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Show Park City Newspaper Guide to the Fifth annual festival offers wealth of film and video U.S. Film and Video Festival by Rick Brough Monday, Jan. 17 has been dubbed as Independence Day. That's when Park City hosts the fifth annual United States Film and Video Festival. Festi-val. For seven days, Park City will be abuzz with film and video works, celebrities, artistic and technical discussions discus-sions of the arts, and premieres. It's all part of what people are calling the best showcase for work in independent film and video. The festival features more than 30 films and tapes. And that doesn't count the short films and a special collection of New Wave underground films from the late 50s and 1960s. If you're not watching programs, you'll be looking for famous faces. Film critic Roger Ebert will return to the festival for his third straight year, according to festival spokesmen. Actor Martin Sheen, star of "Apocalypse Now" and the current "That Championship Season," will conduct an acting workshop as part of the festival's program of seminars, to be held at the Egyptian Theatre. Festival sources also say that Sydney Pollack, director of the recent smash, "Tootsie," will lend a hand at the workshop. The festival's Medallion award will be given this year posthumously to Verna Fields, for her lifetime contribution to the film industry. Fields, who died this past year, was an Oscar-winning Oscar-winning film editor for the movie "Jaws," a friend to the festival from its inception, incep-tion, and a mentor to such filmmakers as Steven Spielberg, Spiel-berg, Peter Bogdanovich and George Lucas. Fields was Feature Production Pro-duction Vice-President at Universal Studios, and a representative of the company com-pany will be present at the festival. The Medallion will be given at a gala awards banquet on Saturday, Jan. 22 at Deer Valley hosted by Northwest Energy Company. Com-pany. The awards ceremony for festival films will be held earlier that night at the Egyptian Theatre. The festival activities are more compact and accessible acces-sible than ever before. The box office-headquarters for the festival is just to the north of the Holiday Village Cinemas, where the films will be shown. (Films will also be screened on Main Street at the Egyptian Theatre.) The video works will be shown in one of the Holiday Village theaters. They will be screened over a special General Electric large-screen large-screen TV projector. The projector can display color or monochrome pictures up to 25 feet wide with a high resolution and contrast. The festival has more to see than is humanly possible. So glance over the schedules below, plan your strategy well, see how far your wallet can stretch, and ready.... get set.... go! Introduction Premieres Ticket Info. Local Video Artists Workshops Bl Bl Bl B2 B2 Film Programs B3 Retrospective B4 Short Takes B4 Video Program B5 Film and Video B6 Schedule iff IpgrnoUngM : 1 Pa8CB1 . ' , : !v J v; t ;f ' r - v " ' ... x. '-V - . S ' " ' - V :.tV; , ... -r 'r"F? Thursday, January 13, 1983 Frances (Jessica Lange) is involuntarily committed to the Washington State Mental Hospital in the true film story of a rebellious, persecuted actress. 1 ... , ( :mB$xmmm$mmmmmmmmmm. -! 7 , f ?- i ----- $ i.m. Richard Farnsworth stars as "The Gray Fox" Bill Miner, an outlaw from the Jesse James era who adapts to the 20th Century by pulling off the first train robbey in Canada's history. For tickets and information . . . Tickets for the U.S. Film and Video Festival will begin selling this Sunday at the festival's box officeheadquarters. of-ficeheadquarters. The offices are located at the north end of the Holiday Village Mall, near the Cinemas. On Sunday, Jan. 16, they will be open from noon to 6 p.m. The offices will also be open from now through Saturday, Jan. 15, for festival staffers to dispense schedules, information and take reservations (in person per-son or on phone, Mastercharge and Visa Card only). Through Saturday, the hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. During festival week, Jan. 17-23, tickt.s will b" on sale at the mall box office from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Until Jan. 15, a Salt Lake City box office will sell tickets at Trolley Square, from noon to 7 p.m. Special ticket prices for the festival are available to members of the Egyptian Theatre. This year's standard stan-dard ticket price will be $4.50 for general admission. Members of the theatre may purchase tickets for the films (except the premiers) for $3.50. Members of the theatre should drop by the box office to pick up their special tickets. Those people who wish to become members of the theatre or have any questions can call 649-9371. There's another way to get tickets besides spending your money. Become a volunteer for the festival. Workers who put in more than 20 hours will be able to receive free tickets for some of the screenings. For further fur-ther information, call 649-FEST. Festival premieres include 'Sophie Trances' and 'Gray Fox' Two of this year's major performances by an actress will be featured in the U.S. Film Festival's program of four major premieres. Meryl Streep, the most acclaimed actress now working in films, portrays a haunted survivor of the Nazi death camps in "Sophie's Choice." And Jessica Lange fulfills a long-held ambition by playing the rebellious, tragic actress Frances Farmer in "Frances." "Fran-ces." Another premiere is "The Escape Artist" produced by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Griffin O'Neal (son of Ryan). Festival officials are also optimistic with the premiere of the Canadian film "Gray Fox," about a Western badman who lived on to defy the 20th Century. Said one festival spokesman, "This could be this year's 'Heartland' ( an audience favorite in 1981 ) . " "Sophie's Choice," adapted from the novel by William Styron, tells the story of Stingo (Peter Mac-Nicol) Mac-Nicol) who leaves his native Virginia in 1947 and travels to New York with dreams of being another Faulkner or Hemingway. He finds a room in a Brooklyn apartment house painted war-surplus pink and soon his labors on the Great American Novel are interrupted by the noisy love-making of the couple upstairs. It is his introduction to two startling, passionate people, Sophie Zawistowska (Streep), a Polish immigrant, im-migrant, and Jewish intellectual Nathan Landau (Kevin Kline). Beneath their vibrancy, however, rests darkness. Sophie is haunted by the guilt of being the only person in her family to survive the Nazi death camps. And Nathan is a man whose volatility can suddenly sud-denly become menacing and self -destructive. In "Sophie's Choice" (premiering at the Egyptian on Monday night) Stingo is author Styron's alter ego. Through him, we learn about that point in every person's per-son's life where passion and tragedy invades one's comfy insulation. Meryl Streep has been acclaimed for a string of performances per-formances from "Deer Hunter" through "French Lieutenant's Woman." Kevin Kline is making his film debut, but is already well-known as the Pirate King of the stage hit "Pirates of Penzance." Peter MacNicol first appeared in films as the young sorceror of "Dragonslayer." Director and screenwriter Alan J. Pakula (who also wrote the film's screenplay) has made such films as "Sterile Cuckoo," "Klute," "All the President's Men," and "The Parallax View." "Frances," which premieres on Wednesday night, is the true story of rebellious 1930s star Frances Farmer, who overcame the stifling Hollywood glitter and psychiatric atrocities to emerge with her dignity. It is also the story of Jessica Lange's 10-year effort to play the part. As a brilliant high-school student in Seattle, Frances Farmer won an award and stirred controversy with an essay on the death of God. As an actress, she made $200,000 a year and defied the conventions of Tinseltown. Tin-seltown. At age 27, she was thrown in a mental institution in-stitution and brutally mistreated a period depicted with such grisliness that the movie's producers have been moved to insert a disclaimer that California's mental hospitals have, indeed, improved. Lange became interested in Farmer in 1973, when she used an early biography of the actress for an exercise exer-cise in acting class. "Frances was not crazy," Lange said, "she was ahead of her time. She was a threat because she was so straightforward that she refused to play anyone's games." Lange tried to instigate the Farmer project with director Bob Fosse and film-maker Bob Rafelson. Luck stepped in when Graeme Clifford, Rafelson's old film editor, was assigned to film Frances' story and suggested Lange for the role. Co-stars in the movie include Sam Shepard as Harry York, a man who recurs through Frances' life. Kim Stanley, the respected stage-screen actress, plays her domineering mother. Clifford, an Austrialian-born director, has worked under such directors as Robert Altman. He will attend the festival along with producer Jonathan Sanger. At this writing, there is little information available on "Escape Artist." Griffin O'Neal plays the youngster who has inherited the Houdini-like talents of his father. Using them, the kid takes on a whole crooked town. Co-starring Co-starring are Raul Julia and Teri Garr. The director is Caleb Deschanel, who was the cinematographer for "The Black Stallion." It premieres on Tuesday night. The final premiere, on Tuesday night, is "The Gray Fox." This Canadian-made film deals with Bill Miner, who thrived in the days of Jesse James robbing stages and Pony Express riders in the southwest United States. Miner was finally caught and jailed in 1881. When he was released in 1901, the world had changed. Stages were gone and the money was in trains. And so on Sept. 10, 1904, Miner and two other men pulled off the first train robbery in Canadian history. Miner is played by Richard Farnsworth, a veteran stand-in and stuntman from over 300 films. He gained fame, and an Oscar nomination, playing Jane Fonda's ranch foreman in "Comes a Horseman." ... 4? i n rv. .;-r m- y-0 Stingo's (Peter MacNicol) mercurial friendship with Sophie (Meryl Streep) and Nathan (Kevin Kline) changes his life by opening up his limited world. -irtmr-- mm irtfcnftnfn.ifT miftii jHl niiti iim ifi A A mi 11 miftn. iilVjfft..iligf' iA Ai min i1kiifllrii AmirtHi lrT- |