries, and they’re very different.”
The 20th anniversary officially kicked off with screenings of “Becoming Wild” in April, “Just Sing” on June 28, and “Space Cowboy” on July 19 at The Lyceum.
“I don’t think we’re ever gonna compete with Sundance,” North said. “That said, we’d like to become more than the regional power that we are now, that we become known more on the national scene.”
She added, “It’s been a significant 20 years, and it’s been exciting to see it grow and and expand and its reach stretch. We have filmmakers come here from all over the world.”
The film festival will feature more than 60 films and be held Nov. 13-15, with screenings at:
- Virginia Tech’s Academic Building One (3625 Potomac Avenue)
- Charles E. Beatley, Jr. Central Library (5005 Duke Street)
- MetroStage (915 N. Fairfax Street)
- Patagonia (815 1/2 King Street), which is the former Old Town Theater
The submission deadline for the film festival is Aug. 1.
How it started
A lifelong movie lover, North was on the Alexandria Commission for the Arts in the early 2000s, and said that it was becoming clear that a digital revolution was happening and that the city needed a festival.
“I kept talking to my fellow commissioners about it,” North told ALXnow. “They got sort of exasperated and were like, ‘Well, go do something about it,’ so I did.”
North said she got tips from a director of the Washington DC International Film Festival. On the first year of the festival, two dozen films were shown in the auditorium of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the city’s Carlyle neighborhood. One of the films that received the festival’s top prize that year, War Dance, was later nominated for an Academy Award.
“We were lucky in a lot of ways,” North said. “It’s sort of miraculous that we’ve been able to do this all this time with no paid staff.”
Since then, the Alexandria Film Festival has screened more than 1,000 films.
North sees a future where she doesn’t run the operation out of her house.
“To grow significantly, we’re going to have to have more resources,” she said. “We’re about to invest in our first computer this year, because my old one is going away.”
Featured image via Alexandria Film Festival/Facebook
