Off The Screen: Speaker Series
Published March 11th, 2022
AAFF is excited to announce the featured speakers schedule for the 60th festival. Meant to expose attendees to intermedia art, all speaker series events are free, open to the public, and at North Quad Space 2435 unless otherwise noted.
This years' Off the Screen! (OTS!) program includes live cinema and other performances, new media installations, and other intermedia moving image artworks. OTS! engages artists, festival attendees, the general public, students and educators. The program provides opportunities for constituents to experience expanded cinema art, and to more deeply engage with festival subject matter, as well as each other.
See below the full list of speakers including locations and times. All these presentations will be at North Quad Space 2435 (105 S State St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109).
Speaker Series
Tuesday, March 22 (Opening)
Film Art Forum
3pm | Filmmakers & Guests
AAFF Filmmakers and festival guests present 20 slides for 20 seconds each, resulting in a series of 6 minute talks that vary in subject while seeking to explore cinema as an art form.
Wednesday, March 23
Shifting Perspectives
1:35pm | Sean Donovan & Emily Martin
AAFF Special Programs curators Sean Donovan and Emily Martin discuss programming with diverse perspectives in order to enhance diversity, equity and inclusion in the film festival community worldwide.
Thursday, March 24
Rooted Not Retro Redux
1pm | Gerry Fialka
Gerry Fialka hosts AAFF alumni interconnecting their favorite films with past and current times. Survey meta-influencers nurturing community and new ways to view film. How does AAFF shape your behavior?
Friday, March 25
Looking to the Future: University Engagement and the Next Generation
10am–11am | University Faculty Partners
Join Ann Arbor Film Festival staff and partnering university faculty partners and their students for a roundtable discussion about collaborations between the film festival and educational institutions, both locally and further afield.
Experimental Media in the 21st Century
11am–12pm | Joey Lopez
Joey Lopez is an Associate Professor of the Practice at Texas A&M and Director of the Department of Communication’s Media & Gaming Lab. This panel will consist of university student experimental media makers who create for multiple platforms, venues, and audiences.
Tales on Tape
1pm | Lydia Lunch & Joseph Keckler
Lydia Lunch and Joseph Keckler present a selection of videos, some accompanied by live performance, highlighting the diversity of, and finding links among, their respective multimedia projects.
Saturday, March 26
Online Film Forum
9am ET | AAFF Filmmakers
A group of international filmmakers will join us online to present perspectives on cinema as an art form. Followed by an interactive Q&A. Online Only.
Sign Stealing
11am | Megan Young
Artist Megan Young introduces the Sign Stealing project, considering aerial surveillance and predictive policing through creative practice and public experiments. A series of experimental shorts feature footage from semi-autonomous drones tracking participants playing simple games in public spaces.
Sunday, March 27
Speakers, filmmakers, and film enthusiasts mixer
11am
Join us at the tail end of the festival for a short get together to solidify connections between filmmakers and attendees of the 60th AAFF.
What the Hell Was That?
11:45am–12:45pm | Daniel Herbert
This panel discussion has been an Ann Arbor Film Festival favorite for more than a decade. It began when a filmmaker overheard an audience member declare, “What the hell was that?” after viewing his film. An enlightening discussion ensued, and the idea for the panel was born.
