www.michtheater.org

Project Name:

Young Filmmaker Program

Purpose of Grant:

To support and expand the Young Filmmaker Program which encourages and supports digital MicroCinema Filmmaking by high school aged youth.

Executive Summary:

The Young Filmmaker Program is intended to encourage media and cinema literacy in youth and provide a forum for their artistic expressions.  This is accomplished by encouraging and supporting MicroCinema filmmaking by high school aged youth utilizing high quality digital cinema equipment.

Through the implementation of the first year of the program this fall, we have found that high schools in the Washtenaw county area do not have cinema arts programs equal to their existing excellent music and visual arts programs.  Furthermore, Washtenaw county area high schools do not submit the cinema/video artwork of local students to the state-wide Festival of the Arts.  Therefore, although Washtenaw County is typically well represented in other performing and visual art forms at the Festival of the Arts, they are not represented at all in the cinema/video arts category.  With our Young Filmmaker program we will: 1) encourage digital cinema production among area high school students, 2) provide a forum for the exhibition of the work that is created, and 3) provide a means for area students to submit their work to the state-wide Festival of the Arts.

The Michigan Theater is an institution the community holds in high regard, viewed as a successful specialty films exhibitor and la live-on-stage performing arts center.  The theater, opened in 1928 at the peak of the movie palace building boom, today serves about 250,000 specialty film and performing arts patrons annually.  The Michigan Theater is Ann Arbor’s premiere film exhibitor and the primary promoter of cinema culture in the area.  Films exhibited at the Michigan Theater include silent-era films presented in authentic movie palace style, with live orchestral and organ accompaniment, and classic and contemporary specialty films including foreign, documentary and American independent films.  The Michigan Theater is home to the internationally renowned Ann Arbor Film Festival, the oldest “experimental” film festival in the USA and “Cinema Slam,” a monthly series of MicroCinema presentations.