Ann Arbor Film Festival 2009

An inspiring, often hilarious tour of the world's wildest art cars and their larger-than-life creators, who transformed their automobiles into works of mind-bending art. Co-Presented by: FestiFools Sponsored by: VGKids

Dr. Chicago is a uniquely personal, unconventional and absurdly provocative film trilogy. Its verve derives from an active collaboration of multiple talents kept in focus by director George Manupelli’s offbeat vision of a strangely sympathetic scumbag in pursuit of his impossible American dream. Co-Presented by: The Penny W. Stamps Distinguished Visitors Series

a Darkness Swallowed opens on a pair of faded photographs showing an old dented car, one with a child standing beside it and the other without. Speaking in voice-over, Bromberg references a past event, one that will forever haunt her although it occurred before her birth. The film then sinks downward, dipping below the surface of the rational world to mine the seemingly infinite layers of the past stored within the fleshy entrails, chalky bones, sinewy spider webs and gnarled ligaments of both the body and the Earth. Noises - of clanging metal, bells, heartbeats and jazz music, to name only a few - combine to create a dense sound environment, a seemingly immense, three-dimensional space for contemplation. As with all of Bromberg's films, there are images that, once seen, will stay with you forever, and then there are the colors - rich, luscious hues to be savored slowly. Dedicated to the filmmaker's mother, the film is also a gift to us, a reminder of cinema's organic basis in chemistry and light, and of its ability to take us deep inside.

The Sex Pistols star in director Julien Temple's bizarre and hilarious fictional documentary that charts the rise and fall of punk's most notorious band through the eyes of its calculating manager, Malcolm McLaren. Mixing animation and midgets with footage of some of The Pistols' most electrifying live performances, the 1980 film presents the band's success as an elaborate scam perpetrated by McLaren to make "a million pounds" at the expense of record companies, outraged moralists, the British Royal Family - and even the fans and band members themselves. The Great Rock Rock 'n' Roll Swindle was called "a parable of our times" by the Guardian (UK), but most music fans simply consider it one of the best rock films ever. More than 25 years after their breakup, The Sex Pistols' music continues to influence punk and post-punk bands the world over. The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle shows why.

"A personal investigation of cellular memory, a bio-metaphysical musical." -Betzy Bromberg “Los Angeles-based experimental filmmaker Betzy Bromberg returns to the screen with her latest gem, a Darkness Swallowed , a 78-minute meditation on the evanescent traces of memory and loss. At once her most elliptical and also her most overt work in a career that spans nearly 30 years and more than a dozen dazzling films, a Darkness Swallowed opens on a pair of faded photographs showing an old dented car, one with a child standing beside it and the other without. Speaking in voice-over, Bromberg references a past event, one that will forever haunt her although it occurred before her birth. The film then sinks downward, dipping below the surface of the rational world to mine the seemingly infinite layers of the past stored within the fleshy entrails, chalky bones, sinewy spider webs and gnarled ligaments of both the body and the Earth… Dedicated to the filmmaker's mother, the film is also a gift to us, a reminder of cinema's organic basis in chemistry and light, and of its ability to take us deep inside.” - Holly Willis, LA WEEKLY

For over 30 years, Emily Hubley has created short, hand-drawn animated films that explore personal memory and the turbulence of emotional life. The daughter of filmmakers Faith and John Hubley, she worked at The Hubley Studio in various capacities from 1977 to the present. Ms. Hubley created the animation for John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch. With Jeremiah Dickey, she has provided segments to numerous documentaries including Blue Vinyl by Judith Helfand and this year’s William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe, directed by Emily and Sara Kunstler, and What’s On Your Plate?, directed by Catherine Gund. Ms. Hubley was a 2004 Annenberg Film Fellow. She workshopped her first feature film, The Toe Tactic, at the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters’ and Filmmakers’ Labs. Films in screening order: Pigeon Within Set Set Spike The Toe Tactic

This is the story of World Champion Boxer, Kassim "The Dream" Ouma - born in Uganda, kidnapped by the rebel army and trained to be a child soldier at the age of 6. When the rebels took over the government, Kassim became an army soldier who was forced to commit many horrific atrocities, making him both a victim and perpetrator. He soon discovered the army's boxing team and realized the sport was his ticket to freedom. After 12 years of warfare, Kassim defected from Africa and arrived in the United States. Homeless and culture shocked, he quickly rose through the boxing ranks and became Junior Middleweight Champion of the World. Sponsored by: Detroit Public Television

A radical hybrid of spy, sci-fi, Western, and even horror genres, Craig Baldwin's Mock Up On Mu cobbles together a feature-length "collage-narrative" based on (mostly) true stories of California's post-War sub-cultures of rocket pioneers, alternative religions, and Beat lifestyles. Pulp-serial snippets, industrial-film imagery, and B- (and Z-) fiction clips are intercut with newly shot live-action material, powering a playful, allegorical trajectory through the now-mythic occult matrix of Jack Parsons (Crowleyite founder of the Jet Propulsion Lab), L.Ron Hubbard (sci-fi author turned cult-leader), and Marjorie Cameron (bohemian artist and "mother of the New Age movement"). Their intertwined tales spin out into a speculative farce on the militarization of space, and the corporate take-over of spiritual fulfillment and leisure-time.

A meditation on the milieu of "elevated threat" which addresses national identity, gun culture, wilderness, consumption, patriotism and the possibility of personal transcendence. Of particular interest are the ways Americans have come to understand freedom and the increasingly technological reiterations of manifest destiny.