film

A couple years ago, Chris Andrews, a senior at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, realized he was addicted to his smartphone.

“It was something I was using as a crutch,” he explains. “Something that I was using in moments of boredom, moments of anxiety, or a moment of silence in a group of friends – we’d all reach for our phones.”

Cinemasports is an intense film event. Filmmakers have 10 hours to write, shoot and edit their films. Then the films are screened the same day.

“The value for the 10-hour, three-minute film?” asks Bill Dungjen. “Pretty much my entire philosophy of entertainment, which is, ‘Go do something.’”

If you’re using Oscar nominations as a reference, La La Land is one of the best films in history, with 14 nominations.

Only two other films— All About Eve and Titanic— have been nominated 14 times by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 

Aaron Peterson grew up and attended school in Wisconsin. After college, he moved to southern Minnesota, where he lived for about nine months. That's when he and his fiancé decided to move north to Michigan. They chose Marquette, literally because of how it looked on a map. 

Both of them are really big kayakers and they wanted a place where they could settle down, raise a family and still play outside.

Women make up a small fraction of directors producing movies today. This Traverse City Film Festival panel discussion features women directors. They talk about their work and what has to change so more women can direct movies.

The festival kicked off the first full day with a stage full of documentary filmmakers talking about the issues they have followed and the craft of filmmaking.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

We’ve all heard that adage, right? Now, many writers are starting to realize the value of images and have begun incorporating them into their work. It's spawned a new form of creative writing, called the video essay. 

As the Creative Director for The Traverse City Film Festival, Meg Weichman, has seen a lot of films over the years. This week, she stopped by our studio to give us her top five holiday films of all time. “When I put together this list, it was pretty agonizing,” says Weichman. And don’t think the conversation stops at her top five either— Meg also reveals what holiday film offends her most basic sensibilities. 

Plus, our own Aaron Selbig will make his pitch as to why the film Die Hard, is and should be considered a classic Christmas flick.  

The Medal of Honor is the United States highest military honor.

It’s awarded to soldiers for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty.”

The 11th annual Traverse City Film Festival has turned northwest lower Michigan into everything cinematic.

While it’s smaller than say, Sundance or Cannes, the Traverse City Film Festival has it’s own unique flavor. 

Thousands will line up this week with their tickets in hand for the Traverse City Film Festival. But a few miles to the south, the Traverse City Filmstrip Festival at East Bay Branch Library will celebrate a less glamorous medium.

Before YouTube and before videotapes, school kids saw a lot of filmstrips, like the one Rosie Flickinger shows. It’s a story told and sung by the late Pete Seeger.

 She clicks the filmstrip ahead every time she hears the beep on the audio cassette.

Flickinger, a librarian, started the so-called filmstrip festival 10 years ago, when the Traverse City Film Festival was young. The event is really just a couple showings of filmstrips.

A foundation in Traverse City is sending money to a children’s center in Nepal. The money goes to a woman raising 48 children in Katmandu. They are left homeless and sleeping in a field after the earthquake.

Paul Sutherland says, because banks are closed in that country, the Utopia Foundation had to hand-deliver cash.

“I want to make sure those children are able to survive this and are fed and safe. And that means you’re trying to act as fast as we can,” he says.