Tag Archives: documentary film

Ypsi/Arbor Exit Interviews: Adrianne Finelli

By Mark | August 14, 2012

After living among us for the past half dozens years, Adrianne Finelli will be leaving shortly for Pennsylvania. I took the opportunity to ask her a few questions. MARK: Where will you be moving to and what will you be doing there? ADRIANNE: I’m moving back to Pennsylvania, not back to Philly, but the other […]

Posted in Ann Arbor, Art and Culture, Special Projects | Also tagged Adrianne Finelli, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Bethlehem, Bethlehem Steel, Dan F. Friedlaender, Edinboro University, exit interviews, Film, film making, home movies, independent film, Lehigh Valley, MFA, Nancy Heers, pain, Pennsylvania, Perspective on Pain, Philadelphia, Prison Creative Arts Project, Roseto, School of Art & Design, Shadow Art Fair, Shirley Axon, Slate, steel, suicide, teaching, Temple University, The Dance of My Grandmothers, time-based media, University of Michigan, urban farming, Work Gallery, Ypsi/Arbor Exit Interviews | 8 Comments

Two Frenchies on what they love about Detroit’s “Do It Ourselves” culture, and why they’re making a film about it

By Mark | July 12, 2012

A few months ago, I received a nice note from two French filmmakers, who, for some reason, had stumbled across my site and liked it. Their names were Nora Mandray and Hélène Bienvenu, and, as I’d come to learn over the course of subsequent emails, they had been living in the the area for some […]

Posted in Art and Culture, Detroit, Sustainability | Also tagged Arthur K. Peters Memorial Travel Grant, Beaubien, bikes, Caspar David Friedrich, Centre National de la Cinématographie, cities, community, community coming together, decent human community, decline, Detroit je t'aime, Detroit Soup, DIO, DIY, Fender Bender, film making, France, French Film Institute, Fulbright scholars, generation Y, Grace Lee Boggs, hackers, Hantz Farms, Hungary, ingenuity, Kickstarter, La Croix, Lafayette, metaphors, Nora Mandray, Packard Plant, parables, Paris, Paris Institute of Political Studies, post-industrial era, Recycle Here, Romain Meffre, Romantism, ruin porn, self-reliance, soup, the Detroit situation, the future of American cities, the lessons of Detroit, the parable of Detroit, UCLA, urban farming, urban food system, urban living, urban renewal, utopias, Yves Marchand | 21 Comments

HBO’s Frat House

By Mark | March 7, 2012

Somehow, up until this evening, when a friend shared a link by way of Facebook, I wasn’t aware of the controversy surrounding the 1998 HBO documentary Frat House. Apparently, the film, shot by Todd Phillips and Andrew Gurland, never aired on HBO, in spite of the fact that it won two Sundance Film Festival awards […]

Posted in Art and Culture, Observations, Uncategorized | Also tagged Andrew Gurland, class, frats, hazing, HBO, Muhlenberg College, reality television, reality television scandals, Sundance Film Festival, Taxicab Confessions, Todd Phillips | 14 Comments

PBS in Ypsi, the New York Times in Detroit, and a state in transition

By Mark | January 22, 2012

For those of you who haven’t seen it yet on PBS, Ypsi was featured on the most recent episode of Under the Radar Michigan. The crew, as you may recall, was here in town this past October, shooting footage of people lined up down Michigan Avenue, waiting to partake of the 40¢ chicken dinners that […]

Posted in Detroit, Ypsilanti | Also tagged cities, copper, dismantling American cities, Fishtown, Ford Foundation, globalization, Haab's, harbingers of things to come, Heidi Ewing, Leland, little people, manufacturing, Michigan's aging cities, Rachel Grady, ruin porn, scavenging, scrap, scrap metal, Tap Room, the future of American cities, threats to the middle class, Under the Radar Michigan, VIsteon | 11 Comments

7-minute student documentary on the founding of Ypsilanti

By Mark | December 13, 2011

The following video, which I just found out about through my friend Anjanette, was apparently created by a student team at Washtenaw Community College, for a documentary film class. It’s entitled, “The Naming of Ypsilanti.” I thought that you might find it of interest.