Festival History

In 2006 the Ann Arbor Film Festival came under attack by politically-motivated censorship and saw its state funding revoked. In response, the AAFF launched the Endangered Campaign and raised over $80,000 in 4 months. Watch videos from the campaign, which received worldwide press and attention.

Early History

The Ann Arbor Film Festival was started in 1963 by University of Michigan School of Art filmmaker/artist George Manupelli. The 1960s sparked rapid changes in cinema, thus challenging the art world to accept fresh ideas and talent. Manupelli took advantage of this shift and envisioned a festival that would serve experimental and pioneering filmmakers with the exposure, feedback and competition they desired. He designed his festival to be open to anyone who saw filmmaking as art.

From a casual group of fascinated students, filmmakers and film enthusiasts crowded into the smoke-filled Lorch Hall auditorium, to the thousands of filmmakers, artists and spectators hosted in the grand Michigan Theater, the Ann Arbor Film Festival has grown to be an internationally celebrated institution. Since 1980, it has been independent of the University of Michigan as an independent non-profit arts organization. In the fall of 2003 the festival broadened its scope to include video and digital formats for competition.