MICHIGAN STORIES
The Ann Arbor Film Festival is the oldest venue for avant garde and experimental films in the country, and it's one of the best known. Although past contributors have gone on to mainstream fame – George Lucas comes to mind – most of these films will never be seen by a mainstream audience.
At one recent festival, the audience watched "Boobie Girl," an animated film by Brooke Keesling, about a girl who got more than she bargained for when she wished to be "big."
The whimsical Boobie Girl was one of the Film Festival's showings attacked as "pornographic" during hearings held before the state house arts appropriations subcommittee last year. Officials with the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs say after the hearings, they were directed to withdraw the festival's promised funding. The council said the festival had violated the conditions placed on state arts grants, which prohibit displays of human waste on religious symbols, flag desecration, and depictions of sex acts.
Michael Steinberg of the Michigan ACLU says those are unconstitutional conditions, which is why the group is filing suit. "The courts have been very clear, the government cannot eliminate entire categories of art simply because some may find it offensive."
The fuss might not have started were it not for Michael LeFavre. He's an analyst with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free market think tank. Lefavre wrote a commentary which described some of the festival's more controversial films and that caught the eye of state legislators, and sparked the hearings. LeFavre says he has nothing against the Film Festival or edgy, disturbing art. He just thinks tax dollars shouldn't be supporting it.
"The whole idea is if you don't enjoy what was being shown at the Ann Arbor Film Festival you shouldn't be forced to pay for it.
Supporters say the Ann Arbor Film Festival provides a haven for cutting-edge artists that they otherwise would not find in the marketplace. One of those supporters is documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, who grew up in Ann Arbor. He says the Film Festival was an important influence on him as a young person -- and the reason he helped to arrange a ten thousand dollar grant from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to replace some of the festival's lost state funding. Burns says the citizens of Michigan are not being well-served by what he calls "petty politics."
"We're a much stronger society, we're a much freer society, which I think is what everyone wants, when we have a variety of voices speaking, not just the tried and talk establishment voice, but those uncomfortable voices, that even me on first blush don't want to hear."
Film Festival Director Christin McArdle says she understands that some of the films are uncomfortable to watch. But she says the public should continue supporting the film festival -- and the arts-- if for no other reason that the arts boosts the economy. She says Michigan can't afford to become known as a state that is hostile to artists.
McArdle says she welcomes public discussion of the controversy. But she says until now, the discussion has been little more than a knee-jerk reaction to the word "pornography."
"My biggest passion about everything going on is that people are more thoughtful than I've seen them be in the last year – (that's) very important."
The lawsuit seeks the restoration of the festival's funding, and asks that the conditional language attached to state arts grants be struck down as unconstitutional.
© Copyright 2010, MICHIGAN RADIO144
