Picture Shows from the 52nd Ann Arbor Festival

The Velaslavasay Panorama & Los Angeles FilmForum Present

Motion Pictures from the 52nd Ann Arbor Film Festival

This year’s 52nd Ann Arbor Film Festival featured an array of works from Los Angeles based filmmakers.

We review a selection of these alongside their makers.

$10 General - $6 Students/Seniors/VPES Members -Free for Filmforum Members

 Will o'the Wisp (16mm, 2013, 24min)

by Andrew Kim (in attendance)

...or The Wandering Light Illuminating the Dark of Night, Taken Therefore for the Souls of the Departed. An examination of discourses of the causes, continuance, and qualities of such phenomena in nature; occasioned as a matter in contest with the much terrified people who have deemed these lights to be manifestations of the paranormal. [Received the Tom Berman Most Promising Filmmaker Award]

With Pluses and Minuses (16mm, 2013, 5min)
by Mike Stoltz

"A ground-less and boundless 16mm film in which a wall becomes a window to a swirling landscape."

A Study in Natural Magic (16mm, 2013, 3 min, Silent)
by Charlotte Pryce (in attendance)

"Witness an alchemist’s spell; the transmutation of light into substance; a glimpse of gold." [Received the Stan Brakhage Film at Wits End Award]

Square Dance, Los Angeles County, California, 2013

(16mm, 2013, 9min) by Silvia das Fadas (in attendance)

"The people are what is not there yet, never in the right place, never ascribable to the place and time where anxieties and dreams await"

Olivia's Place (16mm, 1966/1974, 6min)
by Thom Andersen (in attendance)

“On Sunday, January 16, 1966, we shot 200 ft. of 16mm Kodak Ektachrome MS film, type 7256,  at OLIVIA’S PLACE, 2618 Main Street, Santa Monica, California. We shot with a static camera, mounted on a tripod, using only available light. A recording of 'There in Something on Your Mind' by Big Jay McNeely and his band, with vocal by Little Sonny, was on the jukebox then. The Harlem Globetrotters and TOKYO JOE, starring Humphrey Bogart, were on TV that afternoon.”

Certain Things (16mm, 2014, 4min)
by Mark Toscano

"Certain things you remember.  These are two of them, remembered by my father, as we drove north on S. Las Vegas Blvd in November, 2011."

Grip (digital, 2013, 6min)
by Daniel Brantley (in attendance)

A video for "Grip" by Southern Californian musician Sun Araw.

No Use Walkin' When You Can Stroll (35mm on digital, 1998, 11min)
by Penelope Spheeris

One-time carny, bartender, and married ten times, Penelope Spheeris’s mother was an uncommon woman. In this sweet, funny, and moving video portrait, Spheeris gives us a vivid glimpse into the richness of her mother.

Musical Recordings from the Realm of the Dead
(digital, 2013, 5min) by Troy Morgan

Four separate individuals at the dawn of wireless technology become accidental collaborators in a musical composition that is pieced together through radio waves. AAFF audience favorite, a stop-motion animation.