Beatrice Welles will appear at two major film festivals in July in concert with showings of three of her father’s classic movies.
First up is a talk and Q&A on July 17 at 4:30 p.m. at the Prescott Film Festival in Arizona before a screening of Orson Welles’ The Lady From Shanghai. The film underwent a 4K restoration in 2013.
The 1948 film, co-starring Welles’ second wife, Rita Hayworth, will be shown on the opening day of the week-long Southwest film festival, now in its eighth year.
A week later, northern Michigan’s Traverse City Film Festival will include a nod to the late filmmaker with anniversary screenings of two of his greatest films, again hosted by his youngest daughter.
The six-day festival, founded in 2005 by filmmaker Michael Moore, runs July 26-31.
The 75th anniversary edition of Welles’ landmark Citizen Kane will be shown on July 27 at 3 p.m. The Oscar-winner recently underwent a 4K restoration.
His personal favorite, Chimes at Midnight, which won two awards at the Cannes Film Festival 50 years ago, will be screened on July 28 at noon. Poorly distributed in the U.S. upon its original release and seldom seen for decades because of legal disputes, Chimes at Midnight was restored and re-released by Janus Films earlier this year to glowing reviews.
Beatrice Welles, who appeared in Chimes at Midnight on stage and screen as Falstaff’s page, has spoken about her father’s work at the Sedona International Film Festival and during a Welles retrospect at The Film Forum in New York City.
The Traverse City Film Festival’s 2016 lineup puts a spotlight on female directors at a time when the industry grapples with a gender gap. Two of the festival’s important categories — U.S. documentaries and U.S. narrative films — are devoted entirely to works directed (or in a few cases co-directed) by women.
“I don’t want to be an enabler of this any longer,” Moore told The Detroit Free Press. “And I don’t want to be part of an industry that shuts out an entire gender.”
Learn more about the Traverse City Film Festival at traversecityfilmfest.org
__________
Post your comments on the Wellesnet Message Board.