(gentle bright music) - So the 63rd annual Ann Arbor Film Festival is coming up.

Tell me a bit about the Ann Arbor Film Festival and its history.

- One of the challenges is when people hear experimental film, they're like, "Ooh, I don't know what that is."

So it's a little freaky, right?

So what I try to tell people is, if you think of us as more like going to the art museum as opposed to the Cineplex, like, that'll get you more in the right frame of mind, except it's a collective viewing experience.

The festival itself is six days starting March 25th.

It'll run from Tuesday to Sunday of that week.

Filmmakers come in from all over the country.

The world, really, we get submissions from a hundred countries typically every summer and what we'll be seeing with the competition work is we've gone from about 2,800 films submitted to, I think this year 112, that we'll show in the competition.

And where we might have something that is like an experimental narrative, or it could be something hybrid.

It could be an animated documentary or a music video for that matter, or an animated music video documentary.

It could be that.

But what we're usually seeing is somehow the filmmakers are doing something different than what we see in mainstream filmmaking.

They're doing something where they might take the medium and see how can you push it in one way or the other to be creative and expressive.

In some cases, it might be a particular story that may be in a documentary, or it could be a narrative that is told in a way that we don't normally see, or is a story that we don't typically hear.

- How many of the submissions are from Michigan versus nationally or globally?

- It's interesting, this year, we had a bumper crop of Michigan submissions.

I feel like typically we'll see maybe 20 or 30, but we got about 70 this year from the area.

We're featuring five or six from Michigan this year, which when you look at the overall global representation, it's on the high side because we really do want to help promote the work of filmmakers who are here and give them the opportunity to be seen by this amazing audience and to meet the other filmmakers who come in from all over the place.

There's a film by Peter Sparling, who is a professor emeritus of dance at the University of Michigan, and he has been making dance films for many years.

And because we have a special program, this year we've collaborated with Screen Dance International, which has been a dance film-oriented festival that's been taking place in Detroit for I think maybe about a decade or so.

And they're going to be showing a program here.

So Peter's film, while it's going to be technically in competition of the Ann Arbor Film Festivals included in this specially curated program of dance films.

Oh, Julia Yezbick, her film, "Marratein, Marratein," will have its world premiere.

She has been making and showing films for a number of years at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

She's also curated special programs with us.

She teaches at Wayne State, and we've got this amazing film called "Simulacrums" by Joanie Wind, who is a Detroit based artist, who is a former Ann Film Festival intern from years ago.

So those are some examples.

- And, Joanie, so your short is in the, the opening night, opening night shorts competition.

That's right.

- Tell me a bit about it.

- It's hard to describe.

The character is basically me in a wig with a propeller hat, and she's trying to kind of find something authentic and kind experience pleasure, I guess.

She makes herself a sandwich and it turns out to be plastic and she can't eat it.

And things kind of just go downhill from there.

Visually, it takes some turns.

I've always done a lot of collagey stuff.

I've always been trying to figure out how I could actually include painterly things like analog paint into the videos.

So that's part of what that was.

Things that I could have done digitally, I did analog, and things I could have done analog, I did digitally kind of thing.

So it kind of pushes and pulls your like perception of, "Oh, what's real?"

And, you know, which kind of follows the idea behind it.

- Leslie mentioned that you were an intern at the festival back in the day.

So what's your filmmaker journey been like?

- Well, I was formerly trained as a painter and I didn't start doing video art until grad school.

And it kind of translated, I think, pretty seamlessly.

Even when I was in, throughout, you know, being in school, going to the Ann Arbor Film Festival was like a time and event, you know, it was... You see stuff that you don't come into contact with.

So yeah, it's kind of a trip, and it was always kind of an inspirational thing for me.

- I mean, what's it like going from, you know, having gone to the festival as a student and then having interned here and now you have a film be line up.

- So maybe your third film, second or third film.

- This is my third film in the festival, yeah.

My first one was in 2019, and then I had one in 2020.

It's really an honor to be a part of it.

It's strange 'cause it's like I've spent so much time, I guess, close to the festival now in a way, like proximity and also being an intern.

But, yeah, realizing that this is one of the best film festivals for the work that I do, you know, to get into.

And that's... And it being so close is just kind of happens to be that way.

- What makes this festival to you so unique and so special?

- I really felt as a young artist that it really informed so much about how I thought about making art.

There's this...

The conditions of viewing and having an audience.

And, you know, so you can be an artist and work in your studio and make stuff, and that's cool.

And then there's the part where then if it's a film, say, it really becomes complete when it hits the screen and then the audience is there and they see it.

So it kind of completes the circuit.

But then to take it to the next level, then people talk about it with each other.

And I would say that that is like one of the most important core pieces of this festival.

That conversation.