AMI presents a Special Program of Experimental Short Films from the 51st Ann Arbor Film Festival Tour:

The Ann Arbor Film Festival is the longest-running independent and experimental film festival in North America, established in 1963. Internationally recognized as a premiere forum for independent filmmakers and artists, each year's festival engages audiences with remarkable cinematic experiences.

Tonight's Program:

Introduced by Shambhavi Kaul, Experimental Filmmaker and Duke Visiting Artist!

A program of 10 short digital works from the USA, England, Germany, and Japan, featuring both live-action and animated works, and a mix of narrative, documentary, and experimental elements.

The Deep End
(Jake Fried, 2013, 1 min, Boston, MA)
Psychedelic, hypnotic, and obsessive, Jake Fried’s hand-drawn animations are created with ink, white-out and coffee to crack open fleeting views of a ‘retro-futurist’ world.

In Hanford
(Chris Mars, 2012, 5 min, Minneapolis, MN)
Combining fact, firsthand accounts and empathetic fantasy of the victims' plight, In Hanford is a fantastic exploration of real, but little known, incidents in Hanford, Washington, where the local environment was poisoned as a result of cold war era nuclear arms manufacture.

Burning Star
(Joshua Gen Solondz, 2011, 4 min, Brooklyn, NY)
Dedicated to my father, who asked that I make a more colorful work. Made during my residency at the now defunct Experimental Television Center, Burning Star is a colorful implo/explosion of the twelve sided star. The title refers to Kenji Onishi's "A Burning Star".

Burrow-Cams
(Sam Easterson, 2012, 3 min, Hartford, CT)
Featuring footage from cameras that have been placed inside underground animal habitats (dens, burrows, etc.). Animals showcased include: burrowing owl, black-footed ferret, porcupine, badger, prairie vole, swift fox, deer mouse, and black tailed prairie dog.

Bite of the Tail
(Song E Kim, 2012, 9 min, Los Angeles, CA)
Wife is suffering from stomach pain and she firmly believes that she can find a cure from Doctor. However, Doctor has no idea how. Husband goes to an empty lot in search of a snake. When he hunts, he wears a beekeeper’s hat. Sister talks but who knows if it is the truth? Life is a constant struggle to find a right answer. – SK

Beaver Creek Yard
(Laska Jimsen, 2013, 5.5 min, Northfield, MN)
Beaver Creek Yard is about a place, a Christmas tree processing facility on Beaver Creek Road, and also about the human impulse to control, exploit, and profit from the natural world. – LJ

Skinningrove
(Michael Almereyda, 2012, 15 min, Los Angeles, CA)
In this intimate and moving film, Almereyda probes photographer Chris Kilip’s memory of a small isolated fishing village in Northern England. Kilip made several trips to Skinningrove in the mid-1980s to take portraits of the town and its fishing community. He sits with Almereyda, showing his photographs (most unpublished) on his laptop. Kilip’s thoughtful reflection tells of a distant way of life and a photographer’s relation to his subjects.

Dad's Stick
(John Smith, 2012, 5 min, London, England)
Dad’s Stick features three well-used objects that my father showed me shortly before he died. Two of these were so steeped in history that their original forms and functions were almost completely obscured. The third object seemed to be instantly recognizable, but it turned out to be something else entirely. – JS

Meteor
(Matthias Muller and Christoph Girardet, 2011, 15 min, Berlin, Germany)
Embracing elements of feature films, fairy-tale moments gone astray and vintage science-fiction motifs, Meteor takes its viewers on a voyage from the children's room to outer space.

Flower
(Naoko Tasaka, 2012, 21 min, Yokohama, Japan)
"It's been a long winter... The bear woke up midnight from hunger...” A story about a bear who ate his entire family during the winter hibernation.
– NT

Cost: Free and Open to the Public

Sponsors: The Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI), with support from the Mary Duke Biddle Program