Blog Post
Survival in the Straits: Tiya Miles, "The Dawn of Detroit" at Literati
by christopherporter
On Monday, Oct. 7, author and University of Michigan professor Tiya Miles visited Literati Bookstore to discuss her new book, The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits. This book is an examination of Detroit’s early days and seeks to discuss an element of the city’s history that isn’t often discussed. Miles’ work aims to locate people of color in Detroit’s history, adding them to a narrative that is often told chiefly as the stories of European settlers.
Miles began working on her book six to seven years ago as a public history project aiming to increase discussions about Detroit. During a classroom field trip in Washtenaw County, Laura Swift Haviland, a white Quaker from Adrian, caught Professor Miles’ attention. She had planned to write a book on Haviland and dove into the relevant historical resources. However, in Haviland’s autobiography, Miles noticed the way that Haviland spoke about Michigan’s slavery laws, which begat questions for Miles about the role of slavery in the state.
Eventually, this question led Miles to study the history of slavery in Detroit. Professor Miles and a team of students spent multiple semesters researching the history of slavery in Detroit, and have mapped locations that were significant to the topic. They mapped where enslaved people lived and other significant places to their lives, or the Detroit slave trade more broadly.
Miles says that the group’s experience with this research, and an eventual tour of related sites, was an emotional experience as much as an intellectual one. Together, they stood among the buildings imagining the lives and experiences of the previously unacknowledged people who made Detroit possible. Here, Miles contemplated the physical intimacy of space. She was also stricken by the river, the only real remaining entity from this era of Detroit’s past.
“Somehow the river felt magical to us, the only witness to the lives of the people we were uncovering.” --Tiya Miles
Miles painted a panoramic picture of what slavery had been in Detroit. Native Americans were enslaved first. African-Americans were enslaved more over time. Detroit’s formal slaveholding period was roughly from 1733 to 1837, when Michigan became a state. There were never very large numbers of enslaved people. But 60-300 enslaved people in a population of 1,300-2,200 is significant.
These enslaved people performed labor that was fundamental in building Detroit. The fur trade was an important industry then and it was the enslaved who possessed the knowledge to properly prepare and transport the furs. These people also carried messages and products across vast distances and performed the domestic labor that kept everyone alive such as growing food, sewing, and cleaning. While there are no explicit primary sources that explicitly point to it, it's also likely that these people maintained the built environment.
The Dawn of Detroit is a work about the perseverance of enslaved indigenous and African people, and also about the conflicts and alliances between these groups and others, notably working class whites. During this project, several relevant primary documents were transcribed and formed the basis of their research. In fact, Miles argues that it is the issue of slavery that helped forge an American identity among Detroiters. Here whites in the area challenged British settlers around the issue of slavery.
Many of the enslaved people in Detroit were Native American women. Miles paused here, and then followed the meaningful silence by verbally acknowledging the reality that these women were often forced into sexual labor in addition to the domestic tasks. Slaveholding men sought these women specifically, and numerous children were born into slavery, the records recording their fathers as “unknown.” With this in mind, Miles implores anyone who is considering the variety of costume sometimes marketed as a sexy Pocahontas costume for Halloween to reconsider.
Though this is a book that talks about slavery in Detroit, Miles is careful to ensure that her audience knows that this is a story about survival and fighting back. There are stories of these individuals stealing from slave owners and running away in order to take control of their own lives. There are also stories of Native American communities that bordered the Detroit area providing refuge for those who those seeking to determine the direction of their lives. Here, Miles properly treats them as people, human beings with full lives, stories, and desires, rather than the footnotes treatment applied by too many history books.
Sherlonya Turner is the manager of the Youth & Adult: Services & Collections Department at the Ann Arbor District Library. She can be found diving headfirst into all sorts of projects over at sherlonya.net.
Blog Post
Personal Universals: jessica Care moore at the Michigan Theater
by christopherporter
I didn’t grow up going to church, but seeing the poet-playwright-author-musician-activist-performance artist jessica Care moore do her thing is what I imagine an incredibly moving church experience feels like.
moore’s appearance at the Michigan Theater on September 14 was the kickoff event of the 2017 Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series. The series aims to bring innovators from a wide variety of fields to the university in order to interact with and inspire university students, faculty, and the greater community. (See the full fall 2017 lineup here.)
Blog Post
Vital Conversations: The Stamps Gallery's fall season launches with two exhibitions
by christopherporter
The Penny W. Stamps' website let me know that I could expect to be challenged by The Unfinished Conversation: Encoding/Decoding and Vital Signs for a New America exhibits.
But despite a deep interest in the overlap of politics and art in the 20th and 21st centuries, I wasn’t quite prepared for this collection of powerful, in-your-face images. I’m also glad that I have until October 14 to fully explore the exhibits.
Public engagement is a critical part of Vital Signs for a New America, and for those who are interested, there are opportunities to engage directly with the artists.
Dylan Miner’s Elders Say We Don’t Visit Anymore features a covered picnic table set with dried flowers and a teakettle. On a wall near the table hang in a row several white teacups. The public is invited to have tea with the artist on Saturdays, 1-3 pm, through October 14, and engage in conversation with him. This idea is the product of an oral history project Miner worked on interviewing Anishinaabe autoworkers, where he left with the desire to explore the idea of “visiting.”
When I visited Vital Signs, nationally renowned artist Sheryl Oring was on site inviting passers-by to participate in her I Wish to Say project, where people are invited to compose a postcard to the president of the United States. She invited me to participate, so I did. Oring sat before me dressed in an outfit that suggested “secretary.” She wore a red suit, with a patriotic red white and blue scarf. She also wore glasses with her hair in a conservative up-do. She sat with an erect posture and typed the words that I dictated to her, carbon paper allowing her to make a copy. I left with my copy and a postage stamp. The other copy went on display behind her station, along with a Polaroid-style photo that she took of me.
A few moments in and I had already participated more than I had anticipated.
I continued taking part with The Hinterlands: The Radicalization Process Papers, where viewers are invited to sift through a collection of boxes of archival papers. I chose one that contained, among other things, a letter to a person being ordered to report for military service. Never before had I considered what such a letter would have looked like during the Vietnam War era. There is a performance that is a part of this project on Tuesday, October 3, 6-7:30 pm called History Is a Living Weapon. Audiences will be invited to engage with the boxes’ contents as a part of their experience.
The Unfinished Conversation is a group exhibition featuring works by Terry Adkins, John Akomfrah, Shelagh Keeley, and Zineb Sedira. This work is grounded in cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s work, particularly his essay Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse. Unfinished Conversation plays with the places where culture, politics, and history swirl together.
In order to view John Akomfrah’s three-screen film The Unfinished Conversation, you had to literally enter darkness, by way of a black hallway. It was unsettling. But I also had Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” stuck in my head for the entire time that I looked at this work’s moving images. This makes sense on two levels: on one level, Gaye’s 1971 album brings together culture, politics, and history; and also since the lyrics to the song “What’s Going On” are about some of the very images that are on display in Akomfrah’s film.
Terry Adkins’ Flumen Orationis was an interesting mix of images and sounds. Here the viewer looks at flickering images of dirigibles while listening to a mashup of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam” speech and Jimi Hendrix's music. In many of the images, crowds are gathered to look at the dirigibles. The viewer may marvel at how technology moves us, but this work also reminds us how turbulent any given era is -- the players may be different, but the issues are often similar.
Shelagh Keeley’s photographs covering the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo touch on the same idea. These photos were taken in 1983, an era when photography was strictly prohibited in the country then known as Zaire. These cool-toned and loneliness-evoking photographs reminded me of the ways decisions are made about what to document and what not to document. Sometimes what survives is in the hands of an archivist; others times in the hands of a regime. This part of the exhibit successfully made me think about who controls the threads from which we weave our narratives.
Gardiennes d’Images by Zineb Sedira places historical storytelling in the hands of Safia Kouaci. In this film, Safia Kouaci discusses the photographic work of her husband, Mohamed Kouaci. The photographer was the only Algerian photographer to be employed by the Ministry of Information during the Algerian Revolution.
I left the gallery impressed how all of these very different topics, treated differently, came together. The mashups and layers in The Unfinished Conversation will take a while to digest, as will the overall fusion of these concurrent exhibitions.
Sherlonya Turner is the manager of the Youth & Adult: Services & Collections Department at the Ann Arbor District Library. She can be found diving headfirst into all sorts of projects over at sherlonya.net.
"The Unfinished Conversation: Encoding/Decoding" and "Vital Signs for a New America" are on view at Stamps' Gallery, 201 S. Division St., Ann Arbor, through October 14. Open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 12-7 pm. Free. Visit stamps.umich.edu for more information.
Blog Post
Truth in Dares: Sherry Stanfa-Stanley, "Finding My Badass Self" at Literati
by christopherporter
When one of the main things you know about someone is that she visited a nude beach, participating fully, with her mother, it is extremely difficult not to imagine that person naked.
You might as well surrender.
On Friday, August 24, Sherry Stanfa-Stanley came to Literati to read from and answer questions about her book Finding My Badass Self: A Year of Truths and Dares. I had read part of the book; a light and funny read that chronicles her quest to, in her 52nd year, try something new each week. I hadn’t quite expected to be, based on appearances, the youngest person in the room with the exception possibly of bookstore staff and my 13-year-old son. As we waited for the event to begin, I examined Stanfa-Stanley, and overheard her say casually, “No one expects perfection out of me.”
Someone had told me about this book, identifying it as something I might relate to as a serial project person. I looked at Sherry Stanfa-Stanley who wore jeans, a white t-shirt, and a button down foliage-printed shirt. I, too, wore a foliage shirt. If I believed we’d ever see a post-racial America, I’d think I was seeing my future.
Behind me, a gentleman asked a nearby woman, “What are you reading?
Her: Her book.
Him: That’s thoughtful!
Her: Why are you here?
Him: Seemed like an interesting talk.
Her: Humor.
Him: (laughs) Yeah, we need more of it.
When Stanfa-Stanley rose to speak, she gave an overview of her adventures. Right out of the gate, she mentioned the nude beach visit. At this point, my 13-year-old glanced over at me. Then she mentioned the time that she accidentally gave a rhinoceros an erection. My son leaned over, crossing his legs as if thinking, “Why have you brought me here?” Then, he whispered, “I’m only 13.”
He relaxed a bit when she informed the audience that her book has an Ann Arbor connection. She had attended a writers’ workshop in the area and hit it off with one the faculty members. Later, the two got together in New York. A conversation about Stanfa-Stanley’s projects pushed her in the direction of the 52 new things in 52 weeks idea.
She started off with a fluid list of things that she wanted to do during the year and began to blog about her adventures. There she noticed that the more awkward her experiences, the more interested her readers became. Stanfa-Stanley said, “[This] shows you guys are really a bunch of sadists."
Stanfa-Stanley read excerpts from her book including a story about the time she decided to fly to a random destination without first making plans and her experience trying to give a high-ropes course a try. Then she talked about the nude beach.
“Did your mom take off her clothes?” someone asked.
She did not. Later, an audience member jokingly lamented that the photo spread in the book didn’t show Stanfa-Stanley at the beach.
In response to audience questions, we learned that this project taught Stanfa-Stanley how to laugh at herself. It made her more comfortable asking for things. She worries less, saying, “I wouldn’t call myself fearless, but I’m desensitized a bit.” She also said that during the year of the project that she “learned a lot of truths,” and that she likes the book’s subtitle better than the title itself.
I gazed across the room and watched this crowd beam at the author. The looked proud. They looked like one of their own had figured out the secret to living well.
Immediately after the event, my son placed his hand on my shoulder and said earnestly, “We are never going to a nude beach together.”
Sherlonya Turner is the manager of the Youth & Adult:Services & Collections Department at the Ann Arbor District Library. She can be found diving headfirst into all sorts of projects over at sherlonya.net.
Blog Post
Food Class: S. Margot Finn and "Discriminating Taste" at Literati
by christopherporter
On August 10, S. Margot Finn spoke at Literati about her new book, Discriminating Taste: How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution. Her book argues that over the last several decades, Americans have become interested in the way they eat as a result of class anxiety born from increasing income disparity between the middle class and the very wealthy. Finn says the professional and managerial class display their class status through food choices.
While I know Ann Arbor is a food town, I was surprised to find the event was standing room only. Maybe, though, I shouldn’t have been, considering the role food takes in so many areas of daily life, from sustenance and ritual to entertainment. And I suppose it's not a stretch that a town known both for dining and a liberal slant would show up for a book about food that mentions class anxiety in the subtitle.
Finn -- a U-M lecturer in literature, science, and the arts -- let the audience in on how her book came to be. She was in graduate school at a time when the news ran stories about a sommelier shortage, and Finn began to dream about leaving school to become a wine expert. Her advisor encouraged her to stay with her program and to focus her study somehow on wine.
This path led her to study what is often called the "American food revolution," described in the book as “a comprehensive transformation in how many Americans buy, cook, eat, and above all talk about and imagine food.” But this "food revolution" means different things to different people. Some people picture Jamie Oliver and his campaign to get school children to eat better. Others hear Michael Pollan imploring us to “eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” Maybe Anthony Bourdain’s worldwide food adventures come to mind. Finn sees this revolution expressed through four ideas -- sophistication, thinness, purity, and cosmopolitanism -- that sometimes overlap and other times are in conflict with each other.
Her argument is ambitious, but Finn’s talk remained accessible through her ability to express her clear passion for the topic and through her use of media. She used clips from the movie Ratatouille to illustrate some of the mixed messages we receive about food and cooking’s greater role in the culture, specifically the conflict between the notion that cooking, and by extension eating well, is something everyone can do but that it's often in the domain of the gifted few. Finn also related to the audience when she admitted her research had, indeed, changed the way that she eats. She no longer diets and she has become more relaxed about what she eats -- including shamelessly enjoying the food product that is American cheese.
Discriminating Taste isn’t a light read, but if you’re interested in why it can be difficult to tease out a coherent narrative of what food and eating in America is like right now, the book digs in. A glance at the index shows entries ranging from "Aristotle to The Biggest Loser," "Chef Boyardee to Chez Panisse," and "Theodore Roosevelt to Arnold Schwarzenegger." But it was Finn’s presentation that makes me look forward to finishing what I am confident will be both an interesting and informative book, as well as encourage me to examine what I communicate through my own food choices.
Sherlonya Turner is the manager of the Youth & Adult: Services & Collections Department at the Ann Arbor District Library. She can be found diving headfirst into all sorts of projects over at sherlonya.net.
Blog Post
Hunger for Life: Roxane Gay at Hill Auditorium
by christopherporter
Roxane Gay is an endurance performer.
She is a professor, essayist, fiction writer, and cultural critic. Any pair of these things could fill or even overwhelm a professional life, but she does not stop there. As a person who at times fetishizes achievement, I am awed by the sheer quantity of pages that she has loosed into the world. And that is before we consider her Twitter presence or the volume of reading that she does, evidenced by the book giveaways that appear on her Tumblr from time-to-time.
I know that Gay’s smarts help fuel her accomplishments as do her talents, but when I think about her -- like, big picture her -- I just think, "Damn, she works hard. She hustles."
At Gay’s reading for her new book, Hunger, on June 16, I took a seat toward the back of Hill Auditorium and watched the audience file in. I've never been someone who needs an excuse to gawk at and examine other women’s bodies, and I was wondering who would join me to hear excerpts from Hunger, which tells the story of Roxane Gay’s body.
Blog Post
Unicorning: Samantha Irby & Scaachi Koul at Literati
by christopherporter
Unicorn should be a verb. As a verb, this would be what you do when you project all sorts of magical qualities onto somebody else.
But I recently read an essay called “Samantha Irby Needs to Talk About Some Sh*t” and I was hooked. We’re talking immediate Google stalking. That’s how I knew that I could -- despite the title of her new release, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life -- meet her in real life.
On Tuesday, June 13, Irby and Buzzfeed culture writer/essayist Scaachi Koul appeared at Literati where they read selections from their books and answered questions to a full house.
I really, really tried not to unicorn them.
I was a bit tardy to the reading, but the best part of running late and standing in the back is you get to unabashedly check out others in attendance. Plus, diversity is perhaps best observed from the back. I examined a long pair of French braids resting on a light brown back. I admired about a half-dozen different heads of Afro hair in a variety of styles. Body shapes suggested women of all ages, and I saw way more skin tones on this sea of necks than the Crayola multicultural set ever came up with. There were even some men in the audience, their body language as attentive as the women who outnumbered them.
The disadvantage to being in the back, beyond the obvious, is that laughter travels away from you; it’s more difficult to enjoy communal laughter from behind.
While I had purchased both We Are Never Meeting in Real Life and Koul’s One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, I hadn’t made it all the way through the books. But I did arrive in time to hear Irby tell a tale that I did read where she describes having to relieve herself on the side of the road.
Not number 1, number 2.
It was wintertime. It was not a desolate road.
Yes, I had read this chapter, but looking directly at the person who lived through this thing that made you sweat sympathetically and hearing the words come from her mouth is an entirely different experience.
Koul shared also shared a visceral, body-related story. In the space of a chapter, she scratched up memories of those days when one hopes to remake herself, become reborn, those days when something like a T-shirt or a skirt promises to be the thing that changes your life. In this tale involving a dressing room, a skirt, scissors, and the thong that was maimed in the process, Koul brought the audience face-to-face with stone cold humiliation.
As I watched the golden-hour sun stream into the window that framed these women, I tried to keep the unicorning at bay. But resisting this urge is a tall order when you’re looking at two bespectacled, brown-skinned, smart, funny women who probably have as much trouble as you do finding makeup that looks right on their skin.
Both women touched on the idea of unicorning. Koul, in particular, talked about the tension that comes with writing nonfiction essays about one’s life. In addition to people asking her overly personal questions about her upcoming wedding arrangements in response to an Instagram post, she experiences emotional overflow from her readers. “Brown girls come up to me and just weep. They show up and they just fucking bawl,” Koul said. On representation, she continued, “I wish there was more stuff so they had the opportunity to dislike me more.”
Irby touched on this idea when she told the audience that her book and Roxane Gay’s Hunger were to share a release date at one point. “Naw, man,” she said. “Two fat black girls’ books can’t come out on the same day.” She then talked about how she and Roxane Gay are sometimes confused for each other despite the marked differences in their work. If turning two very different people into one isn’t unicorning -- letting a person stand in for an abstract idea -- I don’t know what is.
When asked what their recent reads were, they gave the audience a few books to explore. After they recommended each other’s books, Koul mentioned American War by Omar El Akkad. Irby mentioned The Mothers by Brit Bennett, Roxane Gay’s Hunger, and the forthcoming Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng.
In addition to recommendations, these women served up many laughs. “People ask me why I’m angry,” Koul said. “Is it men who ask you that?” Irby replied. “Of course,” Koul emphatically said, “it’s men who ask me that!” Another zinger came from Koul on the topic of Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau: “He’s super hot, but he’s useless.”
They weren’t laughing, however, when asked about the path to publishing their books. Irby had 40,000 words cut from her manuscript and Koul had 30,000 words cut from hers. But as the audience tensed up at imagining this challenge, Irby and Kohl joked that it just meant they had to come up with thousands of new words.
This example illustrated how challenging the writing life can be and how much work goes into these books that were years in the making. It also reminded us how lucky we were to share an evening with these remarkable unicorns. I mean, writers.
Sherlonya Turner is the manager of the Youth & Adult: Services & Collections Department at the Ann Arbor District Library. She can be found diving head-first into all sorts of projects over at sherlonya.net.
Blog Post
All the Way In: Diving into the Ann Arbor Film Festival for the first time
by christopherporter
hashtag by Sherlonya Turner
Confession: Despite living in the greater Ann Arbor area for nearly 20 years, I have never attended any part of the Ann Arbor Film Festival.
The poster caught my attention. I’m a sucker for bright colors.
Seduced by the orange, pink, and yellow in this year's AAFF poster, I thought, "Wouldn’t it be funny if I watched as many episodes of Dallas as I can before the film festival and then went to the screening of Hotel Dallas?," which documents Romania's strange fascination with the TV show that ran from 1978 to 1991.
An experience was born, but instead of diving into Dallas, I decided to steep myself in the Ann Arbor Film Festival experience.
First, I had to learn about the thing, so I did some light research on the festival’s founder, George Manupelli. I stumbled upon a memorial blog for him and read the whole thing click-after-click on my phone. Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to create for myself the experience that this man would have appreciated.
I like to imagine that he’d approve of my plan to jump right in.
In preparation for the experience, I watched a DVD of short movies from an earlier Ann Arbor Film Festival. The viewing made me feel as if remixed scenes from my life were flashing before me. It also made my son take off his headphones, leave the table where he was doing homework, look at me with serious concern and emphatically ask, “What ARE you watching?”
Days before the official AAFF kickoff, I visited associated exhibits at the Ann Arbor Art Center, which hosted three works. The one that haunted me was Indication by Yuan Goang-Ming. Here, I entered a curtain to find a mostly black screen punctuated by a line of people walking toward the viewer. As the video continued, the people continued to approach until suddenly they were all pointing directly forward. Could I read this as a demand to actively participate in one’s experiences? Should I?
On Tuesday, the official first day of the film festival, I lined up outside of a North Quad room with just over a dozen people who seemed excited to kick off their film festival experience. I wandered into "Pop Up Projection Pavilion (PU_PP)" by Peter Sparling. His piece consisted of several screens that worked together to create a film experience. As I watched an on-screen dancer, I almost ignored the strange sensation of watching a film inside a room of rooms, darkness created by window shades and a black partitioning curtain. I barely registered the just audible milling about that was happening in the other part of the room. As I pondered what I viewed, the dancer’s exquisite control of his instrument shone, and his silver-haired chest reminded me that art and creation require time, discipline, and practice.
Confession: I am highly distracted and fascinated by other people’s behavior.
Overheard: “It’s a miracle that we got this far. Not a miracle. Just our own steam.”
I moved on to the rest of the room where I noticed a group of students viewing the exhibit Lasting Synergies. Their instructor encouraged them to eat the Jerusalem Garden spread from a nearby table. The students had, as a part of Terri Sarris’ "Screen Arts" class, used ephemera from the Ann Arbor Film Festival’s archival materials to create the exhibition. The work they had created provided a taste of history for this AAFF newcomer.
I looked around and had the distinct feeling I was not among my people, lacking the context to understand the customs and rituals that were playing nearby among the veteran film-festers. I certainly didn’t understand it when a man stood directly behind me as I read one of the posters and grunted over the back of my head. I moved to my right, where there was plenty of space, and read the poster from there.
Overheard: “With the hosting, I get a free pass all week!”
Confession: I was mesmerized by some of the outfits.
At the opening night screening, "Films in Competition 1," there was a lot to take in with the crowd alone. There was pattern mixing. There was a blue fur stole? A capelet? There was hair of many colors. There were floral pants. There were cable-knit tights as pants.
I found a seat and studied the AAFF booklet, which I knew to look for from a conversation I had with a regular attendee. Thumbing through it helped me understand the magnitude of what was offered, the impossibility of covering it all. I realized I needed to take a buffet approach and have a little taste of a lot of things. Had I paid closer attention to the booklet, I would have realized earlier that the tent in the lobby was actually a part of the festival, too.
Overheard: “I love to drink. I’m not an alcoholic. I enjoy it.”
As the organist began to play, I noticed a woman wearing blue lipstick and a smartly dressed sir with a man bun.
Executive Director Leslie Raymond and Assistant Director of Programs Katie McGowan soon took the stage, spoke, and sparkled. They literally sparkled: one wore a sequined skirt, the other a floor-length metallic gold one.
Like I said, the evening's outfits mesmerized me.
That evening, the standout movies were a pair of love stories. Victor & Isolina showed us an old couple that reflected on the ups and downs of their relationship. Luis & I told us about the story between a clown and the young secretary who fell in love with him.
Confession: There is a very thin line between what I’m calling "overheard" and purposeful, directed eavesdropping.
The next day, I attended the "16mm Etching and Digital Manipulation Workshop." I am no filmmaker, so I was a little nervous walking into this experience. We were all given a length of 16mm film and encouraged to make markings directly onto it in order to create a short, abstract movie.
I worked at scratching my piece of film but found that I had a more delicate touch than I had imagined, which meant I needed to repeat what I had done to leave my marks. The next day, I returned for the second part of this workshop where everyone’s short film was digitized. I called mine hashtag. (It's up there at the top of this post.)
Overheard: "The bottom line is, how does it upset you because it’s more about you …."
I became curious about The River by Ya-Ting Hsu after sitting behind the filmmaker the day before and listening to her make small talk with a few people. I learned the film is about a difficult pregnancy, but when I showed up to see it as part of "Films in Competition 3," I wasn’t expecting to watch a baby’s head pass from his mother’s body.
In fact, Wednesday’s films bombarded me with surprises. Camping With Ada boldly displayed vulnerability on screen. Here, a young woman yearned for a life that was better than the one she had, but she couldn’t escape her reality of working as a prostitute. A Love Story was a moving tale of the life cycle of a relationship between two yarn creatures. Something about that one reminded me of Pinwheel-era Nickelodeon. Voyage of the Galactic Space Dangler was exactly the type of strange I expected it to be. Yet I did not expect to witness my personal nightmare: someone taking milky toilet water to the face and getting some in his mouth.
Overheard: “I wish I could extend my arms to go shopping for rocks.”
I ended Wednesday evening with a feature-length film, Jim Trainor’s The Pink Egg. In it, human beings in simple costumes acted out the life cycles of seven insect species. It was strange to watch people dressed in form-fitting unitards play insects. It was also strange that Trainor was successfully able to show how these different insects interacted with each other using no words at all. It was like taking a Discovery Channel documentary and crossbreeding it with the performance of colorfully dressed mimes.
“Charles Darwin was my hero.” --Jim Trainor.
Thursday, I hustled to make it to "New Negress Film Society: I Am a Negress of Noteworthy Talent" talk and presentation. I was particularly intrigued because this title borrows from artist Kara Walker’s work. In preparation for these films, I both revisited some of Walker’s work and watched a few videos on the New Negress Film Society's YouTube page. I was quite surprised to enjoy Jo’Tavia Gary’s Cakes Da Killa: No Homo. I had tracked down some of Cakes Da Killa’s music, which was just not for me. It was a genre thing, not a content thing, and it was the first time in my immersive AAFF experience that I wished I hadn’t first done my homework.
I followed the New Negress Film Society event with "Films in Competition 4: Out Night." While I thoroughly enjoyed each of these films, Walk for Me by Elegance Bratton, a coming-out film set in the ball scene, left me wanting more and with Paris Is Burning on my “to see” list. Rodney Evans’ Persistence of Vision made me want to learn more about the blind photographer John Dugdale and his experience making art as someone who lost his sight.
Friday evening, I could only squeeze in "A Prerequisite for Rebellion," a collection of films curated by Ingrid LaFleur. All That Is Left Unsaid, while only three minutes long, packed a punch. Everything Audre Lorde tried to say in the film gets truncated. It symbolized her life, which was cut short by cancer, and also the filmmaker’s mother who also battled then succumbed to the disease. I also found Siboney to be quite powerful. Here we watched a woman produce a tropical-themed mural on a very large wall. Once it was complete, she doused herself in water and then destroyed the painting using her body to smear/ruin it. The film unapologetically and beautifully explored what it means to have power and control of one’s own body and one’s own choices.
On the fifth day of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, I rested.
I appreciate a story that has a distinct beginning and a distinct end. With that in mind, I decided Hotel Dallas would be the back cover to my Ann Arbor Film Festival experience. I don’t even remember what I was expecting when I went into the theater, but several moments in, that was all blown off of the table. Also, it made me glad that I hadn’t watched more episodes of Dallas in an attempt to properly ground myself for taking in this movie, which I'll just let the AAFF describe:
The primetime soap opera Dallas becomes a big hit in 1980s Romania, providing a rare window to the West for viewers living under a brutal communist regime. Among those watching are Ilie and his daughter Livia. He's a small-time criminal and aspiring capitalist; she's in love with Dallas hunk Patrick Duffy. After communism falls, Ilie builds the Hotel Dallas, a life-size copy of the show's iconic mansion. Livia becomes a filmmaker and recruits Duffy to star in a bizarre Romanian version of Dallas, haunted by the ghosts of the country's past. Weaving together documentary, fantasy, and a surreal film within a film (within a TV show), Hotel Dallas creates innovative cinema from personal and cultural history.
Hotel Dallas is about a moment in time, but also about how history repeats itself. It was about how major events anchor us in time ... sometimes.
Overheard: “So weird,” said Person A. “But kind of interesting,” said Person B.
Confession: That’s right.
Sherlonya Turner is the manager of the Youth & Adult : Services & Collections Department at the Ann Arbor District Library. She can be found diving head-first into all sorts of projects.
Check out the rest of our 2017 Ann Arbor Film Fest coverage here. View a list of the 55th festival's award-winning films here.