The Independent Film Festival Ypsilanti will be back for its seventh season from April 16 to 18. This three day celebration of 49 indie feature and short films will take place at the Riverside Arts Center.
This year, David Krcatovich says they will have “our first-ever guest of honor brought in from out of town, Super 8 punk auteur Danny Plotnick. His early film Skate Witches—which will be celebrating its 40th anniversary at our festival, with Danny and most likely all of the titular Skate Wiches in attendance!—was shot in Ann Arbor on the UM Diag in 1986 for $60. Last year, it was honored by the Smithsonian Institution for its influence on subsequent generations of women skaters. We’re deeply honored to be sharing a retrospective of Danny’s films and have him in town to bask in the glory.”
RELATED: From Punk to the Smithsonian: The Enduring Magic of “Skate Witches”
Krcatovich added, “Beyond that, so many cool thing—the return of the 26.2 Filmmaking Marathon, the Michigan premiere of Adam Sekuler’s feature documentary The Flamingo, a sneak preview of Toko Shiiki’s documentary about the Fool School Clown Class Send More Clowns, plus blocks of shorts featuring all Michigan filmmakers, relationships-themed horror, experimental landscapes—it’s a stacked program!”
The first screening will start at 76 North Huron Street at 7:30pm. on Thursday. The second day will have DJ Agent 99 and Golden Feelings at the afterparty at Ziggy’s, starting at 9:30pm.
All but one of the films are shorts. The short films are sorted into seven categories according to iFFY Director Micah Vanderhoof.
“There’s a lot of variety in this year’s entries—I was particularly impressed by the diversity of innovative techniques and approaches our regional filmmakers utilized—shadow puppetry, stop motion, poetic and experimental approaches, challenging character profiles and narratives, and even a few films shot on actual film—and that variety and ingenuity underscores an overall theme that has emerged from much of the festival programming this year: a kind of scrappy, DIY, punk approach to filmmaking that is incredibly raw and real and fun,” Vanderhoof said. “This year’s programming was especially fun and challenging as there were a ton of really great regional submissions to chose from, but thanks to a number of them being very short, we were able to include 14 films in the Michigan-ish regional short film program. So, folks can expect a wide variety of perspectives and a lot of connection and fun from the programs this year.”
Tickets are available, but you can also get an all-access pass for $50.
“I think smaller, independent regional film festivals like iFFY are a great place to have your first film festival experience—not only are you getting to see the impressive variety (and the impressive quality) of films that are being produced by filmmakers and artists in our own community and getting talk to those filmmakers and their crews, but you’re getting a chance to see short films from around the world that would be fairly hard to access outside of a festival context, and if that festival is on a similar scale to ours, you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg to catch a screening. The vast majority of short films that get produced only really get shown at film festivals and, other than the Oscar Nominated shorts and the odd retrospective, it can be really hard to find short films—even online it can be a challenge simply because of the number and variety of shorts that are produced each year—and the relatively limited marketing budgets they usually have. So, you’re getting to have that short film experience in a theatrical context and you’re getting to see a lot of films you might never have a chance to see elsewhere,” said Vanderhoof.
Vanderhoof added, “A big part of our mission centers around making both film-going and filmmaking accessible and providing a space for film goers and filmmakers to intermingle and learn from one another. I feel like our Saturday lineup is a great example of this—we have a free workshop that folks of any skill or experience level can attend, we’ll have the festival’s first visiting artist, Danny Plotnick in attendance for a retrospective of his films, a sneak preview screening of local filmmaker Toko Shiiki’s documentary ‘Send More Clowns,’ some really evocative and award-winning experimental films, and we’ll get to screen the filmmaking marathon films (and there are usually a few teams that end up being first-time filmmakers); so it’s really an opportunity for folks with all levels of experience as filmmakers and film-goers to watch some great films together, learn about filmmaking, and hopefully challenge themselves through film. That’s all a particularly unique opportunity that’s a benefit of attending a smaller festival that’s focused on independent film and the community, that you’d be hard pressed to find at a larger festival or at the local multiplex.”
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!
