About

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. The six-day festival presents 40 programs with more than 160 films from over 20 countries of all lengths and genres, including experimental, animation, documentary, narrative, hybrid and performance based works.

The Ann Arbor Film Festival is steeped in a rich tradition of ground-breaking cinema. Thousands of influential filmmakers have showcased early work at the AAFF, including luminaries such as Kenneth Anger, Agnes Varda, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Gus Van Sant, Barbara Hammer, Lawrence Kasdan, Devo and George Lucas. The Ann Arbor Film Festival receives more than 2,500 submissions annually from more than 65 countries and serves as one of a handful of Academy Award®-qualifying festivals in the United States.

The AAFF is a pioneer of the traveling film festival tour and each year presents short films programs at more than 30 theaters, universities, museums and art house cinemas throughout the world. The festival began to distribute short films in 2008 and has produced two DVD collections with award-winning works available for home and educational viewing. The AAFF also presents and partners on events throughout the year, which have included screenings with the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD).

In 2007 the Ann Arbor Film Festival was selected as the recipient of a two-year grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation and selected by Variety Magazine’s president and publisher, Charlie Koones, as one of “10 Film Festivals We Love,” a list that was pulled from over 6,000 festivals around the world. In 2009 the Festival was recognized with a grant from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences to bring legendary filmmaker (and AAFF alumni) Kenneth Anger to the 48th Festival for a tribute and retrospective of his work.