(Renata Sheppard)
By Montague Gammon III
Big art coming out of the small town of Cape Charles has made this erstwhile ferry boat stop on Virginia’s Eastern Shore known from Los Angeles to New York, at film festivals across the USA and as far flung as Ireland and Hong Kong, for almost a dozen years now.
Cape Charles is the home of the annual and unique artistic residency and festival hybrid called Films That Move, formerly known as Experimental Films Virginia, now in its twelfth season.
August 2 will provide a first look at 2004’s roughly double handful of new cinema pieces at the town’s Historic Palace Theatre.
“More likely than not, there’s something for everyone in the films,” said Renata Sheppard: dancer, visual artist, choreographer, teacher and founder, artistic director and all-around head honcha of Films That Move.
For two weeks each summer, film makers and dancers and artists of all the varied talents that go into making movies converge on this town of some 1200 souls.
Visitors and locals turn out a bunch of new pieces of cinematic art focussed on “thinking in film … specifically looking at dance and at movement as a language, the body as a story-telling agent,” Sheppard said during a series of phone, email and text conversions.
In these films Cape Charles yearly lives up to its self description of “Small Town, Big Art.”
Born in Naples, Italy, father American, mother Italian, Sheppard was raised on the Eastern Shore. After local high school, William and Mary and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Sheppard went on to be a Fulbright Scholar, Henry Luce Scholar, Kate Neal Kinley Fellow, and US Embassy Artist Research grantee, to teaching and artist in residence positions in Mexico, South Korea, Italy, Spain, Taiwan, England, New York City and ODU.
One of the first comments Sheppard made about FTM 2004 events was, “I am excited to report that it does look like we are going to make two films to honor local dance legend Lorraine Graves, whose illustrious career at Dance Theatre of Harlem paved the way for ballerinas of color.“
Graves passed away last March here, in her home town of Norfolk. This pioneer among ballerinas was, Sheppard said, “one of my fundamental dance teachers and remained in my adult years a very dear friend.”
Some likewise high powered dance artists this summer will probably be part of the Graves films “exciting mini-residency happening inside the larger residency.” Sheppard said.
Top notch artists, such as Oscar nominated international filmmaker David Darg, an Eastern Shore resident and Films That Move board member (who has worked with A-Listers like Will Smith, Sheppard mentioned) annually join up-and-coming filmmakers of varied backgrounds and experience as part of the residency-festival’s basic design.
Sheppard explains: “The whole design is to really have multigenerational, multidisciplinary and multi-experience levels.”
“The design is the brain child of my own experience as an artist. I tried to makes something that would really, really push the field of dance film and of film and of how we make film… there’s a visual artist, there’s a composer, there’s a sound designer and a director and a choreographer and a dancer …and David Darg in the same room as [for example] a Governor’s School for the Arts young filmmaker, a high schooler.
“There’s a magic that happens when you’ve got an Oscar nominated film director in the same room as one of New York’s top dancers next to a young but promising and very, very talented film maker. That…breeds an attitude of curiosity and respect and desire to support each other.”
For “people like David Darg,” she said, “a high level artist…traveling to Saudi Arabia and Dubai and Mexico and everywhere in between and hopping back and forth between LA and New York…for him, coming and working on these films is a pleasure. He’s like ‘I love it I love getting to work with the dancers and the creatives.’ “
“There’s an incredible energy in the room… together we build these teams and we make eight to ten new films. Somehow we birth that in a two week process.”
“There’s a little bit more space for play, for risk taking, and that’s very intentional. Without the pressure of a big corporate commercial project or high level executive producers breathing down your neck…you get to do what all artists really crave doing which is to create!”
Heads-up-notice: Darg is working on an Accomack County themed film tentatively titled “Cape Burning,” about a woman with a history of danger, to paraphrase some early online remarks. The Films That Move August showings may include its trailer or teaser.
Sheppard continued, “Films that are inspired by the people and places of Virginia’s Eastern Shore [are] especially meaningful for Virginia residents [and] of the Greater Hampton Roads…we don’t often get to see films that are made and inspired by our own people, places and the textures of our life and culture.”
“You might be surprised at how you will find something–and the films are short–so you’re going to see eight to ten films and maybe one…will delight you in a way that you did not expect.”
“Modern day society [doesn’t] have a long attention span, so the short film format is the perfect vehicle to invite a broad audience into the world of art film. They will feel quite at home with our films. More likely than not, there is something for everyone in the films that we show.”
WANT TO GO?
Films That Move – 2024 Premieres
8 p.m., Fri., Aug. 2
Historic Palace Theatre
305 Mason Ave., Cape Charles, VA 23310
www.filmsthatmove.us
757-331-GEAR (757-331-4327)
