The Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF) has announced the three jurors for the 51^st festival, March 19-24. The jurors are Laida Lertxundi, Marcin Gizycki, and Kevin Jerome Everson. They will be in attendance festival week, view more than 120 films in competition, and award more than $20,000 in cash and film stock/processing. Each juror will also present a specially curated program of films during the festival.

Laida Lertxundi is a filmmaker from Spain who currently lives and works in Los Angeles. She was awarded Most Promising Filmmaker at the 48^th AAFF. Marcin Gizycki is an art and film historian, critic, photographer, writer and filmmaker. He is the founder and Artistic Director of the Animator International Animated Film Festival in Poznan, Poland. And, Kevin Jerome Everson is a critically acclaimed artist working with the medium of film. Originally from Mansfield, Ohio, he is Associate Professor of Art at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

To learn more about this year’s jury, please visit the AAFFwebsite.

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Ken Burns in Attendance with The Central Park Five

Ken Burns, best known for documentaries such as the Academy Award nominated Brooklyn Bridge (1981), and his critically acclaimed PBS series The Civil War (1990), Baseball(1994), Jazz (2001), The National Parks: Americas Best Idea(2009) and Prohibition (2011), screened his early film Huey Long (1986) at the 25th Ann Arbor Film Festival in 1987.

On Thursday, March 21st, Burns returns to his hometown of Ann Arbor for a Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series presentation at 5:10pm in the Main Auditorium of the Michigan Theater. Burns will discuss his creative process, motivations, and the common themes throughout his work. More about Ken Burns’ presentation and the weekly U-M Stamps School of Art & Design Penny Stamps series can be found here: http://art-design.umich.edu/stamps

On Saturday, March 23rd, Burns will screen his latest film,The Central Park Five (2012), which examines the infamous 1989 New York “Central Park Jogger” case when five black and Hispanic teenage boys were wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for the rape of a white female jogger.

Following the screening on Saturday Burns will discuss the film on stage with the Ann Arbor audience. The Central Park Five recently had its premiere in New York City and has received positive press from The New York Times, Salon and the Chicago Tribune.

 

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Pat O’Neill Will Present a Two-Part Retrospective 

The 51^st AAFF will present two programs highlighting the work of filmmaker Pat O’Neill. O’Neill’s films have screened and won awards at the Ann Arbor Film Festival beginning in 1964 with By The Sea (with Richard Abel) at the 2^nd AAFF and most recently with Horizontal Boundaries in 2009 at the 47^th AAFF.

In addition to his film and video work, O’Neill

has produced a significant and singular body of collage, sculpture, photography, installation and multimedia work spanning more than 50 yea

His films have screened at museums and universities around the world including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris, and Toronto’s Experimental Film Congress. O’Neill himself has earned many accolades throughout his filmmaking career including the Maya Deren Award for Independent Filmmaking, the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award and a Rockefeller Foundation grant for filmmaking.

The AAFF is excited to bring Pat O’Neill to the 51^st Festival where he will discuss his films and his long career as an independent artist.