Flying Lotus delivered on the promise of his world premiere live score to Harry Smith’s “Heaven & Earth Magic” with a bonus appearance by Dr. Strangeloop and improvised audience Q&A. Those attending the sold out after party were not disappointed as FlyLo rocked the foundation of the Blind Pig.
The following night Kenneth Anger transfixed a packed house with his films and charmed everyone in his conversation with New York film critic Dennis Lim. Seemingly inspired by the gorgeous Michigan Theater, Anger was in fine form and stayed well beyond his program to sign autographs for adoring fans. Special thanks to AMPAS for making this unforgettable evening possible.
The Kids Are Alright program featured a pre-show puppet parade by FestiFools and music on toy instruments by Little Bang Theory, who later brilliantly scored a short silent film - The Mascot. Sandwiched in between were short films in competition that engaged and challenged filmgoers of all ages, including students from several area high schools that participated in AAFF media literacy workshops this winter.
This year’s festival also had its share of funny press headlines. My personal favorite was Cinema Chat during fest week: “Ann Arbor Film Fest highlights, dragons, hot tubs and more.” Read quickly it seemed to summarize our festival offerings; read more carefully it clearly was covering film happenings beyond the AAFF. But with our festival you never know what might appear - hot tubs and dragons are not farfetched...next year perhaps.
Donald Harrison
Executive Director
Ann Arbor Film Festival
For more photos from Opening Night, please visit our Flickr page (click on the photo). Special thanks to our lead photographer Connie Huang.
I couldn't help but hearing the two young women as they left the Michigan Theater.
They were talking about Jack Cronin's short film Sleeping Bear, which screened in closing night's Awarded Film Program 2.
"What was the point of that?" one asked. "I mean, were we supposed to be impressed because it was black and white?"
"I thought it was all right," the other piped in.
"You liked that?"
"Kind of."
And they disappeared into the bathroom.
Fifteen years ago if I had watched the same short film, a quiet evocation of a visit to Michigan's Sleeping Bear Dunes Lakeshore, I probably would have had the same reaction as the first woman.
Countless movies later, I can appreciate Cronin's patient meditation on the natural world, the way we experience it in a more immediate way. Sleeping Bear isn't about picture-postcard beauty or the grand idea of a natural setting but rather the small details that add up to a whole. When we encounter the natural world it isn't only through our eyes. It's the sounds and feel of a place. It's the bugs crawling through the loam and the pattern of sunlight that breaks through the upper branches of a tree and the way the breeze draws tears from our eyes. In 11 short minutes Cronin's film, if you let it, reminds you of what it feels like to be in the details of a place without revealing the big visual picture.
In many ways, this is a terrific way to experience the Ann Arbor Film Fest as a whole. Don't get hung up on the weird tangents, odd misfires or herky-jerky rhythms of the programs. Instead, lose yourself in each moment. Accept what's coming at you, roll it around your brain pan then decide whether you liked it or not. Whether it moved you. Or frustrated you. Or challenged you.
The joy of the short film program is that no matter how off-putting, alien or uncomfortable a film might make you, there's another one just around the bend. Maybe the next will make you laugh your ass off. Or tweak your sense of nostalgia. Or just plain impress you with its virtuosity.
Unlike any other film festival you'll attend, AAFF rewards its audiences by surprising them. There is no formula or predictable plot to follow. It isn't safe. But with the right attitude, it's immensely rewarding. Come out next year.
-Jeff Meyers
Jeff is a film critic with the Metro Times (catch his reviews there or on Rotten Tomatoes) and the managing editor of e-mags Concentrate and Metromode. He is also a screenwriter and filmmaker.
The 48th Ann Arbor Film Festival is proud to announce filmmaker award recipients for 2010. The festival's awards were selected by jurors Irina Leimbacher, Ben Russell and Tomonari Nishikawa. The filmmakers winning $20,000 in cash, film stock and processing are as follows:Beauty Plus Pity - Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby
Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis - Daichi Saito
Lawrence Kasdan Award for Best Narrative Film - $1,000
Seven Songs About Thunder - Jennifer Reeder
Some Days Are Better Than Others - Matthew McCormick
Chris Frayne Award for Best Animated Film $1,000
Please Say Something - David OReilly
The Barbara Aronofsky Latham Award for Emerging Experimental Video Artist - $1,000
The Burning Blue - Jesse McLean
Prix DeVarti for Funniest Film - $1,000
El ataque de los robots de Nebulosa-5 - Chema Garcia Ibarra
Passage Briare - Friedl vom Groller (Kubelka)
Peter Wilde Award for Most Technically Innovative Film - $500
Travelling Fields - Inger Lise Hansen
\aut\FILM Award for Best LGBT Film - $500
City of Borders - Yun Suh
Award for Best Sound Design - $500
way fare - Sylvia Schedelbauer
Kodak/Filmcraft Imaging Award for Best Cinematography - $3,000 [$1,500 film plus $1,500 processing]
Songs from the Shed - Melika Bass
I Know Where I’m Going - Ben Rivers
Award for Best International Film - $750
Lost World - Gyula Nemes
Award for Best Michigan Filmmaker - $500
Sleeping Bear - Jack Cronin
Food Gatherers Feeding the Soul Award - $500
Portrait #3: House of Sound - Vanessa Renwick
The Eileen Maitland Award - $500
Twist of Fate - Karen Aqua
The No Violence Award - $512
Golden Hour - Robert Todd
Jury Awards - $1,200
The City is Cinema Award: Vineland - Laura Kraning
The Doubling of Space Award: Simultaneous Contrast - Chris Kennedy
The False Fiction Award: Atlantropa - Samuel Stevens
The Lost and Found Award: From the Archives of an Inventor - Stephen Wetzel
The Map of Time Award: Piensa en Mi - Alexandra Cuesta
The Memory and Magic Award: A Letter to Uncle Boonmee - Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Kenneth Anger looks normal – that’s how he tricks us. The red pullover and rumpled khaki trousers don’t reveal the 666 tattoo on his left arm or the shield of Lucifer on the right.
He sounds normal – if ungracious – as he demolishes his cinema peers (and others) with throwaway comments. There’s nothing demonic in his demeanor.
For "An Evening with Kenneth Anger" at the Michigan Theater on Saturday, he steamrollered Dennis Lim of The New York Times, who was supposed to interview him during Part I of a career retrospective that included screenings of four films (Part 2 screened Sunday, Mar 28). Warlock or whatever, Anger is a serial name-dropper. From Luis Bunuel to Marilyn Manson, a roll call of the famous and infamous filled his brief talk on stage. (Manson is too wrinkly to be considered for an Anger music video. The fresh-faced Jonas Brothers are just right.) In life, Dr. Albert Kinsey resembled a potato with a crew cut, unlike Hollywood hunk Liam Neeson who played him in the eponymous biopic, Anger says. Anger and Kinsey became acquainted early on, when Kinsey attended the debut of Fireworks, Anger’s first film. That film also kicked off last night’s showcase, which was fairly tame by today’s standards, however shocking the films may have been on first viewing.
Anger’s work may have been tamed by time and greater bad taste from filmmakers who came after him. Still, we must give props to his pioneering efforts. As we’re jaded to the towering talent of Chaplin and Harold Lloyd by shameless imitators in newer comedy films, we can’t let imitators take away from Anger’s novelty.
Viewing his films today, we may ask, “What’s the big deal?” For one, the impact of pop music to illuminate his films. The combo of high-contrast images of real bikers in seedy apartments accompanied by peppy Top 40 hits was new when he made Scorpio Rising.
Anger’s reality – filtered through a privileged Hollywood upbringing – went straight into his films. Bikers stroke Siamese cats before making the motorcycle club scene. Sailors swarm north from San Diego to fill Anger’s fantasies with bruises. He pretends to be one of the working men he desires.
He’s still torn between insider and outsider. He revels in being quarrelsome. He told the Michigan audience he likes to pick fights with friends to see if they care enough to make up. True friends and fans will look past his anger.
-Constance Crump
An Ann Arbor journalist and movie fan, Constance attended her 39th Ann Arbor Film Festival this year.
In his onstage introduction, Fest Director Donald Harrison emphasized that, program title notwithstanding, "The Kids Are Alright" was designed to entertain audience members of all ages, not just children.
He was spot-on with that assertion, as the eight selections clearly held the attention of adults, many of whom arrived at the Michigan Theater without little ones in tow--a visible affirmation of Harrison’s statement.
I’ve never programmed a film festival. Where to begin? First up was Rebecca Sugar’s Singles, 
at once playful and existential. The main character is trying to build himself a sandwich, typically a mundane undertaking, but which here requires intense self-examination. I’m not certain if any kids grasped its deeper meaning, but they loved Sugar’s inviting animation.
Magic Cube and Ping-Pong explored the cityscape, a frequent theme, intentional or not, of The Kids Are Alright. In this animation from Beijing filmmaker Lei Lei, colors flow and shapes shift, while an instrumental version of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” underpins the onscreen movement, a not so subtle jab at the human impact of China’s rapid metamorphosis.
Earlier this year, my six-year old daughter Zoë and I had a sneak peak of Yvette Edery’s Jillian Dillon, the tale of a lovely being who is part hippo, part platypus. But as a hippoplatypus, Jillian doesn’t fit in, until that unique pedigree allows her to rescue some animal pals from a watery demise. Brilliant sets and scene transitions, a marvelous original song, and a message that being different is OK made this well-choreographed puppetry a big hit with the youngsters.
In Debra Sea’s experimental balance, we see the world through the “eyes” of a bicycle tire, which spins along in ever-changing conditions. Given its unusual perspective, some adult film-goers wondered aloud if what they were seeing was real. Sea described in the after-program Q&A how she used a sport mount and gaffer’s tape to hold a Flip camera snugly on the bike. Vibrant and decidedly original.
One young audience member sitting close by me said of Aaron Wendel’s bric-a-brac: “This is really freaky!” Freaky good, I agreed, due to the crayon rubbings Wendel generated from what he later explained in the Q&A were thousands of two-layer drawing that seamlessly mesh together images of objects like cassette tapes, keys, and coins into a delicious, three-minute animated dance.
“Eerie” describes The Zoo. Set in a long-abandoned Los Angeles zoo, the documentary from Katherin McInnis follows people as they explore what today is a picnicking space. Now we know how captive animals must see us from inside their cages. It was unlike anything else in the program.
It has a silly-sounding name, but Danielle Ash’s Pickles for Nickels is serious business, possibly this program’s most “adult” film. Weaving cardboard figures, animation, and other techniques – along with potent music – it traces changes within an urban space and the resulting effect on its inhabitants. I’d enjoy watching this one again because it merits further study.
When I saw Wladyslaw Starewicz’s 1934 epic The Mascot online some time ago, I was stunned. Technically advanced for its era and with a multi-layered storyline of a stuffed animal brought to life and sent forth into – here’s that theme again – the fearsome big city. My daughter sought reassurance during the frightening parts, but the film contained humorous scenes, too. Michigan’s own Little Bang Theory – featuring Frank Pahl – accompanied this black-and-white masterwork with the live world premiere of a dazzling original score fashioned out of ukulele, melodica, glockenspiel, and other instruments.
As we stood up to leave, I saw many smiles.
-Tim Pulice
He's a University of Michigan alumnus, and has worked as a professional writer since 2000. Tim covers U-M for Examiner.com, writes about the state of Michigan in his blog, The Pulice Report, and is the founder of the social media network Michigan Creatives. Pulice has been an on-air music host at WDET-FM (Detroit Public Radio), and helped AAFF as a pre-screener the last two years.