Film festival coup for Centre

51st Annual Ann Arbor Film Festival Tour 
The Arts Centre Edge Hill, February 5

The touring film festival that helped launch the careers of the writers of Star Wars George Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan returns to the region next week.

For a third year running The Arts Centre at Edge Hill University is the only UK host of the 51st Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF), North America’s longest-running independent and experimental film festival.

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Pioneers of the travelling festival, the event is established as a way for new and challenging filmmakers to have their work seen by appreciative audiences.

The 2013 AAFF included more than 200 films, videos and live performances, with more than 30 premieres and film-makers from the UK, USA, Japan and Germany.

At Edge Hill a selection of 10 short films from 2013’s festival includes the six prize-winners.

Michael Almereyda’s Skinningrove, winner of the Michael Moore Award for Best Documentary, tells the story of life in an isolated fishing village in North Eastern England in the 1980s.

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Fellow UK director John Smith’s jury prize-winning Dad’s Stick considers three well-worn objects steeped in history, shown to the film-maker by his dying father.

Owen Evans, Edge Hill’s Senior Lecturer in Film and Television and Co-Founding Director of the European Cinema Research Forum (ECRF), has developed close ties with the festival. He said: “The festival is committed to celebrating and supporting bold and visionary filmmaking, dedicated to film as an art form.It allows us to engage audiences and students with remarkable cinematic experiences.”

Since its launch in 1963, thousands of influential filmmakers and artists have exhibited at the AAFF, including Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, Gus Van Sant, and Yoko Ono.

Free entry, but booking is advised to avoid disappointment – please visit edgehill.ac.uk/artscentre

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