ALIEN INVASION

The schedule’s set for stunning. When the 21st-annual Virginia Film Festival opens Oct. 30 with its “Aliens!” theme, Charlottesville will be the landing zone for films and discussions about immigrants, exiles, extraterrestrials and outsiders of all kinds.

Festival organizers on Thursday announced major guests and outlined a busy week that will explore otherness with an array of film screenings, panels, workshops and an out-of-this-world film series at the McCormick Observatory.

This year’s opening-night film is “Lake City,’’ a Southern gothic story about a mother and son that was filmed mostly in Richmond. Charlottesville residents Sissy Spacek and Dave Matthews star in the film, which was created by three University of Virginia alumni — co-director Perry Moore, producer Mark Johnson and one of the executive producers, Weiman Seid. Moore, Johnson and Seid will attend the screening.

The festival will be the final one for artistic director Richard Herskowitz, who has been at the helm since 1994. Starting in December, he will be the curator of a new festival for the Cinema Arts Society of Houston slated to launch in November 2009, and he will teach and design exhibitions for the film studies program at the University of Oregon.

Herskowitz’s wife, Jill Hartz, former head of the UVa Art Museum, headed west earlier this year when she was named executive director of the University of Oregon’s Jordan Schnizter Museum of Art in May.

“This has been quite an exciting 15 years, fulfilling and gratifying,’’ Herskowitz said while introducing a new commercial for the festival that played on a “War of the Worlds’’ theme. The festival will observe the 70th anniversary of Orson Welles’ controversial radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds,’’ a drama that duped millions into believing extraterrestrials were attacking Earth, with a rebroadcast Oct. 30 at the observatory.

This year’s featured guests will include:

l Guillermo Arriaga, a Mexican screenwriter and novelist who is known for “21 Grams,’’ will be on hand for screenings of his “Amores Perros,’’ “Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada’’ and “Babel,’’ as well as the Virginia premiere of his directing debut, “The Burning Plain,’’ which stars Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger.

l Gregory Nava will attend the 25th-anniversary screening of “El Norte,’’ the 1983 story of a brother and sister’s efforts to survive as newcomers in America, and lead a shot-by-shot examination of the film. He picked up an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay.

l Peter Riegert starred as an American alien in Scotland in “Local Hero,’’ also marking its 25th anniversary, and he will present a screening of the film. He also stars in “The Response,’’ a new film dramatizing the case against a Guantanamo detainee.

l Abderrahmane Sissako, a Mauritanian director who was raised in Mali and lives in exile in France, will be on hand for screenings of his films “Life on Earth’’ and “Waiting for Happiness.’’ His 2007 film “Bamako,” a courtroom drama, was shown at the Cannes Film Festival.

In an interesting twist on the festival’s theme, one guest will appear via Skype online hookup after experiencing visa problems.

Herskowitz said that Ghazel, an Iranian-French video and performance artist, battled what she considered “humiliating’’ roadblocks in her attempt to secure a visa to attend the festival in person.

Virginia ties will be explored in “The Great Seal of Virginia,’’ an animated film about the UVa mascot by alumni Irwin Berman, Michael Wartella and Sam Retzer; Robert Griffith’s “Moviemaking in Virginia,’’ his new documentary on the state’s film scene; the regional premiere of “Sunshine Cleaning,’’ a Sundance Film Festival hit by Richmond writer Megan Holley, who won the Governor’s Screenwriting award at the film festival in 2003; and the American premiere of “Little White Feather and the Hunter,’’ a film on Pocahontas and English explorers by British artist Anna Lucas, which will be shown with “Wasteland’’ by local filmmaker Derek Sieg.

Film scholar Hamid Naficy, the first Virginia Film Festival Fellow, also spoke at Thursday’s announcement. Naficy, who praised Herskowitz for integrating the festival into an academic setting, will lead a one-week mini-course on the festival theme that’s set to begin Oct. 27 and last until the festival concludes Nov. 2. For registration details, send an e-mail to Judy McPeak at .

The festival will bring back its Family Day for a second year, teaming up with the Virginia Discovery Museum to present events at the Paramount Theater. Paul Reisler, Terri Allard and local schoolchildren in the Kid Pan Alley program will accompany silent films with live music, and director Meni Tsirbas will introduce the regional premiere of “Terra,’’ a new animated film about a planet rattled by an invasion of humans.

There also will be a salute to Oscar winner Stan Winston, a past festival guest and UVa graduate who died in June, with screenings of his films “Aliens’’ and “Galaxy Quest.’’

To stay on top of additions and announcements about the festival, visit http://www.vafilm.com.