Asheville Film Festival
Considering that the Asheville Film Festival just debuted in 2003, it's done pretty well for itself. Over the course of four days in October, the festival features competitive and noncompetitive screenings, seminars and workshops, cocktail parties and receptions, celebrity "Evening withs," awards galore and some serious schmoozing, making the trip for an extended weekend well worthwhile for movie fans and insiders alike. The festival has thus far attracted such industry luminaries as Ron Howard (who said of the festival: "Not only is this good for Asheville, but festivals like this are changing and evolving this whole medium. You folks are on to something here."), David Lynch and Ken Russell.
Asheville is deserving of a film festival of this caliber. Its history with film is a storied one, dating back to 1911 when Thomas Edison visited these mountains to shoot short films. A feature film, Conquest of Canaan, was then shot here in 1921.
Gorgeous backdrops, a wealth of talent and nonunion labor have kept production companies coming to Western North Carolina over the years, but certainly the two most illustrious films shot in and around Asheville are Thunder Road - Robert Mitchum's homage to moonshining, shot on the back roads of Bent Creek and elsewhere - and the classic Being There, with a stunning performance by Peter Sellers, shot largely at the Biltmore House.
As an aside: The making of Thunder Road was quite an event. The self-proclaimed, and convicted, pot smoker Mitchum was a larger-than-life presence, and the party was reportedly nonstop. And as another aside: The legendary crash scene at the conclusion of the movie would reappear in two films: They Saved Hitler's Brain and Species. Crazy.
And on a personal note: I once got very drunk with Welsh character actor Bernard Fox - best known as Malcolm Merrieweather on The Andy Griffith Show, Col. Crittendon on Hogan's Heroes and Dr. Bombay on Bewitched - when he was in Asheville making a movie with Don Knotts and Tim Conway.
Anyways … as evidenced by the Asheville Film Festival, cinema is near and dear to Asheville denizens. Integral to the promotion of the visual arts is the Media Arts Project (www.themap.org). The MAP "cultivates innovative arts & technology," providing area artists with exhibition programming, professional development, outreach and education. Kudos to them for their good work.
Among Asheville Film Festival venues are the Diana Wortham Theatre at Pack Place and the Fine Arts Theatre (which used to show dirty movies but now screens all the good independent stuff) on Biltmore Ave.
For more about the festival, stop by www.ashevillefilmfestival.com.