John Freakin' Turturro at the Savoy Theater?
Maybe it's because I just watched Five Corners and Miller's Crossing (again), and he's amazing in both of them. Anyway, that was my first thought when I read about this series of screenings the Vermont College of Fine Arts will hold later in the month at the Savoy for the fall residency of its inaugural MFA in Film program.
Turturro, who's appeared in a score of Spike Lee and Coen brothers films (and, yes, some Transformers movies), will screen his own directorial effort, Romance and Cigarettes (2005, starring James Gandolfini), on Friday, November 1, 7 p.m. at the Savoy. Tickets are free, but as of this writing, just 27 are left. If you want to go, better hustle over here.
Turturro may have the star power, but he's far from the only visiting director worth checking out at these Savoy screenings.
The New York Times recently listed Terence Nance as one of "20 Young Directors to Watch." He's on VCFA's film faculty, and he'll screen and discuss his first feature, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, on October 29.
Till Schauder directed The Iran Job, a documentary about playing basketball. In Iran. He'll be there on October 28.
You can see faculty chair Laura Colella's Breakfast With Curtis on October 30, and Nina Davenport's documentary First Comes Love on October 31. The latter relates how the director decided to become a mother through sperm donation. Davenport is also known for Operation Filmmaker, a 2008 doc about a Baghdad film student and his unlikely (mis)adventures working on a big Hollywood production.
Looks like VCFA's new program is a windfall for cinephiles in our area. Let's hope future semesters keep the filmmakers coming.
