When Martin Thoburn and Donald Harrison launched the Independent Film Festival Ypsilanti (iFFY) in 2020, they offered cinema fans socially distanced, drive-in-style screenings and a momentary reprieve from the pandemic, which had shuttered movie theaters across the country.

Three years later—and one year after finding a new home at the Riverside Arts Center—iFFY is solidifying its spot on the local film scene with an ambitious scope and schedule, running April 19-23. 

"There's also double the amount of programming. An extra day-and-a-half," said Micah Vanderhoof, iFFY operations manager and a University of Michigan alum with a bachelor's degree in screen arts and cultures who previously worked as a programmer for the Portland International Film Festival.

"Michigan-ish," a competitive program of a dozen short films produced in and around the region, kicks off the fest on Wednesday, April 19 at 7:30 pm, followed by an after-party at Ziggy's featuring DJ sets and decorations by House of Jealous Lovers.   

When Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta Patience opened on April 23, 1881, London’s Savoy Theatre had another hit from the popular duo. Patience had another witty and stinging libretto from W.S. Gilbert and a witty and lush score from Arthur Sullivan.

Gilbert and Sullivan once again tapped into the latest fad by lampooning the aesthetic movement of the 1880s and '90s. The art-for-arts-sake approach to the arts, including theater, was itself a critique of art with a message or political manifestos. Though the movement preceded Oscar Wilde, he is often cited as an example of the aesthetic approach.

Over time, Patience has not been performed as frequently as Gilbert and Sullivan’s other comic operas, HMS Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado. 

Cameron Graham is directing the University of Michigan Gilbert and Sullivan Society production of Patience, which runs April 13-16 at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater, and believes it has a lot to say about our own self-involved times as it did when it first wowed the London audiences.

The era of landline phones, typewriters, and carbon copies returns for Eastern Michigan University’s Department of Communication, Media & Theatre Arts production of 9 to 5: The Musical at the Legacy Theatre, March 31 to April 16.

The 9 to 5: The Musical made its Broadway debut in 2009. It’s based on the 1980 comedy film starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Dabney Coleman, where the three women, fed up with their terrible boss, plot to take him down.

“A lot of those iconic moments that are in the movie,” such as the women’s revenge fantasies and taking their boss hostage, “we’re making sure that we represent them in the show, sort of how people of a certain age might remember them,” said Ryan Lewis, the production’s musical director and an EMU Department of Communication, Media & Theatre Arts lecturer and musical theater accompanist.

“It’s the vibe and feel of the movie, and the script is really great at paying homage to that. A lot of the characters are expanded and developed more, and I feel like the script is fantastic at doing that. We get to understand their frustration a little bit more than you do in the movie.

“Our set designer Jeromy Hopgood is great with those period pieces and so much of it is in an office in the ‘70s. What does that look like? What does that feel like?

“But then the office has to have a change when the ladies start taking over and start making those big changes. They’re subtle, but they’re significant changes. What are those and how do we make it a brighter place? And a more friendly workplace?”

In 9 to 5: The Musical, Violet Newstand (Leah Saunders), Doralee Rhodes (Brookelyn Hannah), and Judy Bernly (Abby Siegel) struggle with being women in a male-dominated workplace at Consolidated Industries. Newstand can’t get promoted, Rhodes has been objectified, and Bernly has been jilted.

The Ann Arbor Film Fest (AAFF) is always a tornado of activity and it's sometimes hard to keep up—not just with all the great events and screenings but also the media coverage.

We've published three articles highlighting the 61st edition of this Ann Arbor institution, which runs March 21-26 in person and through March 29 online, and fellow media outlets have also been on the case. Plus, AAFF published a wonderful series of video interviews with several directors whose films will be shown.

Below is a survey of all the coverage we've found for the 2023 film fest, along with links to AAFF's most pertinent schedules.

The Ann Arbor Film Festival celebrates collaboration. Sure, there are some movie mavericks who do everything themselves when creating a film, but it's usually a talented group of people combining their resources to create something special.

Chien-An Yuan lives for collabs.

The Ann Arbor polymath is capable of making films, photography, art, and music all on his own—and he has many times—but he prefers to work with others to bring creations to life.

And there are so, so many creations in Yuan's world.

Yuan is a co-founder of the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) performance troupe IS/LAND, whose latest work, TETRA, will be performed at the Ann Arbor Art Center (A2AC), April 15-16 and 22-23. Featuring dancers J Amber Kao, Olivia Lemmenes, S Jean Lee, and Yuan on sound design, TETRA is all about transformation: "Forming rolls of colorful Hanji mulberry paper into shapes and pathways of wisdom, knowledge, and healing, the movement of the dancers offer improvised ‘rituals’ as communal gestures of healing and transmutation, ultimately creating a restorative healing space for both the audience and performers," writes Yuan.

IS/LAND then returns to the Ann Arbor District Library on May 20 for KIZUNA TREE, an interactive installation and performance. The event combines an Ikebana tree designed by Celeste Shimoura Goedert, sound recordings from the collaborative series AAPI Stories, which was co-developed by Zosette Guir of Detroit Public Television and journalist Dorothy Hernandez as a response to the Atlanta spa shootings in 2021, and movement, visuals, and readings by IS/LAND. "KIZUNA TREE is an exploration of communal healing for AAPI peoples, across generations, communities, and ethnicities," writes Yuan.

More immediately, Yuan has a couple of projects at the Ann Arbor Art Center—both collaborative, of course.

He worked with artist Thea Augustina Eck to create a string installation in the rear staircase of A2AC, using colored yarn to create a web of lines that fan out from single sources, only interacting in separated layers when looking down or up the length of the well.

The fiber art will still be at A2AC when Yuan, using an iPad, and percussionist Jonathan Barahal Taylor improvise a score to Mattieu Hallé's May Waves Rise From Its Floor on Thursday, March 23, as part of the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Based in Ottowa, Canada, Hallé will be in Ann Arbor to screen the 16mm film of an abstract ocean landscape. He'll use a modified projector with a candle as its light source; the flame is moved and modified by Hallé's breathing and handheld pieces of broken crystal. As the shadows and light move and morph, Yuan and Taylor will react musically in real-time, making every screening of May Waves into a singular experience.

I spoke to Yuan about his current slate of artistic projects, and he gave us an update on some music he's preparing to release on his experimental record label, 1473.

Edward Owens' story may have been lost to history were it not for film programmer, writer, and Bard College professor Ed Halter.

An obscure figure from one of cinema's most elusive realms, Owens was a Black, queer, experimental filmmaker from Chicago whose career was cut tragically short.

In 2009, intrigued by an entry in the Film-Maker's Co-Op catalog about the experimental short Private Imaginings and Narrative Facts, Halter reached out to Owens decades after he left his life in filmmaking behind. Their conversations brought newfound context to Owens' artistic vision, which helped amplify the voice of an artist whose compelling story was at risk of being relegated to obscurity. 

Owens' life and limited collection of works is the subject of the 61st Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF) program "Remembrance/Vacancy: The Films of Edward Owens" at the State Theatre on Thursday, March 23, 7 pm.

The event offers audiences the rare opportunity of seeing three Owens films back to back: Remembrance: A Portrait Study (1967, 6 min.), Private Imaginings and Narrative Facts (1966, 6 min.), and Tomorrow's Promise (1967, 45 min.).

Following the screenings is a conversation between Emily Martin, who programmed the event, and Jessica Ruffin, an assistant professor in the University of Michigan's Department of Film, Television, and Media.

Frank Uhle's upcoming book, Cinema Ann Arbor, covers the entire scope of film history in the city, from the old theaters no longer with us to the students who went on to be famous moviemakers.

But the campus cinema societies, who brought art films and experimental movies to town, are the heart of the tome's 344 pages.

Cinema Ann Arbor is a co-publication of Fifth Avenue Press—the Ann Arbor District Library's publishing imprint—and the University of Michigan Press and officially comes out in June, but Uhle will have 50 copies for sale in time for the roundtable he's hosting on Friday, March 24, as part of the 61st Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF).

Uhle will moderate "Cinema Guild and Campus Film Societies: Their History and Legacy," a discussion with former University of Michigan film society members, including Hugh Cohen, a longtime cinema professor, a juror at the second AAFF in 1964, and the faculty advisor to Cinema Guild in 1967 when he and three others were arrested for showing Flaming Creatures, a short that was deemed obscene. Cohen is joined by Dave DeVarti (Alternative Action film series), Philip Hallman (Ann Arbor Film Cooperative), and Anne Moray (Film Projection Service).

To coincide with AAFF, Uhle also put together an exhibit at AADL's Downtown location, "Cinema Ann Arbor: Film Societies, Film Festivals, and Filmmaking in the Analog Era," which is on display through April 13. It features artifacts from Uhle's personal collection as well as material he gathered during his extensive research while writing Cinema Ann Arbor. (Additionally, Uhle and AADL's archives team are posting material to an online repository at aadl.org/cinemaannarbor.)

We'll speak to Uhle more in-depth about Cinema Ann Arbor when it comes out this summer (though you can pre-order it now). Our interview below is specifically about the cinema societies that helped influence Ann Arbor culture for nearly 70 years as well as his AADL exhibit.

Three years ago, The Ark was set to be the venue for the Midwest premiere of The Fourth Messenger, a musical with a modern perspective on the life and teachings of the Buddha. Then the pandemic hit and the musical was canceled.

Now, almost three years to the day, The Fourth Messenger, with book and lyrics by Tanya Shaffer and music and additional lyrics by Vienna Teng, will finally get its Midwest premiere at The Ark on March 18. The concert-style performance will be a benefit for The Ark, Ann Arbor’s popular home for folk, jazz, and alt-country.  

In an interview with Shaffer in 2020, she described what inspired the musical while she was on a spiritual retreat. 

“The idea came to me on a nine-day silent retreat when I was supposed to be clearing my mind,” she said. “I was thinking about the story of Buddha’s enlightenment, where he was found under a tree and vowed not to get up until he found enlightenment. Then for many days and nights, all the temptations of the world are trying to get him up. And it came to me that it would be cool as a song and dance, the temptations standing under a tree and then thinking the whole story would be a musical because it has that scale of a hero’s quest, and so I got excited on the retreat and for many hours forgot about my breath and I thought about the musical.”

Shaffer didn’t pursue the idea for another five years. She said she had trouble deciding how to handle the story about the historical Buddha and his teachings.

“I started to think how would people view this story if it was a woman, and I wanted to update it and make it feel very relevant and contemporary,” Shaffer said. “So it took me five years to find my way into it and then many years to workshop.”

The Fourth Messenger premiered at the Ashby Stage in Berkeley, California, in 2013 and was presented at the New York Musical Festival in 2017. 

On the evening of April 16, when Hill Auditorium fills with the opening notes of Johann Sebastian Bach’s famous Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, University of Michigan organ professor James Kibbie will be on the precipice of completing an incredible achievement.

This work is the final of Bach’s 281 solo organ compositions that Kibbie will perform in his 18-concert series that began in September 2022. It's a monumental musical offering that marks the end of Kibbie’s 42-year tenure as professor of organ at the University of Michigan.

The concert series also marks the culmination of Kibbie’s life-long relationship with Bach’s music.

“I’ve been working on this a long time,” Kibbie says. “Some of the first simple pieces I learned on the organ were by Bach.”

It’s been a while since local acoustic music fans have heard from Misty Lyn Bergeron, the accomplished singer, songwriter, and leader of the standout roots band Misty Lyn & the Big Beautiful. 

A serious car crash, a global pandemic, and other issues created some challenges and delays, but at last there’s a new album out, Narrows, and it’s more than worth the wait. It features Bergeron’s warm, expressive voice; her first-rate band, and a fresh batch of well-crafted songs about some big themes like love, friendship, and perseverance.

To celebrate Narrows, Misty Lyn & the Big Beautiful are having a record-release show at The Ark in Ann Arbor on February 17.

"Jim Roll will be our special guest, and it’s also how I’m celebrating my birthday," Bergeron said. "The Ark is my absolute favorite venue, and it has been years since my whole band has been on that stage. I am so excited to share this music alongside these amazing artists. It’s going to be a special night for us!"

Bergeron is also a talented photographer, but we focused on her music in this email interview.