Closing Night

Presented by Vicki Mabrey

Closing Night offers a perfect capping to four days of celebrating the glorious and disparate world of film. After watching all kinds of films (documentaries, features, shorts…) from all kinds of filmmakers (established veterans, students, exciting newcomers…) from all over the world from many points of view, what better way to celebrate than with a screening and a party? And what better way to party than with Motown?

60 Minutes II correspondent, Vicki Mabrey, hosts a screening of the award-winning documentary, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, which tells the story of the unheralded musicians behind the Motown Sound. When Berry Gordy Jr. was beginning his new record company, he gathered the best musicians from Detroit's jazz and blues scene to play on the records. Over the next 14 years, they played on every hit from Motown's Detroit era, ultimately playing on more #1 hits than the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Elvis – combined.

Forty-one years after they played their first note for Motown, the group reunited in Detroit to play their music and tell their story. Featuring archival footage, interviews, recreations, and performances from the reunion show where the Funk Brothers backed contemporary artists such as Joan Osborne, Ben Harper, and Me'Shell NdegeOcello singing the Funk Brothers' songs, Standing in the Shadows of Motown is not to be missed if you've ever sung along or tapped your feet to a Motown song.

Vicki Mabrey began her journalism career in 1982 in the AFTRA reporter-training program at WUSA-TV in Washington, D.C., and she soon became familiar to Baltimoreans as a general assignment reporter for WBAL-TV from 1984-1992 before joining CBS News. Mabrey served as a Dallas-based and then London-based correspondent for CBS, and has been a correspondent for 60 Minutes II since its debut in January 1999. She is the recipient of two Emmy Awards for her reporting on the death of Princess Diana and two for coverage of the Atlanta Olympics bombing and the crash of TWA Flight 800. She has also received an American Women in Radio and Television Gracie Allen Award for her report on a controversial proposal to sterilize drug-addicted women.

Members of the Funk Brothers will also attend the screening. After the movie, join old friends and new for the Closing Night Party across the street in the Festival Tent with the Swingin' Swamis.

--Dan Krovich