The James River Film Festival hasn’t strayed far from its original mission, says founder and director Michael Jones. “We fit in where we always have. Because of where we positioned ourselves when we started, we can do almost anything.”
Sponsored by the nonprofit James River Film Society, Richmond’s longest-running cinema roundup will celebrate its 30th anniversary on April 11-14 and 20, once again bringing to area screens an eclectic array of rediscovered Hollywood classics, hard-to-find cult films, avant-garde works and music documentaries, with a strong emphasis on local topics and filmmakers. This year, three filmmakers from Richmond, Sasha Waters, Yossera Bouchtia and Michele Poulos will have new and recent works featured.
The JRFF will also bring back popular recurring events, such the Silent Music Revival and the RVA Music Archives, and see the long-awaited return of the James River Filmmakers Forum, which kicks off the festival after a long absence on Thursday, April 11 at Studio Two Three. This year’s forum guests will be Richmond directors Jim Stramel, Todd Raviotta, Ariel Unser, Will Sadaros and Dave Ellsworth. “It’s a very unique thing that he does,” Jones says of host Jeff Roll, who recently founded the CinemaNiche movie program at Studio Two Three. “It’s not often that you get to watch a film and then talk to the filmmaker afterward. Jeff is like the Tom Snyder of Richmond film, he has connections to everyone in the local filmmaking world.”
The festival was originally started through the Department of Photography and Film and the Art History programs at Virginia Commonwealth University. Jones says that highlighting the D.I.Y. film community has been a focus of the festival from the start. The idea was to be an indie version of the Virginia Festival of American Film in Charlottesville, now known as the Virginia Film Festival. “They were bringing in Hollywood stars like Gregory Peck so we thought we’d go the independent route, the offbeat. And that’s where we’ve been for the last 30 years.”
“We always try to err on the side of the edges,” says Coleman Jennings, a James River Film Society curator and board member. “We like to show not only classics that don’t get a lot of airtime anymore, we also like to invite people to experience something that they may not have an opportunity to experience elsewhere… experimental, obscure films and documentaries.”
Most JRFF events cost $8 but some are free, such as the Main Public Library screening of “Stormy Weather.” (April 12, 12:30 p.m.). In addition to featuring such legendary African-American performers as Cab Calloway, Lena Horne and Fats Waller, the 1943 musical features the final screen appearance of Richmond’s own Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson.
“Robinson is probably the greatest tap dancer to come out of the South,” says Jones, who teaches film studies at Randolph Macon College. “There’s a statue of him on Leigh Street. We’ve featured many African-American films over the years but we’ve never shown this before. And it’s a free program at the library, only a few blocks from where he grew up.”
Following “Stormy Weather” at 2:30 p.m will be a free showing of Josef von Sternberg’s evocative “Morocco” (1930), with Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper. Richmond author Nelson Calisch will be on hand to sign copies of his book, “A Line a Day” which documents the life and career of his grandmother, Edith Lindeman Calisch, Richmond’s first movie critic [read Style’s story here]. “She was related to the Thalhimer family,” says Jones. “But she had a real independent streak, and maneuvered her way into the newspaper business. Interestingly, she interviewed both Bill Robinson and Gary Cooper.”
The Morocco of “Morocco” was recreated on the Paramount Studios backlot, but the evocative short, “Arfi, the Coming Night,” by director Yossera Bouchtia, showcases the real, and mysterious, Moroccan desert. It’s part of a series of short films by Bouchtia, a professor of film at Virginia Commonwealth University, screening at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts on April 14 at 12:30 p.m. Says Jones: “She talks about the idea of bridging the worlds of East and West in her work. There is one beautiful little film [“I Am Selma”] about a Muslim student who wears her traditional garb at school and is harassed and eventually wraps herself up in the American flag in order to be accepted.”
A rare showing of Carl Dreyer’s creepy-as-hell horror classic, “Vampyr,” from 1932, will follow at the VMFA at 3 p.m. with a live soundtrack by the Richmond ensemble, Cast Shadows and Sbowe. “We’ve always had a soft spot for the marrying of music and film,” says Jennings. “Live soundtracks and films about musicians have always been our bread and butter because people seem to like them, and we like them as well.”
Case in point: Sasha Waters, who teaches film at Virginia Commonwealth University, will showcase her unfinished documentary, “Bruce Conner and a Soul-Stirring Work-in-Progress,” on Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Grace St. Theater, free of charge. “Conner, the experimental filmmaker [and artist], was working on a documentary about the seminal gospel group, the Soul Stirrers, in 1984 and never finished it,” says Jones. “She’s gotten the footage and is putting it together.” Following that, at 9 pm., there will be a screening of “Half Japanese: The Band that Would Be King,” a music documentary about the avant-punk group that was a big hit at the very first JRFF. “It’s our nod to the first festival,” Jones says. “Half Japanese used to play Richmond all the time with the Orthotonics.”
As with previous editions, the 30th installment is scattered on screens all over town. It’s also spread out over two weekends this year due to a scheduling conflict with the Byrd Theater. The Silent Music Revival, curated by Jameson Price, will wrap up the festival’s first weekend at Studio Two Three on Sunday, April 14 at 8 p.m. The Revival features the fusion of a silent film with the live music of a Richmond band. This time, the rootsy “soulbilly” of Cassidy Snider and the Wranglers will provide the on-the-spot soundtrack for Charlie Chaplin’s iconic “The Gold Rush.”
The festival resumes on April 20 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts with two “guerilla ethnologies” from African director Hisham Mayet, documenting the cultural life and customs of Mali and the Republic of Niger. Bill Lupoletti, the host of WRIR’s “Global A Go-Go,” will introduce the films, “The Divine River: Ceremonial Pageantry in the Sabel” and “Oulaya’s Wedding,” at 12:30 p.m. Of the latter, Jones says, “Think ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ but in Africa.”
At the Byrd Theater, local filmmaker Michele Poulos will present her documentary, “Wild Creation: Mardi Gras Women” at 2 p.m. “She was an intern of [famed documentarian] Albert Maysles at NYU,” Jones says of poet and screenwriter Poulos. “Her second film is like a piece of anthropology, she captures her subjects so well.” The film, years in the making, is a behind-the-scenes look at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, as seen through three different women of different races and cultures.

Things get even weirder and dreamier at the Byrd when the festival hosts a two-film tribute to the Italian horror director Mario Bava at 5 p.m. Bava’s gothic cult classic “Black Sunday,” with B-movie queen Barbara Steele in dual roles, will screen with a lesser-known Bava work, “Kill, Baby, Kill.” Film critic and Italian horror scholar Tim Lucas will present pre-recorded commentary on Bava and his films during intermission. “Bava’s films all have similar patterns,” Jones says. “Castles, witches, curses, cults. We ran ‘I Drink Your Blood’ a few years ago, but we haven’t done too much of the B-movie stuff before.” You can also read a story about Bava’s work by Style Weekly film critic Chuck Bowen here.
Finishing off the festival, there’s the return of RVA Music Archives, slated for the Byrd at 9:30 p.m. It features a compilation of new and archival music videos from Richmond singers and bands. “It was far and away our most popular event last year. People were saying they couldn’t wait for us to do it again,” Jennings says. The screening is a collaboration between Society curator Laney Sullivan and Chris Damon of the video collective, Good Day RVA.
How has the James River Film Festival changed in three decades? “We don’t do as many programs as we used to,” Jones says. “We are a little more fine-tuned, a little more streamlined. We’re all-volunteer, and we all have jobs. The fact that we’ve managed to put this together for all this time is somewhat miraculous to me.”
The 30th James River Film Festival will feature movies at The Byrd Theatre, Studio Two Three, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Grace St. Theater and the Richmond Main Public Library on April 11-14 & 20. For tickets and complete schedule and times, go to https://www.jamesriverfilm.org .