Ann Arbor Film Festival 2009

In RiP: A remix manifesto, Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers. The film’s central protagonist is Girl Talk, a mash-up musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. But is Girl Talk a paragon of people power or the Pied Piper of piracy? Creative Commons founder, Lawrence Lessig, Brazil’s Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil and pop culture critic Cory Doctorow are also along for the ride. A participatory media experiment, from day one, Brett shares his raw footage at opensourcecinema.org, for anyone to remix. This movie-as-mash-up method allows these remixes to become an integral part of the film. With RiP: A remix manifesto, Gaylor and Girl Talk sound an urgent alarm and draw the lines of battle. Co-Presented by: Arts Alliance Sponsored by: MetroTimes

In her feature film debut, writer/director/animator Emily Hubley brings her distinctive hand-drawn style and an entire artistic community to this mischievous and melancholy cinematic meditation on themes of time, memory, loss and yearning. Starring Lily Rabe, Kevin Corrigan, Daniel London, Sakina Jaffrey, Jane Lynch and Novella Nelson, with the voices of Don Byron, David Cross, Andrea Martin, Marian Seldes and Eli Wallach. Original score by Yo La Tengo.

Jennifer Reeves’s epic, years-in-the-making When It Was Blue presents an experience of a world that is both visceral and fleeting. Photographed in 16mm over many years in various waters and terrains, an elaborate montage connects diverse ecosystems spanning from the northeastern USA, to Iceland, Canada’s Pacific coast, New Zealand, and Central America. Reeves hand-painted the 16mm film, creating impressionistic textures and colors that mimic the qualities of land, water and trees, and fuse with the photographic imagery. A frenetic, delighted and mournful visual journey ensues through decades and seasons, as if trying to “capture” as much of the natural world as possible before it disappears. Icelandic musician and composer Skúli Sverrisson’s emotive and haunting score brings the internal human experience to this vast world away from home.