T hey can be rubber and stuffy, with eyeholes. They can be applied in front of your bath- room mirror with cakes and powders. They can be a smile or the way you dress. What do you mean you don't wear a mask? Look again.
Not just a tool of B-Movie horror directors or stick-up artists, the mask is a part of everyday culture. Some make life harder; some make it easier. Whatever your mask, you may be apt to see it on screen this weekend, as the Virginia Film Festival pays tribute to life's "Masquerades."
The diversity of this year's festival owes much to the diversity of masquerades that are a part of everyday life and film culture. Says Film Festival Artistic Director Richard Herskowitz, "Everybody in their everyday lives acquires masks and roles that they can get frozen into. The technique that actors use to transform themselves are direct outgrowths of the technique that people use in their everyday life."
The festival's guest of honor, Gena Rowlands, has often dealt with this fact of her craft in her films. When asked how Rowlands' collaborations with her late husband John Cassavetes came to be a part of this year's "Masquerades" theme, Herskowitz said, "As I was developing the theme, I came across all these references to the use of masks in Cassavetes movies." In a way, he says, "how [people] are confined by masks and how they break out of them" is central to Cassavettes' films.
In "A Woman Under the Influence," a performance that earned her a Golden Globe for Best Actress and an Oscar nomination, Rowlands plays a woman who tries desperately to escape her mundane existence, to shed her everyday mask, only to be labeled insane and committed to an institution. According to Herskowitz, she was just a woman "trying to live her life creatively ... to escape her wifely existence." The film shows the hidden danger in the suppression inherent in self-disguise.
While Rowlands' presence at the festival is a showcase of the ways we masquerade on a daily basis, the festival also pays tribute to those unusual performances that show how radical a change in costume or a bit of makeup can be. The festival salutes the works of character actor Danny Kaye and master monster actor Lon Chaney in separate presentations.
Director and Hollywood commentator Mark Rappaport, whom Herskowitz calls "a brilliant analyst of Hollywood movies," will host a screening of Kaye's neglected masterpiece "On the Riviera," where he plays multiple roles. After the screening, Rappaport will talk about Kaye and give insights into Kaye's penchant for multiple screen personalities.
In 1927's "The Unknown," Chaney transforms into "Alonzo the Armless Wonder," a circus performer who throws knives with his feet. The film will be accompanied by live music from Phillip Johnston and the Transparent Quartet. Also present at the screening to pay tribute will be University alumnus Stan Winston, a master of special effects make-up himself.
If the Virginia Film Festival had to have a "patron saint" for the past few eclectic years, it would have to be Winston, the University's prodigal son of the arts. According to Herskowitz, his return for 1999's "Technovisions," which featured his special effects creations for films like "Terminator 2" "coincided with a shift in thinking on my part."
Herskowitz explains that the last three festivals have been influenced by Winston's own interest with masks and transformation. He says that last year's theme, "Animal Attractions," was about "shape-shifters ... which has always been an inspirational theme for filmmakers." It was only a small leap from the transformation of one's species to a transformation of one's gender, ethnicity, or place in society. All of these are central to the diverse offerings of this year's festival.
Aside from the time-tested films mentioned above, the festival includes many brand new films. In addition, the program includes some of Herskowitz's personal favorites, such as "Close Up," "The Naked Kiss," "Children of Paradise" and "Purple Moon." He said that when he started to develop this year's theme, he "began to think of what great favorite movies of mine I could show under this title." The festival will contain masquerades both familiar and foreign to most, but none uninteresting.
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