
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, September 9, 1993                   TAG: 9309090223
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MIKE MAYO
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

FILM FEST TO FEATURE MITCHUM, WIDMARK

The theme of this year's Virginia Festival of American Film is "Film Noir: Through a Lens Darkly." The celebrity guests are two of Hollywood's noir legends, Robert Mitchum and Richard Widmark.

The festival will be held Oct. 28-31 in Charlottesville. Mitchum will discuss his work in "Out of the Past" from 1947. Widmark will talk about his starring role in the original 1950 version of "Night and the City."

Writers also will be represented this year.

Donald Westlake, nominated for an Oscar for his screen adaptation of Jim Thompson's "The Grifters," will be a guest. His crime novels, written under the pseudonym Richard Stark, are in the noir tradition, too.

Novelist and screenwriter Richard Price also will be in Charlottesville. He's probably known best for the screenplays for "The Color of Money," "Sea of Love" and the recent remake of "Night and the City."

Poet Tess Gallagher will be on hand to discuss "Short Cuts," the Robert Altman adaptation of short stories by her late husband, Raymond Carver. The film, said to be one of the year's best, will be screened during the festival.

Critic Roger Ebert, half of "Siskel and . . .," will lead a three-day frame-by-frame analysis of the classiest and most baroque of films noir, Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard."

A complete schedule of films to be screened at the festival will be announced in the first part of October.

by CNB