VTIFF Program Guide 2025 - Flipbook - Page 7
SPECIAL EVENTS
NANCY SAVOCA
VTIFF AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION
TO AMERICAN CINEMA
Along with her numerous festival screenings and honors, Savoca’s films True Love
and Household Saints are listed in The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000
Movies Ever Made, and True Love was named one of the “50 Greatest Independent
Films of All Time” by Entertainment Weekly.
HBO’s If These Walls Could Talk won multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations
and Women in Film’s Lucy Award. Reno: Rebel Without a Pause (Unrestrained
Reflections on September 11th) was awarded the Seal for Peace & Liberty by the
City of Florence, Italy, and Dirt, a Spanish-English dramedy about class and
immigration won Best Director at L.A.’s Latino Film Festival and a Writer’s Guild
nomination.
Savoca’s archives were acquired by the University of Michigan’s Film Mavericks
Collection, which holds the works of Orson Welles, Robert Altman, and her mentors
John Sayles and Jonathan Demme. Her first three films, True Love, Dogfight, and
Household Saints were all restored and re-released in 2024. Retrospectives of her
work have been held at the American Cinematheque, the Museum of the Moving
Image, the Cinematheque Française, and more.
As a teacher, Savoca has conducted directing workshops around the world and has
taught at NYU, University of Michigan, City College of New York, and others.
VTIFF wishes to thank the UVM Film and Television Studies program and
the UVM Humanities Center for their support in hosting Nancy Savoca.
WITH ADDITIONAL
JOHN WATERS
John Waters has written and directed sixteen movies, including Pink Flamingos,
Female Trouble, Polyester, Hairspray, Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, and A Dirty Shame.
Both Pink Flamingos and Hairspray have been added to the U.S. Library of
Congress’ National Film Registry.
He is the author of numerous books, including Shock Value; Crackpot; Pink
Flamingos and Other Filth; Hairspray, Female Trouble, and Multiple Maniacs; Art: A
Sex Book (co-written with Bruce Hainley); Role Models; Carsick; Make Trouble; Mr.
Know-It-All; and in 2022 his first novel, Liarmouth: A Feel Bad Romance, which was
optioned by Village Roadshow Pictures for John to write the screenplay adaptation
and direct the movie.
Picador has published six of Waters’ screenplays as individual editions in 2025: Pink
Flamingos, Flamingos Forever, and Desperate Living in May, and Multiple Maniacs,
Female Trouble, and Hairspray in October.
John is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the
National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, a past member of the Andy
Warhol Foundation Board and the Wexner Center International Arts Advisory
Council. He is currently on the Board of Trustees for the Baltimore Museum of Art as
well as the Maryland Film Festival Board and has been a key advisor to the
Provincetown International Film Festival since it began in 1999, the same year
Waters was honored as the first recipient of PIFF’s Filmmaker on the Edge Award.
In September 2014, the Film Society of Lincoln Center honored Waters’ filmmaking
with a 10-day celebration entitled “Fifty Years of John Waters: How Much Can You
Take?” featuring a complete retrospective of his work. The next year, the British Film
Institute also honored John’s contribution to cinema with its own program called
“The Complete Films of John Waters… Every Goddam One of Them.”
John has appeared in many motion pictures and television shows, including
Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild, Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown, Seed of
Chucky, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, The Simpsons, Ryan Murphy’s
Feud, The Blacklist, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,
Search Party, and the Chucky TV series.
SUPPORT FROM
VTIFF.ORG | VERMONT INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2025
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