Documentary Events
8:15pm
Opening Night Screening
Animation, Documentary, Experimental, Films in Competition, Short Film
A selection of short films, featuring innovative new works in animation, documentary, experimental and independent cinema.
9:15pm
Films in Competition 2
Documentary, Experimental, Films in Competition, Short Film
New films and video by Mary Helena Clark, Siegfried A. Fruhauf, Marc Pelletier, Scott Stark, Jonathan Schwartz, James Sansing, Chris Kennedy with newly restored films by Phil Solomon and Pat
9:30pm
Out Night with Barbara Hammer
Documentary, Experimental, Films in Competition, Historic Film, Narrative, Short Film, Special Presentations
A celebration of historic and influential LGBTQ films, featuring trailblazing filmmaker Barbara Hammer in person with her films. Tina Takemoto’s video Looking for Jiro (2011), Ira Sachs’ 1994 film Lady,
7:00pm
Poetic Injustice: Short Films from the Arab World
Documentary, Experimental, Historic Film, Narrative, Short Film, Special Presentations
Curator Irina Leimbacher will present films and videos from the past 25 years from Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, and Morocco. What does it mean to speak one’s history and the dreams
7:15pm
Bruce Baillie Retrospective 1
Documentary, Experimental, Historic Film, Short Film, Special Presentations
The Ann Arbor Film Festival is honored to have Bruce Baillie in attendance for the presentation of the first of three retrospective programs, featuring some of the most important films to
9:15pm
“The Strawberry Tree” w/ “FLIGHT”
Documentary, Feature Length, Films in Competition
Existing between anthropology, documentary and reverie, The Strawberry Tree is a mesmerizing cinematic poem that portrays the final sigh of one of Cuba’s last fishing villages. Preceded by Greta Snider’s
12:30pm
Films in Competition 6
Documentary, Experimental, Films in Competition, Short Film
New experimental and documentary films from Canada, Romania, Germany and Singapore featuring the world premiere of "Berlin Tiger" by Shioh Cinquemani, and the US premieres of "Forest Walk" by Mike
1:00pm
Bruce Baillie Retrospective 2
Documentary, Experimental, Historic Film, Short Film, Special Presentations
The second of three programs celebrating the work of Bruce Baillie features two masterworks Quixote and Valentin de las Sierras, preceded by the rarely seen Yellow Horse and Termination. Bruce Baillie will be
3:00pm
Films by Omar Amiralay
Documentary, Historic Film, Short Film, Special Presentations
Three films by Omar Amiralay (1944–2011), Syria’s greatest documentary filmmaker, presented by Irina Leimbacher. The program includes Tabaq el-Sardin (A Plate of Sardines, 1997), Amiralay's powerful reflection on personal and
3:30pm
Films in Competition 7
Documentary, Experimental, Films in Competition, Short Film
New non-fiction films from Hayoun Kwon, Richard Wiebe, Robert Fenz, Fern Silva and the world premiere of Sasha Waters Freyer's "An Incomplete History of the Travelogue, 1925". This program also
5:00pm
“This Our Still Life” w/ “Kid Beat Box”
Documentary, Feature Length, Films in Competition, Short Film
This Our Still Life is comprised of video and 8mm footage dating back to 1989; artist and filmmaker Andrew Kötting has created an exceptionally warm yet unsentimental portrait of his
7:00pm
“As Above, So Below” w/ “Amos Fortune Road”
Documentary, Feature Length, Films in Competition, Historic Film, Narrative, Short Film
The world premiere of Sarah J. Christman’s feature-length documentary; As Above, So Below intimately examines various transmutations that reshape matter and its meanings. What separates the permanent from the
7:15pm
Films in Competition 8
Animation, Documentary, Experimental, Films in Competition, Short Film
New experimental, animated and documentary films from Peru, Finland, Japan and the U.S. including Suzan Pitt's latest animation "Visitation" and the North American premiere of Minna Parkkinen's film "Circle". Please
9:30pm
Films in Competition 9
Animation, Documentary, Experimental, Films in Competition, Historic Film, Short Film
New abstract, experimental documentary and animated films from the U.S., England, and Germany including recent works by Jennifer Reeves, Fern Silva, Stephen Irwin, Sylvia Schedelbauer, Evan Meaney, Martin Arnold and
11:00am
Films in Competition 10
Documentary, Experimental, Films in Competition, Historic Film, Short Film
New experimental films from David Gatten, Samantha Rebello and JB Mabe. Program includes the North American premiere of "Generator" by Takashi Makino and the rarely seen 16mm film "Porch Glider" (1970,
1:00pm
Films in Competition 11
Documentary, Experimental, Historic Film, Narrative, Short Film
George Kuchar’s 1966 classic Hold Me While I’m Naked with new narrative, documentary and experimental films by Bobby Abate, Dietmar Brehm, Kevin T. Allen, Josh Gibson, and Kevin Jerome Everson.
2:00pm
This Is Not A Film
Documentary, Feature Length, Special Presentations
A day-in-the-life documentary of Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s experience of being under house arrest, filmed almost entirely inside his apartment in Tehran, as he creatively expresses his frustration of not
Documentary Films
RocketKitKongoKit
(Craig Baldwin, 1986)
This kaleidoscopic, amphetamine-paced tour de force uses a barrage of found-footage images and rapid-fire narration to trace a history of Zaire since its independence in 1960. The CIA, German munitions...
Showing Wednesday, March 28 7:15pm
FLIGHT
(Greta Snider, 1997)
My father’s photographic legacy, compiled and transformed into light. His family photographs, his hobbyist pictures of trains and roses, his airplanes and his obsession with birds circling...these images are imprinted...
Showing Thursday, March 29 9:15pm
Termination
(Bruce Baillie, 1966)
Another of the Canyon CinemaNews reels, this time credited to the “Canyon Cinema Documentary Film Unit” (Paul Tulley and Bruce Baillie and others). Termination was made in Spring 1966 for a small...
Showing Saturday, March 31 1:00pm
Yellow Horse
(Bruce Baillie, 1965)
"Cycle scrambles poem. Bass solo by Pat Smith, LA". - BB...
Showing Saturday, March 31 1:00pm
Valentin de las Sierras
(Bruce Baillie, 1967)
"This ten minute portrait of lives lived in rare air and under sunlight of liquid gold is, simply put, one of the most beautiful films ever made." –Chuck Stephens "In...
Showing Saturday, March 31 1:00pm
Quixote
(Bruce Baillie, 1965)
"One-year journey through the land of incessant progress, researching those sources which have given rise twenty years later to the essential question of survival." -BB The bearded figure at the...
Showing Saturday, March 31 1:00pm
The Chickens (‘al-Dajaj’)
(Omar Amiralay, 1977)
Amiralay’s third documentary was produced by and for Syrian state television, though it was subsequently banned. Its focus was the new chicken farming industry in a pilot village in the...
Showing Saturday, March 31 3:00pm
Film-Essay on the Euphrates Dam (Film-Muhawalah ‘An Sadd al-Furat)
(Omar Amiralay, 1970)
Amiralay’s first short film is an enthusiastic and lyrical depiction of the Ba’athist regime’s construction of the Assad dam on the Euphrates River. Its cinematic exuberance with regard to large-scale...
Showing Saturday, March 31 3:00pm
A Plate of Sardines (Tabaq el-Sardin)
(Omar Amiralay, 1997)
“The first time I heard of Israel, I was in Beirut, and the conversation was about a plate of sardines. I was six years old, Israel was two.” In this...
Showing Saturday, March 31 3:00pm
Joshua City
(Kevin T. Allen, 2011)
A cross-cultural camera roll of two desolate landscapes. One half shot in the Mojave Desert of Joshua Tree in California, the other half in the industrial ghost town of Industry...
Showing Sunday, April 01 1:00pm
Chevelle
(Kevin Jerome Everson, 2011)
In Chevelle, Kevin Jerome Everson captures two workhorse GM cars at a moment of drastic transformation. A junkyard crusher puts metal to metal and smashes the cars into tidy rectangular shapes while the...
Showing Sunday, April 01 1:00pm
Passage Upon the Plume
(Fern Silva, 2011)
Plumes dust the arid land, east to west, shapeshifting as they lift in ascension. Something lowers. An ark ran aground where revolution took root: ropes raise stones in baskets. Hearts...
Showing Saturday, March 31 9:30pm
Peril of the Antilles
(Fern Silva, 2011)
Peril of the Antilles was filmed at the beginning of November 2010 while visiting a friend in Haiti. At this specific time, the cholera epidemic was on its way to...
Showing Saturday, March 31 3:30pm
Porch Glider
(James Herbert, 1970)
Porch Glider is James Herbert's rarely seen masterpiece, one of over a dozen films by Herbert screened at AAFF from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s. The film is...
Showing Sunday, April 01 11:00am
Sack Barrow
(Ben Rivers, 2011)
Sack Barrow explores a small family run factory in the outskirts of London. It was set up in 1931 to provide work for limbless and disabled ex-servicemen until the factory...
Showing Saturday, March 31 9:30pm
Correspondence
(Robert Fenz, 2011)
Fenz returns to the locations of three classic films made by the pioneering American ethnographic filmmaker Robert Gardner. Dead Birds (1964) was filmed in West Papua, Rivers of Sand (1974) was filmed in...
Showing Saturday, March 31 3:30pm
A Preface to Red
(Jonathan Schwartz, 2011)
A single recording, recorded in a tunnel that one passes through after exiting a boat taking you from one continent to another, where people are selling bright colored toys and...
Showing Saturday, March 31 7:15pm
Here I Am
(Bruce Baillie, 1962)
One of Baillie's earliest films, Here I Am is an extraordinary portrait of children at the East Bay Activity Center, a school in Oakland, California started in the 1950s to...
Showing Thursday, March 29 7:15pm
Mass for the Dakota Sioux
(Bruce Baillie, 1964)
A film Mass, dedicated to nobility and excellence. The film begins with a short introduction - "No chance for me to live, Mother, you might as well mourn." Sitting Bull,...
Showing Thursday, March 29 7:15pm
To Parsifal
(Bruce Baillie, 1963)
Baillie's tribute to Wagner and the myth of the Holy Grail and the Parsifalian hero. Various scenes, first in the Pacific, mainly in the fog (including passing under the San...
Showing Thursday, March 29 7:15pm
Castro Street
(Bruce Baillie, 10 min)
An extraordinary technical achievement and a poetic masterpiece, Castro Street is a layered portrait of the Standard Oil Refinery in Richmond, California which Baillie describes as "coming of consciousness". "I wanted...
Showing Thursday, March 29 7:15pm
All My Life
(Bruce Baillie, 1966)
"Caspar, California; old fence with red roses." -BB...
Showing Thursday, March 29 7:15pm
Mr. Hayashi
(Bruce Baillie, 1961)
One of several "Canyon CinemaNews" reels that Baillie made in the early to mid 1960s, the film Mr. Hayashi has "an immediate basis in necessity" as Baillie described, and is a...
Showing Thursday, March 29 7:15pm
The Dead Weight of a Quarrel Hangs
(Walid Raad, 1998)
This piece investigates the possibilities and limits of writing a history of the Lebanese civil wars (1975-1991). The videos offer accounts of the fantastic situations that beset a number of...
Showing Thursday, March 29 7:00pm
Slippage
(Ali Cherri, 2007)
A reflection on the aftermath of the war: is it time to abandon Beirut, now that it has abandoned itself? Filmed in 2006 during the July War between Lebanon and Israel...
Showing Thursday, March 29 7:00pm
Ninha / Nous
(Danielle Arbid, 2005)
"My father was dying. I shot him to keep some evidence. I was afraid to lose everything I thought about him, all my anger against him, all my memories."-Danielle Arbid...
Showing Thursday, March 29 7:00pm
Compound Eyes 1 - 5
(Paul Clipson, 2011)
COMPOUND EYES Nos.1-5 is a series of short Super 8mm film studies studying aspects of insect and animal life, viewed within a succession of environments in unexpected ways. Filmed in the...
Showing Friday, March 30 11:30pm
Kid Beat Box: Twenty-two Tapes, Edit Nine
(Stephen Wetzel, 2012)
Kid Beat Box: Twenty-two Tapes, Edit Nine consists of thirty-five 10-second bits of video lifted from twenty-two standard digital video tapes. "I don't know Kid Beat Box, or I know...
Showing Saturday, March 31 5:00pm
This Our Still Life
(Andrew Kötting, 2011)
“The film moves through the four seasons, but mostly it’s a flickering and wilful impression of family life, characterised by found footage edited together with Kötting’s thoughts and a score...
Showing Saturday, March 31 5:00pm
Mapping Journey #5
(Bouchra Khalili, 2010)
Part of Khalili's Mapping Journey Project. Khalili travelled to Marseilles, Ramallah, Bari, Rome, Barcelona and Istanbul– the arteries of trafficking and trade. She walked around each city with maps and a fistful...
Showing Thursday, March 29 7:00pm
All Divided Selves
(Luke Fowler, 2011)
All Divided Selves, a new feature length film by the artist Luke Fowler. Following his celebrated works What You See Is Where You’re At (2001) and Bogman Palmjaguar (2007), this is the third...
Showing Friday, March 30 7:00pm
This Is Not a Film
(Jafar Panahi, 2011)
Filmmaker Jill Godmilow will be in attendance to introduce this program. This is Not a Film is a day-in-the-life documentary of Jafar Panahi’s experience of being under house arrest, filmed...
Showing Sunday, April 01 2:00pm
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