Bustling crowds, friendly people, a globally cosmopolitan atmosphere overflowing with activity. That is what seeped through the air of the opening night of the sixty-third annual Ann Arbor Film Fest when the opening gala went into full swing on Tuesday evening.
“This is the only place where I feel like you don’t need to have a big budget, and you can showcase raw creativity with whatever materials you have access to,” Joanie Wind, a Detroit-based artist said. This is her third time having a film in competition – this one is a five minute short called Simulacrumbs. “It’s about a woman who is trying to find pleasure and authenticity. She goes to the fridge to make a sandwich, and it turns out to be plastic. Throughout the film this recurs in different ways. She tries to find something authentic.”
Film makers from across the globe will be swarming in and around the half a block between the Michigan and State Theaters from March 25 to 30. This year has eight feature length films and 112 shorts playing on screens of all sizes – often with the film makers themselves in attendance. These run the gambit from documentaries, to experimental films – some of the best of the best of the medium are on display, jury selected from over 2,600 submissions.
The lucky hundreds upon hundreds of global creatives packed the Michigan Theater’s grand staircase on March 25. Food and drinks by some of Ann Arbor’s top restaurants – Café Zola, TeaHaus, Frita Banditos, Hear:Say, Sava’s, the Mothfire Brewing Company, Venue by 4M, Vineology the Ann Arbor Distilling Company, and Side Biscuit – filled the space with delicious smells as the murmur of networking and reunion filled the air.
“I’m just looking forward to seeing what people have done, the unique things that people have done,” Drew Hopper, an Ypsilanti-based creative who doesn’t have a film in the competition, but has recently had his project “Organized Crime: Paranormal” get picked up on Amazon Prime, said. This is also his first time at the AAFF. “It’s a networking opportunity, about meeting new people, connection, and seeing what people have done – seeing the proud films people have put together and understanding what they have done.”
The films are played in a series of batches. An LGBTQ film series, “Out Night”;p[9-, will start at 9:30 p.m. on March 27. An animation selection will be on March 28. The Almost All Ages show of films appropriate for children will be starting at 1:30 p.m. on March 29.
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Creatives from all over the world often delight in meeting their friends at the festival. But it is always fun to bump into someone who is there for the first time – which this year included Ypsilanti-based youth theater teacher Andaiye Spencer.
“I’m looking forward to seeing everything – people have been very welcoming – I’ve been to some of the other film makers and guests, and they say ‘you’re in for a very interesting journey.’ I’m a theater person – I’ve been to a lot of theater festivals, but never a film festival, so it’s a very different medium and I’m very excited to see what people do with it,” Spencer said. “I’m a lifelong artist. I help young people make their own art and realize that they can do things, and promote their own voice. So finding other avenues of expression are key to my own pedigree in teaching, so things like this are right up my alley. I’m having a new experience out of my comfort zone, and I’m finding new ways to communicate with people. … Everyone has different ways of communicating, even in the same house, and I think that film really allows that expression to be as weird, and as traditional, and clear, and vague as it wants to be. It is a very liberating medium in its diversity.”
This year’s festival is being held in honor of Detroit-based film maker Joseph Bernard, with over 40 films in the Academy Film Archive in addition to a career teaching creative studies at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. He recently passed.
According to the festival: “Bernard made over 100 Super 8 films from 1976 to the late 1980s. His film work has been screened internationally, including a retrospective at the 52nd Ann Arbor Film Festival. …. He will be missed.”
Non-film events are also available. The Ann Arbor Arts Center has film-based multimedia pieces five blocks west on Liberty Street. The North Quad will be hosting a New Voices panel on March 27 – in which U of M students getting their start in film will be showing some of their earliest work – from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
The AAFF is famous for the uber creativity, and some of it is just downright weird. If weird is your delight, North Quad is also going to be hosting a screening celebrating the different starting at 10:30 a.m. on March 30 – “What the hell was that?”
Drew Saunders is a freelance business and environmental journalist who grew up just outside of Ann Arbor. He covers local business developments, embraces his foodie side with reviews restaurants, obsesses over Michigan's environmental state, loves movies, and feels spoiled by the music he gets to review for Ann Arbor!
