Ann Arbor Film Festival rolls out arthouse features

By Zara Zangana
Contributor

The Ann Arbor Film Festival celebrated its 57th year last week, drawing 10,000 audience members to the Michigan Theater to experience more than 200 films screened at the festival.

AAFF is an Academy Award-qualifying festival. Winners of The Ken Burns Award for Best of the Festival, the Chris Frayne Award for Best Animated Film, the Lawrence Kasdan Award for Best Narrative Film, and the Best Experimental Film Award are eligible for an Oscar nomination. This year, the winners of those categories and Oscar nomination-qualifiers were “On Destruction and Preservation” directed by Maija Blåfield, “32-Rbit” directed by Victor Orozco Ramirez, “Flowers (Flores)” directed by Vado Vergara, and “TROPICS” directed by Mathilde Lavenne, respectively.

Thirty films received awards this year. The award for Best Documentary Film went to Cheri Gaulke for her short film “Gloria’s Call,” a documentary about women surrealist artists.

The Eileen Maitland Award went to “We Were Hardly More Than Children” directed by Cecelia Condit, a moving short film centering on one woman’s story about abortion.

The Peter Wilde Award for Most Technically Innovative Film went to “Traces with Elikem” directed by Ariana Gerstein, while the Prix DeVarti for Funniest Film went to “Under Covers” directed by Michaela Olsen.

Jury Awards went to many different shorts. Among these were “Mudanza Contemporánea” directed by Teo Guillem, “Pictured Rocks” directed by Jack Cronin and “Armed Lullaby” directed by Yana Ugrekhelidze.

“The festival was emblematic of what the Michigan Theater represents: a devotion to experimental work,” said Sofia Spencer, a festival attendee and University of Michigan student. “The building may be traditional, but the films were not.”

Spencer attended a screening of “Closing Time” directed by Nicole Vögele, one of the features being shown at this year’s festival. She said the film “felt like the type of film that you have to study to appreciate.”

The festival is known for screening artistic, unconventional films made by filmmakers just starting out in their careers. Voted the number one best film festival in North America by USA Today’s 10 Best Readers’ Choice travel award contest, and named by Variety in its Top Ten favorite film festivals in the world, the Ann Arbor Film Festival is a festival for the filmmaker.

Before each screening, volunteers handed each attendee a ballot on which they could rate the short films or feature film they saw.

The AAFF DVD of the official selection of films shown at the festival will be available for purchase on its website in the coming months.

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