Artistic Director Richard Herskowitz may be on his way out, but the Virginia Film Festival is already hard at work attracting film academics for its next two installments. According to UVA Today, Andrea Press, the chair of UVA's Media Studies program since 2006 and executive director of the festival, and other festival employees, are seeking out fellows for the next two years.

This year's "Aliens!" program was also the first to feature a Virginia Film Festival Fellow. Professor Hamid Naficy, author of An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking and a communications professor at Northwestern Univesity, interviewed many festival guests and taught a one-credit short course for UVA students titled "Accented Cinema" as part of his fellowship, which was funded by a "major gift" to the festival.

"For a long time, we've wanted to connect the film festival more closely to academic offerings," Press tells UVA Today. With an artistic director on the move and an emphasis on film scholarship, what will the festival look like next year?

Hamid Naficy, the first Virginia Film Festival Fellow, works with students during a short course held during the fest as part of his fellowship.