There’s some great social and political films coming up at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. I for one hope to make tomorrow’s film “Lost film fest”.

ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL
CULTURE JAMMING AND SOCIO-POLITICAL FILMS
Thursday March 23rd-Sunday March 26
At the Michigan Theater (Screening Room)
603 E. Liberty Street

*Feel free to forward this email to anyone who might be interested

Thursday March 23rd 8pm
DISARMING THE AD BOMB, a program of socio-political films curated by
Leslie Dreyer

In these times when even world news and history are packaged and sold to
us, fortunately some filmmakers and tactical media artists choose to
interrogate the norms of our “world?mart.” From tongue-in-cheek critiques
to innovative interventions, this program will take viewers through a
myriad of actions and reactions concerning today’s mass marketing machine.
Featuring: OSCAR (61 min) directed by Sergio Morkin
Oscar is a taxi driver, family man, and intrepid guerilla artist who
rebels against the bombardment of commercial advertising in Buenos Aires.
While driving his taxi, he transforms billboards using his own collages
and drawings. He has already created more than 800 ephemeral works, ironic
and provocative in nature. In doing so, he attracts attention from both
the media and academia as an artist/activist whose story resonates
throughout the city and beyond. As the 2001 riots unfold, Oscar’s message
is even more potent.

Thursday March 23rd 10pm
CZECH DREAM (35mm, 87min) directed by Vít Klusak and Filip Remunda
documents the largest consumer hoax the Czech Republic has ever seen.
An original, cheeky treatise on capitalism, with more than a whiff of
exploitation, “Czech Dream” follows two film students who used a state
grant to promote the opening of an entirely fictitious big-box mega-market
in a Prague field. The resulting scandal, alternately hilarious and
discomforting, illuminates the waking nightmare of consumerism in a
country still adjusting to the strengths and pitfalls of the concept.
Eddie Cockrell, Variety, Jul, 2004
CZECH DREAM – the Hypermarket for a better life!

Friday March 24th 8pm
LOST FILM FEST
A laugh-a-riot film performance (with equal emphasis on both “laugh” and
“riot”) hosted by vj Scott Beibin (Evil Twin Booking,
HollywoodCanSuckIt.com + Bloodlink Records). The program is a multimedia
roadshow of progressive political shorts that travels the globe almost 200
days a year. The presentation focuses on pranks vs. corporations and
government institutions featuring the NEWEST short video clips and banned
footage from folks like The Yes Men, Guerrilla News Network, and The TV
Sheriff. If George W. Bush makes you puke, and you dig pie fights with
cops, riot footage, and culture jamming, you’ll love the punk rock urgency
of the Lost Film Fest and its celebration of media archaeology and illegal
art. This jam is about smashing the illusions cast by Hollywood, the
Pentagon, and FOX News. Yeah! more info: www.lostfilmfest.org

Friday March 24th 10pm
Darfur Diaries (57min) directed by Adam Shapiro
In an area of Darfur cut off to international aid agencies and the media,
thousands of Darfurians have suffered widespread atrocities at the hands
of the government of Sudan and proxy militias. “Darfur Diaries: Message
from Home” goes behind the lines and presents Darfurians - refugees,
displaced people, women, children, grandmothers, farmers, rebels and
sheikhs - who tell their stories of life and conflict in Darfur. The film
gives historical and political context for the crisis unfolding in Darfur
and presents the voices of the silenced.

Saturday, March 25th @ 3:30pm?
Sunday, March 26th @ 3:00pm
B.I.K.E. (89min) directed by Jacob Septimus and Anthony Howard is an
exploration of the Black Label Bicycle Club (BLBC) and the wider freak
bike subculture that has grown up around it. Started in Minneapolis in
1994 BLBC has inspired rival clubs and grown into an international
subculture with hundreds of members worldwide. Comprised mainly of artists
driven by anti-materialism and a belief that the impending apocalypse will
render cars useless and bicycles in power, BLBC battles mainstream culture
and rival gangs for its vision of a better tomorrow.

Shot on location in New York City, Minneapolis, London, Paris, and
Amsterdam. Pulling threads from Critical Mass and the wider bike
counterculture, B.I.K.E. is a definitive look at the intersection of
subculture, radical politics, group dynamics and personal identity.

Tickets: $8 for general public, $6 for students