Two local film festivals will vanish soon.
Fortunately, each gets one more splurge. The Lake Michigan Film Festival opens Thursday, Feb. 26, with an ambitious portrait of Detroit’s jazz stars; the East Lansing Film Festival will wrap in October,
For local film fans, that means trimming from three big festivals to one.
The Capital City Film Festival will be April 8-18. There are also specialized fests, including Michigan State University’s Latinx Film Festival.
The fading has been gradual, said Susan Woods, founder of both departing festivals. “It started with the (smart) phones.” A generation began watching short things on small screens, skipping the long ones on mega-screens.
Over the past 29 years, these fests have moved around — from Wells Hall to Hannah Community Center and now to the Studio C theaters, at Meridian Mall. They’ve survived two ice storms, Covid and basketball.(The events switched to fall to avoid March Madness.)
But problems have piled up, including shrinking attendance and a staff shortage. This year, Woods found herself administering both festivals, while dealing with seasonal affective disorder. She decided to drop the fests, but continue to do the intermittent Indie Film Series.
The timing is ironic, she said. While audiences shrink, “the quality and variety of the films has totally increased.”
When both festivals began in 1997, the LMFF (then under a different name) was just a one-day off-shoot of ELFF. “We started with about 70 entries,” Woods said. “Now we have more than 300. I chose 65, which is the most we’ve ever had.”
All are from a four-state region; most are shorts, in eight packages. Woods is especially high on the social-justice documentaries (12:30 p.m. Sunday), including a portrait of people denied the chance to visit loved ones in Michigan prisons. (One such person, Bridget Young, will be there, along with members of Citizens for Prison Reform.)
Documentaries have always been a big draw at both festivals. Capacity crowds have savored films about writer Molly Ivins, musician Sixto Rodriguez, the Boblo boats and more. They liked a film about trees, loved one about an octopus. And in 2002, they cheered “Standing in the Shadows of Motown,” about the studio musicians who backed hit records.
Now the spirit of “Shadows” returns in “Best of the Best: Jazz from Detroit,” at 7 p.m. Feb. 26 at Studio C in Meridian Mall. It includes the people who backed pop songs by day and worked jazz clubs at night.
“It’s like (author) Lars Bjorn says in the film: ‘Without jazz, Motown would never have happened,'” said Mark Stryker, a producer of the film.
Weaving fresh interviews alongside long-ago clips and photos, his film reflects the skill of modern archivists.
That’s also true of a very different documentary, “1969: Killers, Freaks & Radicals” (6 p.m. Friday). Tracing the murder of young women in the Ypsilanti/Ann Arbor area, it has none of the joy of the jazz film, but much of the precision. “It is very well-done using archives,” Woods said.
The festivals have also had success with fictional films, starting with “Boys Don’t Cry” in the first year. Woods points to the French “The Intouchables” (“a very funny film about a guy who’s a quadriplegic”) and the Swedish “A Man Called Ove.”
Such films (full-length and fictional) tend to be in the ELFF. But this final LMFF has three of them, of varied quality. Those three are:
Lake Michigan Film Festival
When: Feb. 26-March 1
Where: Studio C theaters, Meridian Mall
Tickets: From Studio C, in person or online. The opener is $10. Others are $10, but $8 for seniors (60 and older), military and college students with ID.
Feb. 26: “Best of the Best: Jazz from Detroit,” 7 p.m.
Feb. 27: Short documentaries A, 12:30 p.m.; short documentaries B, 3:30; “1969: Killers, Freaks & Radicals,” 6; “Reverie,” 8:15.
Feb. 28: Student shorts, 12:30 p.m,.; short films1, 3:30; “Premarital,” 6; “The Daughters of the Domino,” 8:15.
March 1: Social justice documentaries, 12:30 p.m.; short films2, 3:30; short films3, 6; short documentaries C, 8:15.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Final Lake Michigan Film Festival has wide variety for film buffs
Reporting by Mike Hughes, For the Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
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