By Montague Gammon III
A line that ties Norfolk’s NEON Arts District and the Work|Release venue on Granby Street to a globe spanning host of filmmakers and dancers, musicians and visual artists from Europe, Asia, Israel, Italy, New York, Chicago and California, is grounded in the small Eastern Shore town of Cape Charles.
Experimental Film Virginia, an annual summer Cape Charles based residency and festival of events and professional (international, national and local) artists, was founded in 2013 by Northampton High School graduate, Fulbright Scholar, Italian born, dual citizenship dancer, choreographer and innovative administrator Renata Sheppard.
Experimental Film Virginia sets foot in Southside Hampton Roads June 25 co-hosting, at Work|Release, a Launching Party of dance, music, visual art (cash bar and food) that EFV Artistic Director Sheppard promises will be (like all EFV occasions) “Fun, relaxed and informal.”
It’s part of the inaugural Rutter Family Art Foundation “Echoes from the East” Exhibition (June 3- July 9).
Sheppard calls the June 25 gathering “A ‘Happening’…a celebration to put the spotlight on a lot of the new energy in Hampton Roads.”
Performers from Taiwan are expected; the “pARTy” will include music by a Korean composer and DJ sets by Italian sound artists, as well as professional dancers performing “site specific” choreography which Ms. Sheppard and the dancers jointly created, along with ample opportunity to meet, greet, eat, drink and to talk to all the artists involved.
From a June 24 Eastern Shore Kickoff Party at the Lemon Tree Gallery and Studio through the July 9 Palace Theater – both in Cape Charles, of course – premiere of fifteen (!) films that have been created over in those two weeks (!!), the whirlwind of activities looks to live up to the EVF tagline/motto of “Small Town, Big Art.”
Visiting artists for the residence in Cape Charles include Hollywood actor Chris Cooper, Italian filmmaker Davide Ferrario, Nickelodeon and HBO comedy writer Matthew Lee Erlbach, and Israeli/German music video director Adi Halfin.
“Art soaked weekends that bring everybody together” are a big part of the EFV workshops and performances.
Sheppard describes the various performances, screenings and “pARTies,” such as the July 2 Art in a Barn “evening of performance, projection, music…local food, beer and wine…in an idyllic setting,” as ways to make dance “digestible,” to “create a space where people can take in extremely high quality and quite experimental” movement art in a context that is very comfortable.”
“Film inherently is dance,” Sheppard points out, and even in 6 minutes, a “We are Done” short featured on the EFV website is evidence that EFV filmmakers know how to give dancers the visual space they need to be seen properly.
For the artists, those weeks in Cape Charles act as “an incubator, a place where we can marinate ideas about film and dance and movement…dance film needs to have an experimental space where it can grow as an art form and film needs an experimental space where it can absorb the language of dance and of movement.”
“What we are trying to get at is the human experience,” she says, by creating “film that is an experience like a painting or a piece of music.”
“We want to honor this place [of Cape Charles and the Eastern Shore] and make something really customized for this location that can only happen here, and then bring this experience to [major] metropolitan areas,” Sheppard continues. “The ‘Small Town Big Arts’ approach is the heart of the design of Experimental Film Virginia.”
Those same fifteen Eastern Shore-made films will have a New York showing July 12, and over the next months will be seen at the Naro and the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, the Commodore in Portsmouth, the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Arts in Virginia Beach, and as far abroad as Italy and Hong Kong.
“I want to put a spotlight on Virginia and Virginia artists.”
“It’s all about driving the audience perceptions of dance,” she says, stressing repeatedly in an hour+ of idea-packed telephone conversation that “The whole point of this is making it accessible and fun.”
Another summation of the weekend Eastern Shore arts events is simply, in Sheppard’s words, “Fun for the whole family.”
For members of Hampton Roads and Eastern Shore communities, she adds, “We have an open call [for volunteers]…There is a place for you. In front of, or behind the camera, we really want people to get involved.”
Experimental Film Virginia Launching Party & Echoes of the East
June 25 (Other events June 24-July 9)
Work|Release
759 Granby St., Norfolk
www.experimentalfilmvirginia.com
Workreleasenorfolk.com
