This year’s RiverRun International Film Festival will host outdoor screenings through the week of May 6. Each night will premiere one to four movies accompanied by four to five virtual screenings.
Downtown locations include: The Ramkat, The Winston Cup Museum, Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP, as well as a few free screenings in Bailey Park. Films will also be screened elsewhere in Winston-Salem and Greensboro.
“We are not trying to push the needle of having anybody inside or anything like that,” said Mary Dossinger, the program manager for RiverRun on the topic of COVID Safety.
This hybrid model with movie screenings available online as well as in person, will allow audiences to view some films when venues are sold out and catering to those who might wish to avoid going out.
This year RiverRun boasts 134 films from 24 countries. The film Dream Horse will open the festival at 8:30 pm at The Marketplace Drive-In on May 6. The opening film, starring Toni Collette and Damian Lewis, tells the story of a barmaid, Jan (Collette), who breeds a racehorse in her small village in Wales. As the horse rises through the ranks, Jan faces off against the racing elite for the national championship.
The festival will close on May 16 with the film The Dry, a murder-mystery set in the Australian Outback that will also be shown at The Marketplace Drive-In.
The RiverRun International Film Festival is one of the premier film festivals in the southeastern United States based in Winston-Salem, NC. Founded in 1998, RiverRun was inspired by the French Broad River near Brevard, North Carolina, where the festival was originally held. The 11-day Festival programming includes family-friendly, independent, and international films attracting diverse audiences from across North Carolina, the U.S. and world.
Richard Emmett, the co-owner and operator of The Ramkat, sees RiverRun’s return as a way to help rejuvenate businesses, restaurants, and hotels downtown Winston-Salem this spring.
“RiverRun brings in a lot of new crowds of people that maybe have never been to Winston-Salem before,” said Emmett. “It helps the different venues and gives RiverRun a more eclectic feel.”
With the shutdown last spring, the RiverRun team did its best to bring award-winning movies to Winston-Salem. The festival partnered with The Marketplace Drive-In over the summer to showcase 10 movies. Since May 2020 RiverRun has been releasing films on a monthly basis online. However, virtual audience turnout was only about one third of the usual audience size that RiverRun has come to expect.
“It was a challenge to get people to buy tickets for the online screenings,” said Dossinger. “There is a lot of promise for better turnout now that the events will be in person again.”
The Ramkat is partnering with the festival this year to have screenings in its parking lot for an outdoor, socially distanced experience. To view the film, movie watchers will be instructed to bring their own seat or blanket to view the film. Tickets will go for $12 per person.
“One of the cool things about screenings at The Ramkat is that we will be selling beverages with waitstaff,” says Emmet.
During the fall 2020 The Ramkat partnered with the downtown theater, A/perture Cinema, to host screenings in a drive-in style. They premiered two movies, The Chuck Berry Documentary and The Stevie Nicks Concert Film 24 Karat Gold, on a blow up screen in the parking lot. The cars filed into the 22 available spaces with the allowance of five people per car. Tickets to view the films were $20 per parking space not including the refreshments served from The Ramkat’s bar.
“When you partner with different organizations you exponentially multiply the number of people who are in attendance,” says Emmet. “So it’s a great cross pollination for everybody involved.”
Even with the new venues and having people together, there are still parts of the festival that will not be the same. A major part of the festival are Q and A style conversations with the directors, but most of those events will be filmed and posted virtually with few filmmakers making it to town this year.
“I do think we will eventually get back to the big fun parties and all that. People really miss it, we miss it. That is a big part of what we do,” says Dossinger. “At least humans will be in the same place at the same time.”
(photo via RiverRun International Film Festival)
