Jessica Lange to Receive Virginia Film Festival's Visionary Award
Jessica Lange will receive the Visionary Award at the Virginia Film Festival next month, The Hollywood Reporter reported on Sept. 22.
The 39th edition of the festival runs Oct. 21-25. The event is a programme of the University of Virginia and the office of the provost and vice provost for the arts.
Lange will take part in three public events. The centrepiece is a live recording of The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast, a long-form interview series with awards contenders and winners, in front of a festival audience on Friday, Oct. 23.
She will also attend a screening of her new film, Jonathan Kent's adaptation of Long Day's Journey Into Night, in which she plays Mary Tyrone. The screening will be followed by a question-and-answer session moderated by Ben Mankiewicz, a host on TCM, the classic-film television network.
The role continues a long association for Lange. She previously won a Tony Award, the top honour for Broadway theatre, for playing Mary Tyrone in a 2016 Broadway revival of Eugene O'Neill's play.
Lange will introduce a separate festival screening of Blue Sky, the 1994 drama for which she won the second of her two Oscars. Her first Oscar came for 1982's Tootsie.
Artistic director Ilya Tovbis oversees the festival's programme. Others set to be honoured this year include writer Aaron Sorkin, producer Todd Black, director James Gray and actor Nathan Lane, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
What makes this stand out is the pairing. Audiences will see Lange discuss a new screen version of a stage role she has already played to awards success, then present the film that brought her a leading-actress Oscar a decade earlier.
