Virtual Ann Arbor Film Festival

The Live Stream Starts
4pm EDT March 24, 2020
The 58th Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF) will be presented as a free live-streamed six-day event March 24-March 29, 2020! We made the decision to suspend all in-person events for the 58th AAFF due to growing health concerns surrounding COVID-19, and instead present short and feature films in competition entirely online.

The online event will be streamed through Vimeo as a one-time event and will be accessible worldwide. All listed times are in Eastern Daylight Time (UTC -04:00). Moderated live Q&As with filmmakers will be streamed following the film screenings in order to continue discourse between filmmakers and our audience. Jurors will fulfill their commitment of reviewing programmed films in competition in order to confer the $22,500 in awards.

Each program is different. Films are not rated. All programs are intended for mature audiences, unless otherwise noted. Some films have imagery of a stroboscopic nature.

All times in Eastern Daylight Time (UTC -04:00)

TUESDAY, MARCH 24

OPENING NIGHT

​

Opening Night Party

DJ set

4pm

Tadd and Nayiri Mullinix

​

Films in Competition 1

5pm

The festival kickoff screening of experimental, documentary, narrative, and animated films, featuring DONT KNOW WHAT (Thomas Renoldner), Pickles Luh (Tofu Riot), tx-reverse (Martin Reinhart and Virgil Widrich), E-Ticket (Simon Liu), White Afro (Akosua Adoma Owusu), The Golden Legend (Chema García Ibarra and Ion de Sosa), Dick Pics! (A Documentary) (Hannah McSwiggen and Russell Sheaffer), Trauma Chameleon (Gina Kamentsky), and We Are Future Shock (Zohar Dvir).

​

FUTURE LANGUAGE: The Dimensions of VON LMO

Feature in Competition

7pm

FUTURE LANGUAGE: The Dimensions of VON LMO is a distorted portrait of an artist that explores storytelling, ego, delusion, conviction and memory. VON LMO is a musician/artist and self-proclaimed alien hybrid who was a part of the late ’70s New York No Wave music scene. Between trips to his home planet of Strazar and multi-dimensional travel, VON has also spent some very real time in prison and on the streets of Earth. Challenged with translating his Future Language for audiences across the galaxy, director Lori Felker, filmmaker, and VON LMO fan, gets sucked into VON’s orbit and finds herself lost in his story.

​

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25

​

My Body, Your Body, Our Bodies: Somatic Cinema at Home and in the World: Films by Lynne Sachs

Juror Presentation

10am

How do we negotiate the photographing of images that contain the body? What experiential, political or aesthetic contingencies do we bring to both the making and viewing of a cinema that contains the human form? If a body is different from our own—in terms of gender, skin color, or age—do we frame it differently? As a juror at the 58th Ann Arbor Film Festival, New York filmmaker Lynne Sachs will guide her audience through her own evolution as a filmmaker by sharing excerpts from her films, from 1987 to the present. She will explore the fraught and bewildering challenge of looking at the human form from behind the lens.

​

야광 / Glow job

Feature in Competition

12pm

From the ’60s to the ’90s, several theaters and public spaces in Seoul and other cities, such as Pagoda Theater, Keukdong Theater, and Seongdong Theater, were appropriated as the crucial “cruising spot” by male sexual minorities. Now the main stage of cruising has moved from the physical spaces to the virtual fields. It seems there is no spatial validity for the Cruising Spot any longer. Directed by Cheol-min Im.

Presented with short in competition Austrian Pavilion (Philipp Fleischmann).

​

Films in Competition 2: Music Videos

2pm

A program of contemporary music videos including Garnet Graves (Flavourcel), Over/Under (Dia Jenet), A New Kind of Universe (Steve Wood), Tetlalli: The Place of Stones (Miguel Nájera), For The Old World (Laura Conway), Standing Forward Full (Alee Peoples), Drama Teacher (Tish Stringer), I Work! (Ben Willis), Mountain (Gabriel Thomas Ayache), Throat Singing in Kangirsuk (Eva Kaukai and Manon Chamberland), Diamonds (Tobias Kubli and Tillo Spreng), Falling Through Holes (Elliot Sheedy), and Sketch Artist (Loretta Fahrenholz).

​

Films in Competition 3

4pm

This program of contemporary experimental, documentary, narrative, and animated films includes Mirage (Jack Cronin), bearing (Greg Marshall), Feminism is a browser (Charlotte Eifler), every dog has its day (Alison Nguyen), Goldfish (Daniel Zvereff), Kere mattu Kere (The Lake and The Lake) (Sindhu Thirumalaisamy), and I’m Not A Robot (Sean Buckelew). Performance (pre-recorded): Presents/Presence (Pat Oleszko).

​

Films in Competition 4

6pm

This program of recent experimental films features Scar (Leilei Xia), Who’s Afraid of RGB? (Billy Roisz), No Objects (Moïa Jobin-Paré), Pattern Recognition (Dirk de Bruyn), Now 2 (Kevin Eskew), Thorax (Siegfried A. Fruhauf), and Rain: Then and Now (Diane Cheklich). Live Cinema Performance (pre-recorded): her* hands and his shape (Sílvia das Fadas and Masha Godovannaya)

​

THURSDAY, MARCH 26

​

INTERROGATING THE PAST: the collaborative work of Lisa Steele + Kim Tomczak

Juror presentation

10am

A juror for the 58th AAFF, Lisa Steele is a pioneer in video art, educator, curator, and co-founder of the Toronto-based organization Vtape, an award-winning media center and distributor of video art. She has collaborated with Kim Tomczak since 1983, producing videotapes, performances, and photo/text works. Currently, Steele teaches at the University of Toronto as part of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

​

Faire-part

Feature in Competition

12pm

On the eve of postponed Congolese elections, two Congolese and two Belgian cineastes work on a film about Kinshasa and its resistance against the legacies of colonialism. The four filmmakers want to tell a story together, but having grown up on other sides of history, they have different views on how to tell that story. Through filming artistic performances in public space, they paint a provocative picture of Kinshasa and its relations with the rest of the world. Directed by Anne Reijniers, Nizar Saleh, Paul Shemisi, and Rob Jacobs.

Presented with short in competition Memoirs (Aaron Zeghers).

​

Why Can’t I Be Me? Around You

Feature in Competition

1:45pm

Albuquerque’s Rusty Tidenberg, auto mechanic and drag-racing aficionado, shocked friends and family by coming out as trans. Followed for eight years by filmmaker Harrod Blank (son of Les Blank), Rusty guides us through the aftermath of her transition, as growing acceptance among her straight-talking Southwest community still doesn’t ease her romantic and professional woes. Interwoven with lively tales of gender non-conforming individuals on the art-car circuit, Blank’s film is a sensitive and unpredictable love letter to people who fight to be unapologetically themselves.

Presented with short in competition Framing Agnes (Chase Joynt and Kristen Schilt)

​

Films in Competition 5: Out Night

4pm

Programmed by Sean Donovan, the Ann Arbor Film Festival’s 19th celebration of queer cinema spotlights recent experimental films with LGBTQ themes: Happy (Seyed Ahmadreza Mousavi), Lesbian Farmer (Carleen Maur), Shannon Amen (Chris Dainty), A messy story about oak and (Maria Bang Espersen and Emilý Æyer), Goodbye Fantasy (Amber Bemak and Nadia Granados), and When Night Falls (Alexandre Lechasseur-Dubé). Performance (pre-recorded): Two Steps on The Water (Angelo Madsen Minax).

​

Films in Competition 6

6pm | Michigan Theater Main Auditorium

This program of recent experimental, documentary, and animated films includes Split River (Ava Zeichner), Últimas Ondas (Emmanuel Piton), Blue Honda Civic (Jussi Eerola), Vever (for Barbara) (Deborah Stratman), Take it Down (Sabine Gruffat), and Colors & Shadows (Andreas Hadjipateras). Performance (pre-recorded): Presents/Presence (Pat Oleszko).

​

FRIDAY, MARCH 27

​

Osbert Parker: New Adventures in Animation

Juror Presentation

10am

New Adventures in Animation is a diverse program of mixed live-action and animated films that spans over 30 years of Parker’s international career in film, TV and the creative arts. Selected films, experiments, private sketchbooks, and a selection of behind-the-scenes films will be shown for the first time, demonstrating a unique approach that creates new adventures in animation, one-of-a-kind imaginary worlds within commercials and short films, starting points for compelling narratives in long-form work.

Video Blues

Feature in Competition

12pm

Provocative and mysterious homemade images from the 80s, two voices, a woman and a man argue about what these images mean, two opinions about her past. Director Emma Tusell reconstructs her family history through these videos, searching for meaning and identity.

Presented with short in competion Time Reversal Symmetry (Evann Siebens).

​

Films in Competition 7

2pm

This program of recent experimental, documentary, and animated films includes Horsey (Frederic Moffet), Something To Touch That Is Not Corruption Or Ashes Or Dust (Mike Stoltz), Blue (Laura Magnusson), a tiny place that is hard to touch (Shelly Silver), Wind (Dana Sink), :::-:: (6-4) (Ana Valdes), and Umbilical Cord to Heaven (Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan)

​

Films in Competition 8

4pm

These contemporary experimental, documentary, and animated films include Candy Shop (Patrick Smith), Barbara (Valeriy Pereverzev), this one weird trick (Joanie Wind), Muybridge´s Disobedient Horses (Anna Vasof), Immaterial Los Angeles (Christopher McNamara), Queering di Teknolojik (Timothy Smith and collaborators), Realms (Benjamin Rinehardt), I have Sinned a Rapturous Sin (Maryam Tafakory), Origin of Hair (Carrie Hawks), and Vertigo A.I. (Chris Peters). Live Cinema Performance (pre-recoreded): Emotions in Metal (Tommy Becker).

​

Films in Competition 9: Animation

6pm

This program of recent animated films from near and far includes The Ride (Huh Hyunjung), Nod. Wink. Horse. (Ollie Magee), There Were Four of Us (Cassie Shao), The Last Bottle (Max Majoros), DRAWING. DANCING (Nicci Haynes), Goodbye Mommy (Jack Wedge), Aphasia or (It Fell Upon My Mind) (Brynne McGregor), Umbilical (Danski Tang), Flesh (Camila Kater), Lickalike (Rebecca Bloecher), and Garnet Graves (Flavourcel)

Asparagus (Suzan Pitt) will be shown out of competition. Performance (pre-recorded): Presents/Presence (Pat Oleszko).

​

Afterparty: A Concise History of American Progress

Expanded Cinema Performance

8pm

Kit Young

​

SATURDAY, MARCH 28

​

Films in Competition 10: Almost All Ages (Ages 6+)

8am

This family-friendly program of narrative, documentary, experimental, and animated films includes Organic (Steven Woloshen), MOTH (Allison Schulnik), Louie’s Antiques (Melissa McClung), The immortality of the crab (Giacomo Manzotti), The Flounder (Elizabeth Hobbs), Someday (Páraic Mc Gloughlin), Chronosync (Sofia Laszlovszky), Freeze Frame (Soetkin Verstegen), Winter’s First Moons (Kathleen Rugh), Throat Singing in Kangirsuk (Eva Kaukai and Manon Chamberland), A Recipe for Tofu Scramble (Alex Fink), and Digits of Pi (Tom Bessoir).

​

Films in Competition 11

10am

These contemporary experimental, documentary and animated films include Trees of Heaven: an underground educational film (Donald Harrison), Perdikaki (Catriona Gallagher), In Her Boots (Kathrin Steinbacher), Non-human Whispers, Episode 2 (Julian Gatto), T A R T A M U D E O (Dave Rodriguez), Unsound (Vivian Ostrovsky), Kanockatonanok (Nicolas Jimy Awashish), and I Dream of Vietnam (Jiayu Yang)

​

Films in Competition 12

12pm

This program of recent experimental and documentary films opens with Firefly (Claudia Claremi), The Eyes of Summer (Rajee Samarasinghe), Seven Elegies (Peter Sparling), and Ascensor (Adrian Garcia Gomez)

​

Home In the Woods

Feature in Competition

2pm

An immersive portrait of a place viewed from different perspectives and scales. A contemplation of the cycles, patterns, and relationships that exist in the forest near director Brandon Wilson’s home.

​

Films in Competition 13

4pm

This program of recent experimental, documentary, and animated films includes Central Square (Daniel Rowe), Ankebût (Ceylan Özgün Özçelik), noonwraith blues (Kamila Kuc), Rain (Piotr Milczarek), Back Yard (Arlin Golden), Terror Fervor (Phoebe Parsons), and The Giverny Document (Ja’Tovia Gary)​. Performance (pre-recorded): Presents/Presence (Pat Oleszko).

​

Films in Competition 14

6pm

This program of contemporary experimental, documentary, and animated films includes SPENCER’S SLIGHTLY IMPERFECT PEEP SHOW A.K.A. MICRO-BURLESQUE (Gary Schwartz), Cage Match (Bryan Lee), The Deepest Hole (Matt McCormick), The Lilac Game (Emma Piper-Burket), I Want (Anne Isensee), Tokyo Story (Hal Torii), Three considerations before choreographing the End (chele isaac), Respiration (Sasha Waters Freyer), Witch Trilogy 13+ (Ceylan Özgün Özçelik), and Scenes from the Periphery (Derek Taylor), Leaking Life (Shunsaku Hayashi).

​

Dream Journal 2016–2019

Feature in Competition

8pm

Filmmaker Jon Rafman’s latest single-channel video explores the effects of technology and information overload on the contemporary psyche. Set in a virtual tech-noir urban space part of the expansive, fractured narrative focuses on the continued adventures of Xanax Girl and her search for her companion who has been abducted. The film, which arose from the artist’s daily practice of animating his dreams using hobbyist 3D software, weaves together deep-web imagery with detective story tropes and repressed fantasies to create a nightmarish vision of an internet addict’s unconscious. The film features an original score by Oneohtrix Point Never and James Ferraro.

​

​SUNDAY, MARCH 29

What We Left Unfinished

Feature in Competition

9am

The mostly true story of five unfinished films from the Communist era in Afghanistan (1978–1991), What We Left Unfinished reunites newly restored footage from lost fiction films with the people who went to crazy lengths to make them, evoking a time when films were weapons, filmmakers became targets, and the dreams of political regimes merged with the stories told onscreen. Directed by Mariam Ghani.

Presented with short in competition Green Ash (Ceniza Verde)(Pablo Mazzolo).

​

Camp on the Wind’s Road

Feature in Competition

11am

Following the death of her father, Belekmaa lodges herself in his herdsman’s encampment. She hopes to see her father at least in her dreams, up to the day when, according to the Tuvan tradition, the spirit of the deceased would be fed and given ultimate send-off. Directed by Nataliya Kharlamova.

Presented with short in competition Depot Asmara (Beatrice Möller).

​

SERPENTARIUS

Feature in Competition

1pm

A young man drifts through a post-disaster African landscape looking for his mother’s ghost. Directed by Carlos Conceição.

​

Films also in consideration for awards, but not a part of the live stream program

KIDS (Michael Frei), Fifth Metacarpal (Scott Fitzpatrick), Motion At A Distance (Lindsay Packer), Kopierwerk (Stefanie Weberhofer)

​

WINNER’S NIGHT:

The 58th Ann Arbor Film Festival closing events offer a program of select award-winning films as chosen by our jury.

​

Award Screening 1

3pm

A select screening of awarded films.

Award Screening 2

5pm

Additional awarded films from the 58th AAFF

​

Afterparty:Works on White

Expanded Cinema Performance

7pm

SpOp (Marit Shalem) and Badgewearer (Tony Kennedy)