TO- Wednesday, September 5, 2001- The Michigan Daily - New Student Edition
NIGHTLIFE
Continued from Page 1D
Go Clubbing/Bar Hopping: For those freshpeople
with fake LD.'s only, this is a very popular way to spend
time here in Ann Arbor. For the sorority/fraternity crowd,
try Rick's. For quality beer and hard cider, stroll on over
to Ashley's. For just hanging out with friends, go to Good
Time Charley's. For the best drink specials, check out
Mitch's on Tuesday and Scorekeepers on Thursday. If you
are a dancing inferno, try the Nectarine or the Millenni-
um Club.
House Parties: These are best when you or someone
you know is actually acquainted with a resident of the
house (and most rewarding - the walk is sometimes quite
long to get to a house party). Booty music, kegs, friends
... all free, all with a more mature, less meat-market vibe
than your average frat party. Due to not knowing many
people outside the dorms at first, you may have to wait
until sophomore year to go to many of these (or until you
actually hold you own house party), but the wait will
hopefully be worth it!
ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL
JESICA JUNSUN/Daily
University alum Dan Lovell dances at the Nectarine, which
was voted Ann Arbor's best dance spot.
.... ....
E =r
:n away from home
On central campus for arts, entertainment,
special events, and social activities.
Localfestival attracts
talent from across the
nation and beyond
By Lyle Henretty
Daily Film Editor
Attending the 39th Annual Ann Arbor Film Festival
at The Michigan Theater is a revitalizing experience
for those who decry the current state of world cinema.
The experimental festival, the oldest one in America to
'showcase 16-millimeter films, draws talent from Ann
Arbor to Australia and boasts an array of visual tech-
niques and styles, ranging from animation to cinema
verite to narrative to documentary. The festival's
$16,000 in prize money is handed out to the winner on
the last day, and the winning entries are screened that
evening. Past winners include Gus Van Sant, Brian
DePalma, Agnes Varda and George Lucas.
Tickets are seven dollars for individual shows and
$50 for a weeklong pass. "I encourage people go to as
much as they can, because [each film] is only shown
once," suggests Vicki Honeyman, who is directing the
festival for the 14th year. "My goal is to prevent it
from becoming way off base from what it intended to
be.
The main 16-millimeter entries are the only films
competing for awards, and are screened on The Michi-
gan Theater's main screen. This year the festival also
utilized the theater's smaller screening room for spe-
cial "sidebar" programs. Sidebar programs include
films that are shown as part of a theme, such as a gay-
themed or a relationships-themed evenings. There will
also be a virtual reality program in The Michigan The-
ater's main lobby.
The festival was started in 1963 by University
School of Art filmmaker and Artist George Manupelli.
Manupelli's vision was to create a festival for those
who saw film as an art form, and give them a forum to
express their ideas without the conformity of cate-
gories, censorship, or "media tastemakers." In 1980,
the festival broke away from the University and
became an independent entity, a not-for-profit organi-
zation that not only has headquarters in Ann Arbor, but
also sponsors a tour of the winning films, taking them
across the country.
The festival gets larger every year, and saw a partic-
ular jump in the number of film submissions this year,
the first time entries were allowed to be submitted via
videotape. There were several more entries from
Michigan this year, including the ten that won admis-
sion. While two of these films are from Ann Arbor,
Honeyman assures that there is no student category, as
AAFF is "not an amateur festival."
While other media is being explored this year
("Because it exists," says Honeyman), the main focus
is, as it has always been, 16mm films. Most of the
filmmakers agree that this is an important part of the
festival." I love the image quality of the film. The tex-
ture, grain, saturation, details in shadow areas are still
superior to video," says Jay Rosenblatt, a California
filmmaker who has two of his films, "Nine Lives (The
Courtesy of Ann Arbor Film Festival
Peter Miller's "The Internationale" brings communists
and capitalists together through song.
Eternal Moment of Now)" and "Worm" competing in
this years festival. Roach, a veteran of the film-festival
circuit and past winner in Ann Arbor, feels that film
shorts allows for an important exercise of creative
prowess. "I believe in minimalism. Less is more. If
you overstate something you actually diminish its
power. I try to find a form that best suits the content."
Artist Maria Vasilkovsky, who brings her short ani-
mated feature "Fur & Feathers" to the festival this
year, agrees with the importance of form and content.
This is Vasilkovsky's first endeavor into painting on I
glass, a tedious process that took her over two years to
produce her stylish five minute short. The film medi-
tates on love and passion between two seemingly
opposite personalities, showing the two individuals
flawlessly morphing into different shapes and ideas.
"Firstly I was not confident that I could realize my sto-
ryboard in this unfamiliar medium," Vasilkovsky told
The Daily. "Soon after I started, however, it was clear
that my only true concern should be the content of my
message: what it is I'm trying to say and how interest-
ing it is. As long as the concept was present, its real-
ization was wishes coming true." 4
The festival is often a vehicle for conflicting ideas
and emotions, both of the filmmakers and their sub-
jects. While New York's Dean Kapsalis' "Jigsaw
Venus" invests the viewer in the lonely life of refresh-
ingly normal looking naked people, British filmmaker
Suzie Templeton's "Stailey" shows an animated mans
deadly obsession withIis cabbage. Two striking docu-
mentaries, Peter Miller's "The Internationale" and
Elida Schogt's "The Walnut Tree" show how beautiful
and terrifying history can be, on both a worldly and
deeply personal level. Two colliding worlds," suggests
Schogt. This is how 'The Walnut Tree' is structured in
terms of both image and text. There is a constant
movement between facts and history (the tangible) on
one hand and emotions and memory (the abstract) on
the other." The Internationale" tells the absorbing his-
tory of how one song can represent both freedom and
oppression, sometimes at the exact same time.
The festival brings this emotion to the masses, and
many artists are given a chance to showcase their work
for the first time. So if you are interested in seeing the
next Lucas, Van Sant, or DePalma, the Ann Arbor Filmi
Festival can be a once-in-a-lifetime event.
Check out our web site and online calendar
www.umich.edu/~munion\AandP
or call 763-3202
I
Great Ur
All this brought to you by the Michigan Union
Program Board and the Michigan Union Arts
and Programs Office. Division of Student Affairs.
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