East Lansing Film Festival celebrates 25th year with some Michigan flavor
The 25th East Lansing Film Festival is almost here, with films featuring Michigan on both ends. It will:
− Open Thursday (Nov. 3) with a film about a Cambodian family trying to have a restaurant in Bad Axe, despite COVID-19, bias and more. “It sold out completely” at the Traverse City Film Festival, said ELFF founder Susan Woods. “It had the most buzz in ages.”
− Close Nov. 10 with a film about Jim Hoffmaster, a former Lansing theater actor who became successful (by most standards) on TV. “It’s been a really long time coming,” Hoffmaster said.
After finishing the main shoots three years ago, director Jane Rosemont (also formerly of Lansing) had well over 100 hours of film. “It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle,” she said.
In between those Michigan moments, the festival will travel the world. Of the five scripted movies, one is Belgian, another is Portuguese and a third centers on a Syrian refugee in Memphis. There are shorts from Australia, England, France, Iran, Ireland, Russia and Spain.
The festival has always had a global approach. Most other things, however, have changed; for starters, the East Lansing Film Festival is no longer in East Lansing.
The entire festival will be at the Studio C theaters in Okemos, which brings some advantages, Woods said. “There’s comfortable seating and all that good parking.”
And there’s the screen size; that’s what Rosemont recalls about her film’s first showing at a festival, where it won an award: “What a huge screen! I had never seen it on a big screen before.”
In the early days, ELFF was at Michigan State University’s Wells Hall, with varied projection and sound. “We used to cart VHS tape all over,” Woods said. Now films are submitted and shown digitally.
What’s been lost, she grants, are the MSU students. At first, they were the majority of the audience; now they’re rare, part of a generation that spends less time in theaters. “Everything’s on their phones.”
Instead, an older audience (strong on college grads and faculty) sees films that often fit their tastes.
This year’s crop partly reflects the COVID era; for instance:
SCRIPTED FEATURES: These have been fairly scarce lately; the three that were available for advance review all tend to fit an indie/art mode, with lots of understated conversation. They are “The Sisters Karras,” the Portuguese “Just Let Me Go” and “Jacir,” which has a showy supporting role for Lorraine Bracco (who had four Emmy nominations as Tony Soprano’s psychiatrist) as the bitter neighbor of a Syrian refugee.
The other two? “This is My Black” is a musical molded by teens in a Pennsylvania academy; “it is so powerful,” Woods said.
And “Playground” has been sweeping awards at festivals (including Cannes) and is Belgium’s entry in the Academy Awards. The Rotten Tomatoes website gave it a 100-percent rating among 60 critics. “For a feature, that’s almost unheard of,” Woods said.
SHORTS: Unlike feature films, Woods said, these are more plentiful than ever. “I think people had more time on their hands,” when the movie world was in lockdown
ELFF chose 21 of them for three packages, she said. “We had to eliminate some good oneS.”
DOCUMENTARIES: These are on the upswing, Woods said, increasing in quantity, in quality and in subject matter.
Some cover vast scope. “Anonymous Sister” encompasses 30 years of family film, ending with the opioid crisis. “Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time” used 40 years of home movies. Others range from “Honk” (a woman-and-goose friendship) to the Michigan films that will start and end the festival.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: East Lansing Film Festival celebrates 25th year with Michigan flavor
