Martians to invade film fest — twice!

A gripping science-fiction story that spooked radio listeners in 1938 and thrilled film audiences in 1953 is heading to an observatory near you.

The Virginia Film Festival will launch its programming this year with “The War of the Worlds.” A 70th-anniversary rebroadcast of Orson Welles’ classic radio play about a Martian invasion will begin at 7 p.m. Oct. 30 in the Dome Room of McCormick Observatory, followed at 10 p.m. by a screening of George Pal’s film “The War of the Worlds.’’ The event was announced Tuesday.

Justin Humphreys, Pal’s biographer and a Charlottesville resident, will be on hand to introduce the film, notable for its impressive Technicolor special effects and the eerily iconic sound of the Martian heat ray.

This year’s Virginia Film Festival has “Aliens!” as its theme. According to Richard Herskowitz, the festival’s artistic director, the event will honor an odd night in Charlottesville history that took place at McCormick Observatory.

On Oct. 30, 1938, the night Welles’ radio drama fooled many listeners across the country into thinking space aliens were invading Earth, the observatory had to open its doors, train the telescope on Mars and show worried Charlottesville residents that the red planet wasn’t teeming with little green men.

The observatory will stay open from 7 to 10 p.m. each night of the 21st-annual festival, which runs through Nov. 2, to present a series of films in what’s being called the “McCormick Observatory Microcinema.’’ There will be three programs of experimental and independent films about space curated by Craig Baldwin, Jeanne Liotta and Ed Halter.

Underground filmmakers George and Mike Kuchar also will present four of their alien-invasion films — “Blips,’’ “Ascension of the Demonoids,’’ “Death Quest of the Ju-Ju Cults’’ and “Secrets of the Shadow World.’’

The festival will include about 80 films and 100 guests, all addressing the way all kinds of aliens — immigrants, outsiders and residents of outer space — have been portrayed in films.

An acclaimed film scholar will serve as the first Festival Fellow. Hamid Naficy, who is John Evans Professor of Communication at Northwestern University and the author of “An Accented Cinema,’’ will make his first visit at 4 p.m. Sept. 25 to present a free lecture, “Making Films with an Accent,’’ in the Kaleidoscope Room at the University of Virginia’s Newcomb Hall.

Naficy also will present a keynote talk, “From Accented Cinema Toward Multiplex Cinema,’’ at 4 p.m. Oct. 30, the festival’s opening day. In addition, he will lead a four-day course, for which participants must sign up by Sept. 12. Find out more about the course by sending an e-mail to Judy McPeak at .

Also announced Tuesday was a film offering for which a recently appointed UVa dean served as executive producer.

Meredith Jung-En Woo, dean of arts and sciences, was executive producer of “Koryo Saram — The Unreliable People,’’ which will be shown at the festival. The film, which examines Stalin’s 1937 ethnic cleansing campaign that relocated Koreans to Central Asia, picked up best-documentary honors at the 2007 Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival.

To learn more about the festival, or sign up for a newsletter, visit http://www.vafilm.com.