Richmond’s French Film Festival Returns and Spotlights Recent Documentaries

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The 19^th Annual French Film Festival opened last night at the Byrd Theatre and continues until Sunday. The event attracted 21 thousand people last year and is a joint effort by Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Richmond. It is a production of the married duo Dr. Peter Kirkpatrick of VCU and Dr. Francoise Ravaux-Kirkpatrick of U of R, who personally select the films from the roughly 170 released from France each year.

Ravaux-Kirkpatrick said that the goal of the festival is to present to Richmond the French community and culture through cinema.

“Every year what we do is we are trying to present to Richmonders and people from Virginia, but also from very far away states a sample, a sampling of last year or this year’s cinematographic productions,” she said.

According to Ravaux-Kirkpatrick, this year’s festival is presenting multiple environmentalist documentaries, because there have been so many that have been released in the past year.

Ravaux-Kirkpatrick said that when she and her husband started the festival, it was very small, but has gotten bigger every year. The festival was initially on campus, but as it grew larger, more and more screenings became necessary.

“Pretty soon, we had to have two or three screenings of the same film and so on,” she said. “And then little by little we came to the Byrd like our fifth year, I think we came to the Byrd, and since then this event has been in the Byrd and it’s grown and grown and grown.”

At last year’s festival, Myriam Guedjahi worked as an intern for college credit, and decided to come back this year because of how much she enjoyed the experience.

“I’m back because last year was for me one of my best experiences as a student, because I learned a lot of things and we want to work in event management, you know like, to organize events,” she said. “I really want to work in this field, so for me that was the best experience ever.”

Guedjahi said that in France, the city of Richmond and the French Film Festival has become well-known, and renowned.

“In France, people know Richmond, thanks to the French Film Festival,” she said. “Because we have a lot of French people who know that, thanks to the students, every year French students are more and more likely to work for the festival.”

Yesterday the festival opened with the documentary “Food Beware, Our Children Will Accuse Us.” In “Food Beware,” director Jean-Paul Jaud deftly illustrates not only the catastrophic results of using pesticides and chemically treating food, but how a small village in France has started eating only organic and local foods.

Nancy Nock, a U of R employee at the Jefferson School for Leadership Studies, has gone to the festival every year since it started. She said she was very impressed with Jaud’s documentary,

and how he presented the issue.

“I think where the director was able to capture this experiment and in this very small village form its inception all the way through to the end of a year or so, and to see how people’s attitudes were changing towards favoring the organic and sustainable way of agriculture and eating, it was amazing,” she said.

Today the festival will showcase more documentaries, including another screening of “Food Beware” at 9:15. Jaud will also present “Severn,” which is about an activist’s campaign to promote biodiversity at 3:30. On Saturday and Sunday, short films and features will be presented, along with “Oceans,” the 2011 Cesar winner for Best Documentary. “Oceans” will be presented on Saturday at 3:00.

According to Nock, documentaries are not common at the French Film Festival, but are a welcome addition.

“Usually, there are more dramatic kinds of films, comedies and dramas, and so forth. Not too many documentaries,” she said. “So I think it’s a really interesting and important departure.”

To Nock and many participants at the French Film Festival, this and other multicultural efforts are becoming more and more important.

“The world is getting smaller, and the more we get to know each other, and know about each other and our cultural perspectives, I think people will find it interesting and learn about each other,” she said.

Nathaniel James Klentzman

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4262 For Kids Starts it's Journey

Photo credit: John Garcia

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A local jack-of-all-trades sets his sights on creating a non-profit and biking cross country with a purpose. Zack Hinkley, a VA beach resident turned Richmonder started his trip Saturday in eastern Virginia and hopes to make it to Oregon by summers end. The roughly 4262 mile trip is where his non-profit gets its name, 4262-for-kids. The organization plans to use Hinkley’s cross country trip to spread awareness and raise money for smaller bicycle-related organizations he meets along the way. Brad Kutner has the story.

Zack Hinkley sits tall in the studio chair across from me as he begins to explain his goal.

“The plan is you go from Yorktown, VA to Astoria, Oregon. It’s about 4200 miles if you take the most direct rout not involving interstates. I leave May 1^st, and hopefully get there sometime mid august. Trying to do it as slow as I can so I can get as much accomplished as I can.”

It’s no easy feat to cross the country on a bicycle, but neither is starting a non-profit. Hinkley said he can handle the bike ride, but it’s the administrative end he has trouble with.

“That’s half the thing, the months of paper work and somebody’s doing it for yea and they know what they’re doing..”

Fund raising has been a challenge from the start. When I first sat down with Hinkley they had raised very little, but in the weeks since our initial meeting, he held some yard sales, took donations, and finally caught up with me at one last fund raising event the night before he left. The had raised close to 2000 dollars up to this point.

He plans to save extra money using social-websites to find places to stay and get clean.

“Couch surfing is awesome. I’m also on a thing called ‘warm showers’… which is exactly what it says it is: a place to take a warm shower. It’s like a couch surfing for bike touring.”

Hinkley had narrowed the focus of his donating and was excited to tell me about the specific causes this ride would benefit.

“Its 4262forkids.org is the website on that. There is 2 awesome Richmond non-profits U-locks of Love and Books on Wheels. Look em up. They are doing great things for kids in Richmond with bikes and getting them out riding them. All of this is going to them, I’m just trying to set something up for next year.”

Hinkley definitely couldn’t have done it alone, he had the help of friends and family to help pull things together. Mattie Hinkley, Zack’s sister, has helped 4262 from the beginning, making fliers and copies for her brother. She knew all the folks who donated their time and energy to a cause she cared about.

“There’s a girl who did all the web design and logo, which is so pretty. Chris Blaine and Megan, Zack’s neighbor, have been his personal assistants. I don’t even know if they’ve been working in the past 2 weeks because they’ve done so much work for 4262. I don’t no how they are handling the stress cause I get pissy when he asks me to do one thing a day and he asks 20 things a day from them.”

She said if anyone could pull off the ride, it was her brother, who drifts in life without a large goal to shoot for. She said 4262 has become the most important thing in Zack’s already well versed life.

“I think it’s amazing. Zack’s the kind of person who feels like he’s not accomplishing anything unless he’s currently doing something huge. He’s done the Europe tour, he picked apples in Vermont, he was a displayed artist in DC, he’s a little go-getter. So when he came up with this idea, he just lit up.”

The first leg of the trip started in Yorktown, about 80 miles east of Richmond. Hinkley spent Saturday making that first leg of the trip with a few friends. One of them was Ashley Sikes. By the time she made it to his going away party, Sikes was barely able to stand. When asked how she felt about the ride, she said:

“It kind of sucked a lot at the time. I wanted to give up once or twice, but I’m really glad I did it. I can’t imagine how he’s going to do it every day. – Could you imagine doing 4262 miles? – No. My butt hurts so bad just from today. I walked here because I can’t get back on my bike right now.”

Chris Blaine, a work friend of Hinkley’s, came into the project early as well. He remembers when Hinkley first started to talk about non-profits.

“Zack came to me with this idea and I just wanted to help make it up. I’ve just sort of been helping with logistics and putting people in touch with each there and letting the magic happened. And people have been fantastic so far.”

To him, 4262 and its future were based on how it would help the children of Richmond and help others who wanted to help.

“The long term goal is making it easier for anyone who is helping kids ride bikes, or making safe for kids to do so. We want 4262 to help get them off the ground and put them in contact with other people that could share ideas or resources. Right now, this year its about organizations that put u-locks in kids hands so they get to keep their bikes, and put free books and bicycle repair in situations where they really need it.”

Hinkley had to drop out early from the first leg of his ride, he made it about 65 of the 80 miles between Yorktown and RVA, but he saw it as once last chance to learn.

“I did 65 good miles today, that felt good. I also had 50 lbs of gear on my bike cause I thought I was a super hero this morning. That needs to be trimmed down. I need to get a good nights rest. I need to eat breakfast in the morning rather than being frazzled and try and get everybody organized and together. If its me by myself, I’ll do 65 and then be done and go to sleep."

That website again is 4262 –for-kids.org, you can donate and track Hinkley’s progress as he spans this great nation looking for folks to help. And he’ll be in touch with WRIR as he makes his trip, so stay tuned for updates.