Film festival wraps up with a local focus

The final day of the Virginia Film Festival showcased a few Charlottesville-area residents’ humble roots.

As one of 16 children, Italian Rosalina Cetta married at 14, and migrated to the United States with only a second grade education. Though she did not know English, and lived on less than $13 a week, she and her husband sent their son, Vito, to study architecture at the University of Virginia in 1958.

Elizabeth Meade Howard, who helped to produce the short film “Rosalina’s Faith in America,” called the film a slice of “the American dream” with ties to Charlottesville.

“His tuition was the amount of their combined salaries,” Howard said, noting that Rosalina Cetta, who died in the year 2000 at more than 90 years old, held an old-fashioned appreciation for family.

Raised a strict Catholic, Cetta eventually diverged from the Church and helped build a Pentecostal church in New Jersey, according to the film. Her children’s religious beliefs now vary, Howard said, depicting religious freedoms that the United States values. Yet, her cooking skills never failed her, said one attendee who knew Cetta: “I never left there hungry.”

The film about Cetta was one of four shorts that were shown Sunday at Gravity Lounge on the Downtown Mall as part of the Virginia Film Festival. The festival, which is sponsored by UVa, has been recognized for more than 20 years for its mix of entertainment and education.

Another film at Sunday’s showcase was about a UVa pre-medical student who had escaped from the Taliban.

Randy Mayo was one of more than 30 people who watched the short films at Gravity Lounge. He said that independent filmmaking is popular in Charlottesville and “has really been picking up around here” in recent years.

He and his daughter, Karyl Mayo, are partners in work he calls “therapeutic theatricks.” The Mayos perform partner juggling at various venues, such as corporate events, weddings and birthdays. Randy Mayo said he hopes to eventually create a short film about partner juggling.