50 Years Of The Ann Arbor Film Festival: Ann Arbor Film Festival Archive @ AADL Launch

Sat, 04/05/2008 - 12:13pm

When: February 3, 2012 at the Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room

The Ann Arbor Film Festival is celebrating its 50th year - and AADL is excited to unveil its new digital archive, chronicling the Festival's history. Join Donald Harrison, AAFF Executive Director, and other voices from the Festival's past as they share behind-the-scenes stories from the longest-running independent and experimental film festival in North America! This event features the premiere of AADL's digital archive of the Festival, which will provide online access to posters and program guides from the Festival's half century of film exhibition history. The evening will conclude with light refreshments and the opportunity to mingle with Film Fest fans. THE ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL ARCHIVE @ AADLThis website will document the history of the Ann Arbor Film Fest and its 50 years of experimental cinema. Festival programs, photographs, promotional materials, and behind-the-scenes documents from the Festival's half-century history will be featured.Original interviews with festival organizers and participants from over the years and media coverage of the event including articles from the Ann Arbor News and Ann Arbor Sun will paint a portrait of the longest-running independent and experimental film festival in North America.Join us for a look in the past and an introduction to this valuable online collection!

Transcript

• [00:00:01.00] [MUSIC PLAYING]
• [00:00:25.95] AMY CANTU: Hello. My name is Amy Cantu. I'm a librarian here at the library.
• [00:00:32.41] And we'd like to thank you for coming tonight. We are launching an archive, the Ann Arbor Film Festival Archive. And we have Donald Harrison to talk with us tonight.
• [00:00:42.77] Just a couple of words before we get going. We'd like to thank Donald and David Dinnell for all the help getting us the programs and some of the other artifacts that we've used to help build the archive. It's right at the very beginning. We like to say when we launch a site that this is just the beginning.
• [00:00:59.19] It's just a launch. It will get bigger. There will be many more items added, especially after the 50th this year, so stay tuned.
• [00:01:07.60] We are filming tonight's program, so if you would refrain from using your cell phones. Be sure you turn your cell phones off. And at the end of the night, if there are questions, we have a microphone stand in the back. If you would please use that, that way we will get your question on film as well. And now I would like to introduce my partner, Andrew MacLaren, who will give you a little demonstration of the archive.
• [00:01:38.08] ANDREW MACLAREN: Evening, everybody. Thank you, for coming tonight. We really appreciate the support here. Let's see if I can find-- ooh, we have so many things in this deck.
• [00:01:50.93] So what we wanted to show you tonight is the beginnings of the Ann Arbor Film Festival Archive. The first question you might want to ask about this archive is, the 50th Festival is nearly two months away, why on earth are you guys launching this now and not launching it when the festival happens? And the reason is that this is just a beginning. You're going to see a lot of missing pieces in here. And a lot of those missing pieces we're hoping can be filled in by some of the people in this room.
• [00:02:19.99] We're hoping to really build a complete archive that really tells the story of the last 50 years of the Ann Arbor Film Festival. And that includes a lot of different things like the programs. And we have a lot of the programs in here. I'll give you a little walk-through of some of these programs.
• [00:02:34.87] We have a number of the programs. And you can go in and remind yourself of what films were there 45 years ago. And you will also get to see the development of the style, as the Film Festival became something larger and something more and more professional and really grew into what it is today.
• [00:02:58.50] It wasn't always that. It was just The Cinema Guild for a while. And now it's really a world-class festival. And when we lay this out like this, you can really see how it's developed and how it's grown.
• [00:03:11.22] But you will also see that we have some missing pieces in here. You'll see we jump from one to four. And we're hoping that, if anybody has two and three, they'll look around and contact us. And we can fill in all these holes and have 1 through 50 by the time the 50th launches.
• [00:03:27.62] Another thing that we have in here are we have all of The Ann Arbor News articles that were written about the Ann Arbor Film Festival. So there are about 80 articles in here right now. It gives another interesting portrait of how the experimental Film Festival was viewed by the very square local newspaper and how that view came to change over the years and how they actually came to respect it, which is not initially the case.
• [00:03:56.96] So you can scroll through all of those. And you can see big, beautiful scans of all the original things, along with OCR text for everything. So you can take a look at all of the articles, print them out, see them in any kind of format that you wish.
• [00:04:12.78] We also have a lot of photos. Again, looking for more photos. If you have taken photos at receptions around town, of any of the advertisements that were up around town over the years, we would love to have those. We would love to be contacted by you. And we would love to add those to this collection.
• [00:04:28.53] We have a number of photos, but a lot of them are just from the last five or six years. We don't have a lot from the earlier days. And we know there must be some out there. And we're hoping to add those to this collection. So if you have anything, we would love to hear from you.
• [00:04:44.61] And one of the ways you can really help us is with interviews. You'll see here, all of our interviews right now are with Donald Harrison. One of the things we're going to be doing between now and the 50th is interviewing as many people as possible, folks who were on the board, folks who worked for the Film Festival, folks who attended the Film Festival, folks who took tickets at the Film Festival.
• [00:05:07.83] We want to hear the stories that people have of what the Film Festival has meant to them, how they've been involved, what it's meant to them over the course of their lives and what it is to Ann Arbor. And again, if you have a story, we would love for you to contact us. And we would love to interview you.
• [00:05:23.23] By the time the 50th Ann Arbor Film Festival happens in two months, this web site is going to look very different. You're going to see a lot more stuff on here. You're going to see a much more robust picture of what the Film Festival is and what it means to Ann Arbor.
• [00:05:36.33] And we're really hoping that you can help us with that. But in the meantime, we hope that you take a look through here and remind yourself of some of the festivals that you've been to and have a good time with some of those memories. So thank you, very much.
• [00:05:51.51] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:05:55.24] AMY CANTU: And now we're very pleased to introduce Donald, who will take you through his history of the Film Festival. Please give him a hand.
• [00:06:05.04] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:06:09.95] DONALD HARRISON: OK, so before I get started with what I'm going to talk about, I do want to point out a few other things with the library, because this library is so fantastic. And I really have to give a special thanks to Amy and Andrew, but really, the whole entire downtown library, though, the Ann Arbor Public Library system, because they took this on as a project. It's a lot of work. And they do so many other things with us and, obviously, a lot of other parts of the community.
• [00:06:37.24] But the DVD collections that we started putting out four years ago, they have copies of those. So you can check those out. And you can see films that played in the Ann Arbor Film Festival. They have artwork you can check out, which includes some posters. So if you want to have one of our posters up-- well, you could probably get one from us-- but they do have it here in the downtown District Library as well.
• [00:06:58.73] And so it's just a fantastic resource. And we're very thankful for all of the work that they've done on getting this project going and really being a hub for film, as an art form, within Ann Arbor and for the people that lived here. So I think I'm going to successfully close this, and we'll start with-- OK.
• [00:07:21.39] So before I get started, I also do want to thank our program director, David Dinnell, because David has done an incredible amount of work. And David's right in the back there. David's done an incredible amount of work doing a lot of this research, finding the materials, helping organize them. And with 50 years, it's a lot. There's a lot of basements and attics and materials that we didn't even know existed or we've been trying to track down.
• [00:07:48.22] So as Amy said and Andrew said, this is an ongoing project. And we're going to be looking for some people in the community here locally and nationally to help contribute pieces. You'll even notice, tonight, as I show some images-- I happened to find them last night, and I took a snapshot. And so you're going to see a poster from the second Film Festival that I hadn't even seen before. I just discovered it in a basement last night.
• [00:08:12.65] So this is ongoing. It is very much the beginning and a living archive. And we're excited that it's going to be something that people can participate not just here locally, but internationally as well.
• [00:08:24.95] So the challenge of to try and talk about our history and this archive launch is that I've been with the festival five years. It's been going on 50 years, so I can't really tell you stories from back in the '60s and '70s and '80s. And there are people that were here, in fact, some people in this audience have been at most of the film festivals that have happened here in town.
• [00:08:47.81] And I definitely invite people to participate in this. If you have an anecdote or a story, again, there's a microphone in the back, or a question or an interjection. I want this to be informal. And I don't want to present this as this is the only version of that history, because there are a lot of great stories that we want to make sure we uncover.
• [00:09:06.76] So what I did is that I interviewed four of the key directors of the Film Festival, predecessors of mine. And we're going to play some audio. We're going to look at some of the imagery. And we're going to piece together sort of a lecture documentary for a large portion of this. And then I'll open it up for some comments and questions at the end.
• [00:09:26.95] So I definitely want to thank George Manupelli, the founder, Vicki Honeyman, who ran the festival for 15 years as the director, Ruth Bradley, who wrote a dissertation on the first 20 years of the Ann Arbor Film Festival and also served as the director for several years, and then Chrisstina Hamilton, who served as the director in the early 2000's. And so the four of those directors, we're going to hear some audio. And we're going to work our way through those images.
• [00:09:56.50] So let's get started with the beginning, so George Manupelli, the founder of the festival back in 1963. And he was a professor at the School of Art & Design at the time and very much had the vision for what is currently-- well, I guess it will always remain currently-- the second oldest film festival in North America.
• [00:10:26.17] So San Francisco started a few years earlier very much as a showcase for feature films, foreign feature films. And that festival is now in its 53rd, 54th year. George had a vision for a platform and a celebration and event where films that weren't theatrically 90 minutes and going to have a life in the theatrical realm had a place to be celebrated and shared and experienced, and those filmmakers to have a place for their film to be seen. And so, from the very beginning, Ann Arbor Film Festival was showing a lot of short films and a lot of films that were dealing with controversial subject matter and weren't necessarily going to have a commercial life to them.
• [00:11:07.04] And that's, in my mind, very much the spirit and the origins of independent film, also very much the origins of experimental film. And we tend to use those words quite a bit. But it really is very much about artists who are working with film and want to share that with audiences. And the cinema is a fantastic place to do that.
• [00:11:26.87] So let's see, I think what we're going to do here is I'm going to shift over to-- you're going to see me go back and forth between some audio clips and back to this. So I think we're going to get started with George. We're going to let George get us started here.
• [00:11:43.84] And I don't think this part needs any introduction. He talks about how he viewed the graphics. And a lot of these directors, I have them talk about some of the visual aspects of what they were doing.
• [00:11:56.99] [AUDIO PLAYBACK]
• [00:11:57.48] -Well, they are sort of like, in a way, scrapbooks. And they have some historic value. They're about the things that were going on in Ann Arbor locally and then, I guess, nationwide or worldwide, socially, culturally, politically. And they were personal, on one hand. I know people who contributed to the festival in different ways, their works, fragments, autobiographical fragments of our lives, our festival lives, the artists we knew, the artists that contributed and those who are no longer with us. And so it's a kind of scrapbook of what was selected visually of what we were doing and what was going on and what we thought should be going on and what we thought new people should take notice of.
• [00:13:06.17] Yeah, I remember the Kennedy assassination brochure was-- this is probably the most shocking thing we did was we'd have Lee Oswald on an autopsy table with a huge scar running down his middle where they, I guess, examined his insides. That was not a pleasant thing to receive in the mail. But I think that imagery and that electricity-- I don't know what current it was. It wasn't AC or DC, it was some other kind of-- it got people to want to be part of the festival, filmmakers, and to submit their films. And I think that the brochures had a lot to do with the amounts of films we received and who sent them.
• [00:14:01.59] [END AUDIO PLAYBACK]
• [00:14:05.52] DONALD HARRISON: So George was, pretty much, the designer of this first 20 years of the Ann Arbor Film Festival. So for him, in a large part, this was like an art project. He was manifesting a lot of his ideas and his visions and responding to what was happening politically through each year of the festival. And as we go, we'll hear more about that and see some of the progression.
• [00:14:28.89] So I have one other clip with George talking. And these are all about a minute and a half, two minutes long. Was that loud enough? Could people hear that? Yeah? OK.
• [00:14:39.88] [AUDIO PLAYBACK]
• [00:14:40.86] -This year, it was a very provocative one, two women getting closer together, scantily clothed and embracing, all in a quite stylistic way, very, very dignified, given the subject matter. Well, at the time, there was a shopping guide in town, called The Ann Arbor Advice, where you looked to see what was on sale at Krogers, that type of thing. They always had a guest column.
• [00:15:10.59] In 1963, they gave us the John Birch Society, who accused the University and myself of showing pornographic films. And so, wouldn't you know, the dean of the college, who never really attended any of the festival screenings, nor did many of the visual arts faculty, took me to the vice president's office to explain this phenomena. And the charge was that we were showing films that depicted explicitly masturbation.
• [00:15:46.23] So I could take him by the ear to the vice president's office. And he said, all right, Manupelli, yes or no? Did you show a film that depicted masturbation explicitly?
• [00:16:00.75] And I said, sir? And he said, don't give me any shit, Manupelli. I want an answer right now.
• [00:16:07.06] But we had a film called [? Jarovy. ?] And it showed a young man in a loin cloth and, I believe, if I remember correctly, a wreath on his head, prancing through Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. And finally, he laid down. And the camera went to his face. And he had some sort of ecstatic look on his face. And that was the extent of the film.
• [00:16:36.38] So he said, I'm waiting for your answer, Manupelli. I said, well, sir, I have never masturbated, nor have I ever watched anyone masturbate. So could you give me some idea of what it looks like, so I can convince you?
• [00:16:49.43] He said, get out, Manupelli. Get out of here. And I don't want to ever see you again. So I left, I guess, with my job.
• [00:16:56.77] [END AUDIO PLAYBACK]
• [00:17:00.90] DONALD HARRISON: So some of these images are not actually in the library's archive yet. In fact, this one was taken just today from a framed picture. And some of these other ones were even just uncovered yesterday.
• [00:17:14.84] So some of these images we're still working on. So you're seeing some stuff that's fresh off the presses, but it's really camera. So we will end up getting more of these in better quality than some of what you're seeing.
• [00:17:26.96] So I think that leads us to our next voice from the festival past, Ruth Bradley. And let me also say that George Manupelli will be at the 50th festival. We're very excited to have him here, pretty much, for the whole week.
• [00:17:42.24] And Ruth is also committed to coming. So Ruth Bradley has probably not been to the Film Festival, I think, in about 25 years, roughly. So we're very excited to have both of them coming in for our 50th celebration.
• [00:17:57.07] So again, as I said, Ruth, she did her dissertation at U of M on the first 20 years of the Film Festival. Fantastic read. I recommend it. It's a great history.
• [00:18:08.33] And she then took over the helm as director around the 20th. And she's somebody who was involved for a long time before that happened, so this transition with George. And she's the one that turned it into a non-profit, a 501C3.
• [00:18:25.66] And that was a big turning point for the organization, which, up to that point, had been a little more informal in terms of just how it was organized and managed. So we have a few insights from Ruth. And let's see what she has to say here.
• [00:18:42.89] [AUDIO PLAYBACK]
• [00:18:43.32] -Well, I never worked-- you know, my attitude, which is still what they do down here, is you just let people do what they want to do. I don't say, oh, we want this approach, or we want whatever. It's like here, make a poster, and make it beautiful. And let people do what they want to do.
• [00:19:01.85] Rob was representing Cinema Guild as well, I think, because he was on Cinema Guild. I was on Cinema Two, which was one of the different film societies. But they're all gone now. So Rob was really also working with them as one of the at least nominal co-sponsors of the festival.
• [00:19:25.96] My favorite story about graphics, to tell you the truth, is in the [INAUDIBLE]. I don't remember what year it was, but I was taking the entry forms to the post office for the mass-mailing. And this had to be right around one of the last years that George did the graphics.
• [00:19:46.06] And I took them to the post office. And the postal guy in the back of the post office, because I got to go in the back door with these bags of entries, and the guy said, where is the horse on it this year? I said, what do you mean, where is the horse? He goes, oh, there's always a horse somewhere on one of these graphics.
• [00:20:06.22] And indeed there were, because George was into the ponies. And as I vaguely recall, I think he co-owned a trotter or a race horse. And so, somewhere, it might have been just a little, tiny picture somewhere, but on an awful lot of those graphics you're going to find, essentially, the entry forms or the tickets, there's a horse.
• [00:20:27.08] [END AUDIO PLAYBACK]
• [00:20:29.85] DONALD HARRISON: I was looking for more posters with horses, but this is about as far as I got. So when I talked to George, he said he was really, really into the racing of horses. That was a passion of his.
• [00:20:42.01] OK, then we have a little more of Ruth's background. This one centers around the 20th, which is right around the time that she was taking over the reins of the festival.
• [00:20:51.49] [AUDIO PLAYBACK]
• [00:20:51.89] -I'll tell you the truth, when I took it over, it was the 20th year. That's it. It was year 20. Now I'm remembering.
• [00:21:01.05] And George had left. And Don and I don't want anything more to do with it. And Woody, who really was doing all the work for him said, I'm out. I'm out. I don't want to do this any more.
• [00:21:10.51] And we're sitting there. And I had said-- and I don't think this would have been a bad thing-- I advocated, all right, let's make this, instead of the 20th Ann Arbor Film Festival, let's make this last Ann Arbor Film Festival.
• [00:21:28.09] Let's just put on the biggest fucking party we can possibly imagine. And let's call it the Last Ann Arbor Film Festival, not unlike the way the Ann Arbor Jazz and Blues Festival handled itself. And everybody, especially Cinema Guild, said, oh, no! You can't do that. No, no, no! Wow! What are you talking about?
• [00:21:47.51] I said, we'll just make a new festival after this one. Because the whole point about being in the arts is you have to make it new. And you can't become institutionalized. And if George taught us anything, it was that.
• [00:22:00.71] And they all got really upset and said, no, no, no, no, no, we have to keep this list. I said, we can stick to the mailing list, you call it something else. You can call it the new, reinvented, improved Ann Arbor Film Festival. But no, they wouldn't go there. And so, at that moment, I think it really became an institution and not like a free-for-all.
• [00:22:24.22] DONALD HARRISON: So I, for one, am really glad that didn't happen, because I think the continuity and the history is really fantastic. And I definitely appreciate that sentiment as well. I can understand different eras and wanting things to play themselves out. But from my perspective, it really is fantastic looking at these past 50 years of the history and that story and the ups and downs and the ways that those relate.
• [00:22:48.81] And I also forgot to mention that Ruth has continued being involved in film. She ended up going down to Ohio University as a film professor. And so she's started another film festival down there and been very active in the experimental, avant-garde film community nationally as well.
• [00:23:06.93] OK, so next up we have Vicki. And Vicki is still here in town. And so this recording was done right over in her shop, Heavenly Metal, and sat down with me.
• [00:23:20.89] And It was tough for me to cut this down, because Vicki is just such a lively person to talk to and was really excited to talk about the many different designs in the many different years. And so I picked a couple of highlights, just as far as some of the years she really, really was excited about talking about. So we'll listen to a couple of clips from her and look at some of the different pieces.
• [00:23:43.64] [AUDIO PLAYBACK]
• [00:23:44.02] -Before the festival started, before I started bringing in grant money and sponsorships that would allow us to print more of a booklet, forever and ever and ever, George Manupelli started this. The way the film program was printed out was on this huge piece of paper that was folded up and had all these different images that weren't necessarily in any way specific to the festival, but they were just all graphically great things. We would lay this big board out on this table. And we would stand there about 3:00 in the morning, because we would have these printed, literally, two days before festival opened, because we pre-screened until a few days before. It was crazy.
• [00:24:40.15] And it was during my time that I finally started to realize, wait a second, I'm the boss here. I have control over this. And I don't have to live so crazy, without sleep.
• [00:24:51.82] And so, at any rate, we followed George's design of using this big sheet of paper that we printed on both sides, that we would rush off to the printer at literally 7 o'clock in the morning after having stayed up all night cutting out found images and then writing stuff. And if you look, you'll see there's some penis prints on these also, if you want to go further back.
• [00:25:22.23] [END AUDIO PLAYBACK]
• [00:25:24.48] DONALD HARRISON: We don't have those for this presentation, but you're welcome to browse through the AADL's digital archive on your own time. Yeah, it was a lot of fun there. We were sitting at my computer scanning through all the images, so you might even hear a few clicks on this next one as I'm looking at some of the different images.
• [00:25:47.85] [AUDIO PLAYBACK]
• [00:25:48.73] -This is the 31st. That's me right there. This is Don's wife.
• [00:25:56.07] DONALD HARRISON: That's Vicki in the lower-right bottom.
• [00:25:57.78] -Oh, God, I don't know who that is, but he took photographs of all these people who were part of the festival.
• [00:26:03.62] -George Hardnett.
• [00:26:04.34] -And George--
• [00:26:09.10] -George Hardnett.
• [00:26:10.23] -Hardnett.
• [00:26:10.58] -Mm-hm.
• [00:26:11.27] -God, I don't remember who that is. Oh, gosh. I can't remember. But let's look at another one. That's Don. That's--
• [00:26:26.75] -This is number 12.
• [00:26:28.03] -Me. That's Matt.
• [00:26:32.24] -And somebody with hair.
• [00:26:34.10] -Yeah.
• [00:26:34.99] -Yeah.
• [00:26:35.89] -So anyway, he shot all these pictures. We did this photo shoot. And oh, oh yeah. God. Oh, yeah. Isn't it fabulous? I mean, don't you just love it? Don't you love this?
• [00:26:52.04] So here is Don using his love of the eye image to the biggest, wonderful extent that he could, and faces, and just the juxtaposition of all these films are so not related, but then interrelated. Yeah, it's a fabulous poster. It's fabulous.
• [00:27:15.05] And as you can see, he's very much into less is more, the simplicity. And we were able to run some color because, by then, I was getting grant funds so that we had some money to spend. Fabulous, isn't it?
• [00:27:31.17] [END AUDIO PLAYBACK]
• [00:27:32.90] DONALD HARRISON: So about five, six years ago, we got some of these frames and these posters that we found framed. And we had a local restaurant, who we adore, who likes the festival, do a show in the restaurant. And we weren't sure if the naked Pat Oleszko poster was going to make it through the month that we were up there. And it did not. And they were like, we like it. But there's just too many patrons who are not OK with this naked picture in here.
• [00:28:01.47] And then this one, to their credit, they left it up. But they said that there were many patrons who felt it was disturbing.
• [00:28:08.77] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:28:09.12] DONALD HARRISON: And it's fantastic. It's one of the ones that's up in our office as well. OK, so far, I think I've memorized this slide show. I don't have a way of knowing what slide's coming up next. So I'm doing OK so far.
• [00:28:24.82] I just also want to say, in terms of Vicki, she ran the festival for a long time. And in terms of her contributions, there were so many in terms of really shifting from that model that George had started in a different era to starting to get grant money, to start to get sponsorship, to host the 30th festival with this huge conference, which was a pretty historic event, and really get it on a different level nationally and internationally as well. So we're very excited that she's here in town. And we're going to make sure that she's at the 50th as well.
• [00:28:59.60] So Chrisstina Hamilton, she started a few years prior to this. So she was very involved in the Film Festival and took over after the 40th festival when Vicki stepped down. And so I have some comments from her, because she was very much involved in a real big transition for the Film Festival, mainly going from film only, 16 millimeter only, to opening it up to digital, which was very much a sign of the times, of what was happening.
• [00:29:27.21] And the festival had not made that move. And Christina very much championed and made that happen for the festival. So we have a couple of clips from her. And I think she first talks about the designs and then talks about that transition.
• [00:29:43.51] [AUDIO PLAYBACK]
• [00:29:43.99] -Well, I think that, to me, the most interesting, relevant and most beautiful part of that story is the first 20 years of the festival, though, I think that the 50 years, in its entirety, is an interesting story. And it is a story that one can see of an organization that takes that journey and that growth, from being a handful of followers of the [? auteur ?] to the institution that it's become, that involves any number of people. And it's no longer the sole, one designer leading the whole thing. It's very different. And it's also very different to work.
• [00:30:39.27] And it's also indicative of how the festival itself has grown in terms of there's a lot of different offerings that are going on. The festival has grown not only in size, but in the number of screenings that are done and the amount of work that's been able to be shown and the fact that there's work that's shown outside of competition. I think the visual component, it's indicative of the beast, I guess.
• [00:31:10.11] [END AUDIO PLAYBACK]
• [00:31:11.80] DONALD HARRISON: The beast. Yeah, Chrisstina is also a lot of fun to talk to. In a lot of these interviews, I talked 30, 40 minutes with each of these directors. There's just so much rich history, I wish I could share more. And here's something where she talks more about the transition to digital exhibition.
• [00:31:36.56] [AUDIO PLAYBACK]
• [00:31:36.64] -We've gone from, wow, you've got everything on 16 millimeter. You can just put together what you want. You build it up on a reel. You go.
• [00:31:44.27] Not only that, when we were showing all 16 millimeter, we had all the films there already, because we were screening on 16 millimeter as well. So there wasn't even a matter of having to contact filmmakers and then get their exhibition copy. We already had it. So it was just a matter of ordering the films that needed to be-- is it screen, as order in the programs, putting them in bins and taking them to the theater and building them into reels.
• [00:32:13.08] And the first year that we gave that-- yeah. I mean it was actually one of the reasons why, when we did the 41st Festival, I knew that I wanted to open to all formats. But I knew that I needed the year to figure out how we were going to do it from an internal, structural basis. Just how were we going to reorganize screening and programming and all of our projection capabilities to be able to take that in? And I knew that, by opening to 35 and 8 millimeter, it's going to give us enough of a mind shift in how we're thinking that we can begin to look to the future and plan backwards.
• [00:33:03.59] DONALD HARRISON: And I think, as many of you know, Chrisstina is still in Ann Arbor. She is running the Penny Stamps Lecture Series to the University of Michigan School of Art & Design. So it's somebody we get to work with very closely for the festival. And it's a lot of fun working with Chrisstina.
• [00:33:19.36] And so that, pretty much, brings us up to this past 10 years, past five year period, at which point, I didn't record myself. I'm here. So I figured I would talk just a little bit about this latest addition.
• [00:33:37.42] And I came in in 2006, I moved to Michigan. Even though I grew up here, I had moved away and moved back. And I didn't know much about the festival from even going to school at University of Michigan. It wasn't until I moved out to San Francisco and started to make film that I started to hear a lot about the Ann Arbor Film Festival and how amazing it was and how great it was. And it was just surprising that I didn't hear that so much as an undergrad here at the University.
• [00:34:04.32] And so, when I moved back, I immediately wanted to get involved. And Christen McArdle had taken over as the director. After Chrisstina, Dan Marino, who's still in town as well, he ran it for a year. That 43rd, Chrisstina was the artistic director, and Dan was the executive director, festival director.
• [00:34:24.62] So then Christen took it over. And that was the time right when I showed up, when we ended up having a really interesting situation with the State and funding and this big censorship case where the ACLU stepped in and sued the State of Michigan on behalf of the Film Festival over showing some controversial films.
• [00:34:46.56] And I think a lot of you have already heard that story. I'm not going to go into that story, although, it is an interesting one. But you'll see, visually, that this is the first year that I was here in town and I was just helping out the festival, but very much consulting on, well, what are we going to do design-wise?
• [00:35:01.86] And this was one of the films that was cited in that case, called Boobie Girl, which was a cartoon, a five-minute cartoon that won a Student Academy Award. It had the voice from Bullwinkle. It was very much a PG film. And they cited this as one of the offensive films in this whole debacle.
• [00:35:21.29] So Brooke Keesling, who, at the time, was here in Detroit as an animator, she was happy to lend her character and create some new art work for this year. And you'll see that it played out. This is the front of the program guide, the posters.
• [00:35:34.97] And we do this traveling tour around the country. And so she had all these fun elements. And you'll see that we put that together. And that played its way out through that season.
• [00:35:46.23] So the next year, we very much wanted the design to get people here in town to pay more attention to this history. In many ways, it was kind of a lead-in towards this 50th, that the 50th was actually approaching. The festival also, this year, was very much in financial crisis, which was, in many ways, due to this censorship funding controversy that started.
• [00:36:12.86] So the festival was in danger of closing. 2007, it was pretty much in crisis. And we had to put together a fund raising campaign to save it, fortunately, which we did. And so going through that experience of standing up for artists and for freedom of expression and ultimately winning this lawsuit and getting the language of state funding changed so we felt it was constitutional, we were out of money. So the festival was in a really bad situation.
• [00:36:41.02] So this year's design, in many ways, was an attempt to make people in this community especially recognize the history and recognize the importance and the value of this cultural event, this cultural anchor event. And so you'll see, on the back this year-- and this was distributed widely this year. This was the first year the program book had come out early.
• [00:37:03.08] I wanted it done a month ahead of time, which is the model I had been taught. Out in California was you have your whole program book done a month early. And you distribute it, so people can pick it up and read.
• [00:37:14.18] Well, here, it was normally done the night before, maybe even the day of opening night. And so I pulled several all-nighters, because I felt this was critical to get this out. And we made it about three weeks, maybe even a little less than three weeks before the festival. And these were everywhere.
• [00:37:32.05] And on the back of the program book, we really wanted people here to have a sense of some of the touch points, some of the important history that I just found that people here didn't know. They didn't realize that this was an Academy-qualifying festival, that Andy Warhol had come here with the Velvet Underground, that this was an important part of our cultural history in this area that was just, pretty much, unknown, except for, actually, a lot of the people here tonight in this room.
• [00:37:58.28] And so a big, big thanks to Myrna Jean Rugg, who is over here in the audience, for doing, pretty much, most of this research at that time and pulling this together. And so, for me, this year's graphics very much are a reflection of what the organization was going through and really just making sure like, hey, it is time to watch, like pay attention to what this festival is about. And we ultimately wanted to have watches created that we could sell. And it just a little too expensive and involved for that.
• [00:38:32.01] So then we have several other years before we got to this past year's design. And one thing that we've talked about quite a bit, this past year was we really want to make sure that we're having some of that physical, real world quality within the imagery. Something we really appreciated about George in that era is that it's very much cut-and-paste. And you can feel it. You can tell this wasn't all very digitally lined up, and everything's not these super clean lines.
• [00:39:00.37] And so that's one of the things we really wanted to go for this past year was the fact that you can see there's film grain, that there's this warmth of the image and that it's not this very digital, clean lines that you see happened as we hit the '90s and we hit the early 2000s within the festival. So yeah, for us, it's very much a reflection of, again, the evolution of the organization.
• [00:39:24.03] And I think I have one more. This was our Call for Entries post card for the 50th festival. And we're bringing it full circle, because George Manupelli did this collage for us.
• [00:39:36.76] And this was the post card that went out nationally, internationally. And again, it really reflects, again, George's cut-out approach to making his art, but also his sense of humor, which is something that very much embodied a lot of the festival's designs. Not just from him, but it really carried on throughout many of the festival directors.
• [00:39:57.50] So I think that's my presentation, my part of the presentation. And at this point, I would invite, I would encourage anybody who wants to add something. Maybe you feel like I missed a piece there or you even have a question, because some people in this audience might be able to answer. But I would invite you to go up to the microphone.
• [00:40:19.38] I know it can seem intimidating. All right, no. I see, actually, a whole bunch of people just swarming to the microphone. OK, Myrna is starting the swarm. She's the contagion of the swarm.
• [00:40:34.71] MYRNA JEAN RUGG: Is this-- I'm a little short, but--
• [00:40:37.89] DONALD HARRISON: Can we-- [LAUGHS]
• [00:40:38.45] MYRNA JEAN RUGG: Yeah. I'm sorry.
• [00:40:39.91] DONALD HARRISON: Thank you.
• [00:40:41.01] SPEAKER 1: Now it's set [INAUDIBLE].
• [00:40:41.43] MYRNA JEAN RUGG: OK. I don't have any questions or anything, but I have some information that I wanted to share. A number if you already know about how we house filmmakers. We have complimentary housing for filmmakers. I'm on the board. And I'm also the housing coordinator.
• [00:40:57.68] And we're expecting a huge influx of people this year that will want to come in for the festival. And I have housed people all over town, places in the Old West Side where I live and other near neighborhoods. And if anybody's interested in housing a filmmaker, I wrote an article for the Old West Side News. There are copies of it on the table over here. So it has contact information for me.
• [00:41:24.90] Some of the filmmakers come for a day or two. Some come for the whole week. They usually stay up late.
• [00:41:30.26] They're out at the Michigan Theater or at the after parties. They really require little maintenance. They do like to have coffee in the morning or tea and a little bit of breakfast stuff.
• [00:41:40.92] But the contact information for me is in the article on the table there. Or you can go to the web site for the Ann Arbor Film Festival, aafilmfest.org. Find out more information. Give me a call.
• [00:41:54.55] And you get a free pass, a full free pass, for housing a filmmaker. That includes the opening night gala. And you get the fun of meeting a filmmaker. It could be from Europe, could be from Japan, could be from Ohio. There's just wonderful people that come into town for this.
• [00:42:13.42] And I think anybody who's hosted has really enjoyed it. And I know our filmmakers have always enjoyed staying with the families in town. So thank you.
• [00:42:23.20] DONALD HARRISON: Thanks, Myrna. And it really is one of the very unique and special parts of our film festival. And it's a testament to this community that so many people open up their homes. And it makes it affordable for a lot of these filmmakers.
• [00:42:35.19] Oftentimes, somebody makes a 5-minute, 2-minute, 8, 10, 12-minute short film. And to have somebody put you up so you don't have to pay for a hotel makes a huge difference for a lot of these filmmakers. And it's a big part of the reason we get so many artists coming here, which really just makes it so much more of a special event. And again, that's something that is made possible by this community, by a lot of you. Jacqueline?
• [00:43:02.51] JACQUELINE WOOD: Hi. I have one question and one comment. My question is I'm interested if this archive is going to have a family tree or some sort of database of the people that have been involved each year. I know that I've been involved on and off for about 10 years.
• [00:43:22.81] And there are some friends of mine, [? Carrie Cachini ?] she was the assistant director in the early 2000s, Vera Brunner-Sung, she did lots of the posters, a friend, [INAUDIBLE], he did a lot of work with the festival, I'm just wondering if there's any way we can compile who was involved every year, so they can be remembered. Because there's a lot of these little names that people might not know, but they were still really important to the history. So I don't know if that's going to be part of--
• [00:43:51.00] DONALD HARRISON: Well, I think that's a great question, because ultimately, yes. And that's definitely something that we've been working on. I think, for us, it's even been a case of going in steps.
• [00:44:02.59] So for us, one of the huge projects has been just finding out all of the films that ever played in Ann Arbor and making sure it's pretty accurate what year they played and making that. And that's been our first step. And it's been a ton of work. And we're getting closer.
• [00:44:18.01] And we'll get to the point where that information's there, then what won awards, what went on the tour. And then that's the kind of information that then would follow suit. In the meantime, I think, most of the years, there is a program book. And at least, probably, the last 20 years, if not more, since they started doing more booklet form as opposed to just a sheet, there's usually the credits.
• [00:44:39.68] So you can go in and see, for instance, the '46 festival. And you can look page by page and see we list all the staff. That's not quite the same as a very indexed version, but I think there is ways to search. Can you search all the text that's on there now?
• [00:44:55.95] So if you put in your name, in theory, it should show up. We should be able to find which programs you were in. But that's definitely the kind of information that we are working towards. And we have some great volunteers who are also working with us on this as well as Sam Haddix is another person who's been doing a ton of research on this project the past few months. And your other?
• [00:45:19.62] JACQUELINE WOOD: Just a really quick comment. For those of you who don't know, my name is Jacqueline Wood. And I actually work for the festival. I do the new education program. So I've been going around to lots of high schools the past few months teaching kids about experimental film, showing them really weird movies.
• [00:45:36.78] Today, I was at Lincoln High doing a presentation for 70 students. And I'm talking about movies, showing movies. And all of a sudden, this boy in the front row raises his hand. And he says, I'm George Manupelli's grandson.
• [00:45:53.48] And I was just star struck. I was blown away. It was just the craziest moment. Nobody else in the room knew who George Manupelli was. And I was just like, OK, I'm going to talk to you after.
• [00:46:04.78] He was such a sweet boy. And on the feedback form-- I passed out feedback forms for all the kids to give me feedback about the presentation-- and he wrote, George Manupelli is my grandfather. I've seen experimental work my whole life. This is nothing new.
• [00:46:18.73] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:46:20.09] JACQUELINE WOOD: So his eyes were not opened at all. They've been opened his whole life. So anyways, I thought I'd share that. I haven't even told my boss, Donald, yet.
• [00:46:28.97] DONALD HARRISON: I love that. It's a goal to make everybody in Ann Arbor just so jaded, of like oh, come on. We've seen that avant-garde stuff. Show us something really original.
• [00:46:38.51] JACQUELINE WOOD: Yeah, that was my neat Ann Arbor history moment, so Ann Arbor Film Festival history moment today.
• [00:46:44.30] DONALD HARRISON: Thanks, Jacqueline. Yeah, it really is, for me, quite a treat to read the first 20-year history. And I know, David, you've read Ruth's dissertation as well. And I think, especially working in the festival, this really hits home.
• [00:46:57.22] But it's amazing-- I think a lot of you would relate to this too-- that a lot of the same challenges and questions and comments that we hear now are no different than they were after the 3rd back in the mid '60s or the early '70s. It's the same, like ah, that's not that original. We've seen this stuff before. And you're like, ah, that was like '67. And they're saying, this year, they've kind of covered it all.
• [00:47:24.34] And for us, we're looking back to then as the golden age of all, when all this stuff was coming out. And we're not seeing anything new. So that's just one of those things. And some of the other typical comments and gripes, they're--
• [00:47:37.82] SPEAKER 2: It's like everything that's anything has been invented.
• [00:47:39.60] DONALD HARRISON: Oh, yeah, yeah. A lot of the same things are exactly what we still talk about now. At the end of the day, they were screening films to an audience and getting artists it to share their work. And it's still what we do today. Are there any other-- yeah, there's another comment here.
• [00:47:58.43] SPEAKER 3: I've always been interested in the musical aspect of the Film Festival. There's some fantastic experimental music. I am curious as to whether there has ever been any live music melded to a film presentation at the festival. I don't remember one, but it could be that I didn't see it.
• [00:48:17.12] DONALD HARRISON: Oh sure, there has been. And I think, David, you might even be able to speak more about that. I know that that's something that's in the works for the 50th. And it's something that we are very excited about having every year at the festival, some live performance with live music happening.
• [00:48:31.52] DAVID DINNELL: Yeah, as Donald mentioned, I think one of the more well-known, infamous early examples was when the Velvet Underground did appear and perform to films by Andy Warhol. And that happened the 8th?
• [00:48:48.99] DONALD HARRISON: I think it was the 4th.
• [00:48:50.95] DAVID DINNELL: The 4th? That early? OK. But even just looking through the early programs, because the festivals started with a kind of synergy with the once music group activities, there seemed like a lot of overlap there. So even, I think, in the 1st or 2nd festival, they had live music accompanying a bank of super-8 projectors for one of the programs. And that was in the first or second year.
• [00:49:22.61] SPEAKER 3: [INAUDIBLE]?
• [00:49:24.40] DAVID DINNELL: Well, I think we might be able to--
• [00:49:26.22] SPEAKER 3: It's probably [INAUDIBLE].
• [00:49:28.14] DAVID DINNELL: I'm not sure, yeah.
• [00:49:29.64] SPEAKER 3: [INAUDIBLE]?
• [00:49:30.10] DAVID DINNELL: Yeah, and then that has continued, at least. And then, two years ago, we had Flying Lotus perform an original score to a Harry Smith animation. So yeah, we'll actually have something for the 50th as well.
• [00:49:46.51] DONALD HARRISON: Yeah. And I think there's also been a lot of the films that deal with musicians, films about musicians, working collaboratively with musicians. The last few years, we started a music video program, because we were getting a lot of music videos. It's kind of hard to figure out how to insert those into the festival, and so we've started to add that component as well.
• [00:50:10.24] One other thing that occurred to me to mention is related to this, to the archive, is that we also have a paper archive where you can go and you can look at a lot of these papers and a lot more at the University of Michigan Bentley Library up on North Campus. And they were very generous in terms of working with us and then the Ann Arbor District Library in terms of sharing this archive.
• [00:50:35.11] So a lot more of the papers are up there. And we're going to be adding to that as well, so that people can come in and do research, as one gentleman here is doing. And that's a very important resource to collect that history and make sure it's preserved, that it doesn't end up in somebody's basement and water damaged and lost.
• [00:50:54.16] So I just wanted to mention that as well. That's a resource for you or for other people you know that want to find out more about this history. If it's not here on the library's web site, it might be up in the archive at the Bentley Library.
• [00:51:08.42] Are there any other stories? Clark, I thought you might have one. I think, Clark, you've been going since the 2nd Ann Arbor Film Festival?
• [00:51:16.34] CLARK: Yes. Yes, I've seen a lot of movies. And generally, I've been to all the showings, not just been attending.
• [00:51:27.74] A couple things were coming through my mind today in reminiscing. One is that, when George ran the festival, especially in the early days, he would have, for example, a 7:00 to 9 o'clock showing, and the 9:00 to 11 o'clock, and 11:00 to 1:00.
• [00:51:46.83] But during, for example, the 7:00 to 9:00, he'd book 120 minutes of actual film, plus an intermission after an hour, plus the time to move people in and out. So sometimes, we'd be around until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. And when you were working, I wasn't retired at that time, I got kind of blurry-eyed.
• [00:52:13.65] One of the things that used to appear every year for several years, probably around the 10th festival or so-- there was a woman, I think her name was Yvonne Anderson. She ran something called The Yellow Ball Workshop. It was for grade school kids somewhere in the South or partly so.
• [00:52:35.29] And they'd make films. And these would be shown. And after watching a couple of days, 50 films and stuff by artsy types and so forth and heavy documentaries, to have the freshness of these young kids, it was really, really kind of neat.
• [00:52:56.78] It used to be in, what's now called, the Askwith Auditorium, I think, in the large hall. Then it was the Architecture & Design School, in the A&D auditorium. And there was a center aisle. And then there was two side aisles that was laid out then. The seats were wooden.
• [00:53:19.73] And so Pat Oleszko, who was then an art student, got kind of tired of the wooden seats and stuff. So one night, she brought in an easy chair stuck it right down in the middle of the front of the aisle. And that's how her shtick started out with the Film Festival.
• [00:53:39.67] And she used to have bells on her ankles. And she also had a rather distinctive perfume that she sold later on. And so you could tell she was coming by either the sound or the smell.
• [00:53:53.16] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:53:54.61] CLARK: But it was a lot of fun. They also used to have some opening music acts before the festival. I remember, especially, Commander Cody. And so that was kind of interesting, rather loud in that little auditorium.
• [00:54:13.30] I remember when it moved to the Michigan Theater. The first big change I noticed was the sound. The sound was so much better. And the picture quality was too.
• [00:54:24.31] I remember one of the first films was a black and white. It was night, the city scenes at night, and it just looked beautiful. I just couldn't believe how good it could look.
• [00:54:35.09] One of the things lost there was that people were spread out more. So before, the place would be often jammed full of people. So you got to meet people a little more readily than you do now.
• [00:54:47.55] Also, you saw all the films that were in competition. Then after, especially, the screening room opened up, there were films that weren't in competition that were sold. And now you have, simultaneously, films in competition. So it's impossible to see all the films in competition. That's too bad. I can understand it.
• [00:55:11.03] But as far as films over the years, you mentioned Andy Warhol. That was interesting. There were also the Black Panther films. They were very heavy politically.
• [00:55:25.34] And also, one year, there were these films shot with a very high-speed camera. It was called a Fastec camera. It was used for scientific studies.
• [00:55:36.54] And so one was like an eye blinking. Another was lighting a match and so forth. And that one won some award for experimental or some such thing, with the understanding they never be shown again.
• [00:55:50.60] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:55:52.08] CLARK: But it's been very, very interesting over the years. I am looking forward to the 50th and looking through these archives. Thank you.
• [00:56:01.20] DONALD HARRISON: Thanks, Clark. Thanks, Clark. And you might be glad to know that we're very likely to have one screening at the old Art & Architecture Askwith Auditorium large hall this year's festival. And so maybe the sound won't be quite as good, but we wanted to have that opportunity. And again, so there will be a little opportunity for those of us who weren't here for those screenings to have a viewing in that room.
• [00:56:26.21] And then Pat Oleszko will be also coming in for the 50th. And the plan is for her to do a performance at some point as well. So there's going to be quite a bit of paying tribute and homage to some the festival's past while, at the same time, we're very much focused on what's current and where are things heading within film, cinema, media, video. That's what the festival has really always been about. And it will continue to do that at the 50th.
• [00:56:54.24] At the same time, we're bringing in Bruce Bailey, who had a partial retrospective at the 1st Ann Arbor Film Festival. And it's a very exciting visit for us to pay tribute to him and have him here. And the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences came in with support this year of our 50th for us to do archival programs and films.
• [00:57:13.24] So you're going to see a lot of films throughout the festival sprinkled into different programs. So you might see a six-minute film from 1971 that starts a program of shorts. And so that's something that is very much going to be built-in to this year's festival. And we hope you get a chance to see a lot of it.
• [00:57:33.23] CLARK: I wanted to add just one thing.
• [00:57:35.12] DONALD HARRISON: Yeah?
• [00:57:38.75] CLARK: I just wanted to add one thing. A big change over the years is that, in the early years, there were very few films made by women. And now, I don't know, it's probably 50-50. I'm not sure what it is. I'd kind of guess that. So that's been a big change over the years.
• [00:57:57.31] DONALD HARRISON: Thanks, for bringing that out, Clark. Are there other comments or questions? Now's your chance.
• [00:58:05.39] SPEAKER 4: I can't wait.
• [00:58:06.72] DONALD HARRISON: Looking forward to it. Well, we do have a couple of events we're excited about even before the festival. We have our 5th retrospective screening that is-- David, do you know the date offhand? It's February 22, maybe?
• [00:58:23.91] DAVID DINNELL: It's a Wednesday.
• [00:58:24.27] DONALD HARRISON: It's a Wednesday, like 25th, maybe?
• [00:58:26.73] DAVID DINNELL: 22nd.
• [00:58:27.46] DONALD HARRISON: 22nd? We'll go with that. And it is Forest of Bliss, Robert Gardner's feature-length documentary. And that played Ann Arbor, I think, it was in late '80s?
• [00:58:37.11] DAVID DINNELL: '86?
• [00:58:38.02] DONALD HARRISON: '86? 1986. Fantastic film. Very influential. Very lyrical and poetic. It really changed the way a lot of people looked at documentary.
• [00:58:47.11] So I encourage you to see that. It's an archival print. It's going to be in the main auditorium. And so I definitely encourage you to see that film.
• [00:58:55.74] And then, on March 7, in partnership with UMS, we're doing a screening of Helicopter String Quartet, which is a documentary about Stockhausen, the composer, conductor. Just absolutely absurd vision of having four musicians perform in four separate helicopters and have it live-streamed in, in sync to an audience, into a symphony hall. And so it's part of their renegade series. And we're excited to, again, have that play in the main auditorium at the Michigan Theater leading up to our festival.
• [00:59:27.73] And then, March 27, opening night, it is one of the few times at the festival, like Clark said, everybody's watching the same thing together in one room. And I definitely encourage you to not miss the opening night screening. So anything else?
• [00:59:43.87] You're definitely welcome to stick around for a little bit, talk to myself or David Dinnell, Program Director. We also have some program books. I just brought a sampling of some that we have extras of.
• [00:59:55.04] So you're welcome to look at those. You're welcome to take them. We have many of the ones that I brought. So if you're wanting to add to your collection, let me know, because we may have 50 extra of some, and we might only have one, or we might be missing one. So again, we're happy to, when we have extras, to share those with people in the community.
• [01:00:14.97] So again, thanks to Amy, Andrew, everybody at the Ann Arbor District Library for hosting us and for working on this very exciting project with us, and to all of you for coming out and caring about this. Thank you.
• [01:00:26.43] [APPLAUSE]
• [01:00:30.93] [MUSIC PLAYING]