The 2015 Virginia Film Festival’s record-breaking roster of filmmakers that travelled to Charlottesville from across the country and around the world included a highly-decorated trio representing UVA’s own Studio Art Department: Kevin Everson, William Wylie, and Lydia Moyer. 

Internationally-renowned filmmaker Kevin Everson presented a selection of short films showcasing his unique ability to find the extraordinary and theatrical in the ordinary and every day. The films included We Demand, the story of UVA’s first African American Student Council President, and Auditioning for Nathaniel, featuring noted actor Nathaniel Taylor. Shot under the dramatic skies of the open prairies of the Pawnee National Grasslands, William Wylie’s short film Prairie focuses on the choreography, movement and the surrounding space as it follows the first week of practice for a small high school’s six-man football team in Eastern Colorado. Lydia Moyer’s Paradise focuses on seven American stories of abandoned or unoccupied sites, including Wounded Knee in South Dakota, an erstwhile Pennsylvania mining town, and the site of Jonestown in Guyana. Both a communal and an individual history, Paradise is as much about the past as it is a poetic meditation on the present, the future, and the meaning of home. All three filmmakers were on hand to discuss their films with VFF audiences.