At a time when remakes, sequels and spinoffs reign supreme at movie theaters and on streaming services, one of the goals of Capital City Film Festival is to provide a breath of fresh air for moviegoers in Greater Lansing.
“I’m a big believer that people will just go and watch whatever they’re sold,” Will Corbett, CCFF’s co-program director, said. “So, when you go to big theater chains or you’re streaming on Disney+ or whatever and they have a big Marvel or ‘Star Wars’ movie or something, people are just going to watch it because it’s what’s being put in front of them.
“There have been times where that wasn’t the case, where indie or arthouse filmmaking had more of a spot and people got to make a name in that area. Now it’s more niche. We’re feeding into the demand there and growing it over time.”
Apart from the ability to view unique, experimental films, the festival also provides a communal space to take in the experience and discuss it with others, added festival director Emma Selby.
“As deeply individual and personal as art is, it’s also made to be shared and talked about. It’s made to be a relationship builder. It’s great that we get to have a space for indie films to be discussed and to be experienced as a community.”
This year’s festival runs today (April 10) through April 20 at two returning venues, the Fledge and the Robin Theatre, and two new locations: R.E. Olds Transportation Museum and Central United Methodist Church.
“One of the great things about our festival is that every year, our venues change up a little bit,” said Selby, who is particularly excited about the Olds Museum because “we get to just plop a movie theater in the middle of a bunch of old cars. It’s kind of this cool slice of Lansing history that we get to be a part of and feature.”
As for Central United, across the street from the Capitol, it’s “a little slice of Lansing history,” Selby said. “It’s widely believed to be Lansing’s first indie theater. The space we’re using is the original theater space, and it’s cool to revitalize that for 11 days and show films in there again.”
Corbett counted that the festival received around 300 domestic film submissions and “a little under” 200 international submissions from about 35 countries. The staff narrowed that selection down to more than 100 short and feature-length films.
Corbett said he’s most excited about the shorts, including three new programming blocks: “Dramedy,” screening 5 p.m. Saturday (April 13) at the Olds Museum; “Otherworldly,” screening 9:45 p.m. April 18 at Central United; and “Abstract & Experimental,” screening 5:30 p.m. April 20 also at Central United.
“If you just want short films, the light ones are the ‘Just a Vibe’ shorts, the medium ones are the ‘Film Imitates Life’ shorts and the heavy ones are the ‘Heavy Hitters’ shorts and the documentary shorts. And then there are two sets of global shorts, the foreign-language ones,” Corbett said.
A new aspect of this year’s festival is that every feature film will be preceded by a short film either made by Michigan filmmakers or focusing on Michigan or the Great Lakes. Corbett said many of these screenings include Q&As with the cast and crew.
The opening night feature also focuses on Michigan. “Camp RicStar” documents the annual Eric “RicStar” Winter Music Therapy Camp in East Lansing, also known as RicStar’s Camp. The screening at 6 tonight (April 10) at Central United Methodist Church is sold out, but the festival has scheduled another screening at 8:30 p.m.
“We will be in our 22nd year in June, which is pretty amazing,” said Judy Winter, who co-founded the camp with her husband, Dick Winter, and camp director Cindy Edgerton in 2003. “We had a son who had cerebral palsy, and at a very young age, it was discovered he also had a gift for music. We were advised to put him in music classes, which we did. When he passed away unexpectedly at age 12 in 2003, we decided to honor his life and legacy by starting RicStar’s Camp so that other people could have the opportunity to also take part in music therapy.”
The documentary covers the camp’s history and the backstory behind its founding, but it also “uses the camp as a window to tell the story of eight different families with campers who have diverse types of disabilities,” director and producer Sam McConnell said. “They all have a different experience, but they’re all kind of connected by what this camp has been able to do for them and kind of also just the joy of music.”
Winter, a disability advocate since her son’s birth, said one of the film’s main goals was to portray disability in a positive light.
“It was important to us that we stop looking away from disability because often, what is out there about disability is hard to watch, negative, and condescending,” she said. All of my work has been about redefining what disability means—what these families and individuals look like and further humanizing them. So, it was really important to our team that we showcased campers and told the story about how it started.”
Many of this year’s films are themed around social justice and inclusivity, but festival organizers said that wasn’t completely intentional.
“That’s just what artists are creating right now,” Selby said. “We strive to be as inclusive of a festival as possible and are always working toward that. So, it’s great when we have all these films submitted that have these really big themes and that social justice bend. We’re not specifically seeking out it, but we appreciate good art.”
Music director Audrey Matusz said visual art, like film, can provide “a great snapshot of the world and where we’re at.”
“In one of my favorite dystopian novels, Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World,’ they talk about the ‘feelies’ and how the decline of cinema happens over time as technology becomes a bigger part of our lives,” Matusz said. “Cinema is a science in many ways. So, I think it’s just our duty as artists to maintain an outlet for a global conversation. Lansing is home to, last time I checked this number, nearly 40,000 migrants that have come in the past 10 or so years. So, it’s not even that out of the box that we’re showing foreign films. It should be the standard.”
Matusz is especially excited about “Underneath: Children of the Sun,” which screens at 2:30 p.m. April 20 at Central United. Set in 1857, it follows a slave in Missouri who’s “thrust into an intergalactic crisis after encountering an alien from a crashed spaceship.”
“This is our first year that I think we’ve put in some effort for an Afrofuturist panel,” she said. “The Afrofuturist genre isn’t new, it’s something that was born kind of in the ‘60s and ‘70s, along with the Black revolution, or Black civil rights movements in America, and the L.A. Rebellion. But Afrofuturism is kind of born out of this idea of reimagining African American history and placing ourselves in the future, in a way, to kind of unpack the past.”
Matusz also highlighted two educational panels happening at the Robin Theatre on Saturday (April 13). The first, at noon, is a screenwriters’ workshop on character development and creating a logline, which Anishinaabe filmmaker ishkwaazhe Shane McSauby and Chinese diasporic filmmaker Jess X. Snow will host.
“They’re both very much rooted in their social justice work. I’m excited to see how that comes across when developing a story,” Matusz said.
The filmmakers will also screen several short films at 6 p.m. Friday (April 12) at R.E. Olds Transportation Museum.
“These are two people who have been featured quite frequently in the past two or three years for their short films and contributions to Indigenous narratives,” Matusz said.
The second workshop, at 2:30 p.m., will feature local musician and composer James Gardin, Detroit-based music supervisor Carita Miller and composer and part-time MSU music instructor Brian Roth, who will discuss the role of music in cinematic storytelling.
There are film festivals all over the globe, but Selby said CCFF differs because of the passion of its staff, many of whom have been involved for years, if not since its founding in 2011.
“Part of the reason it’s lasted so long is the people. It started with a group who wanted to create something unique for the community, so those underlying relationships and community involvement have always been there,” she said. “We see the festival not just as strictly a ‘film festival.’ We’re always trying to figure out how to integrate what our community cares about. Last year, we collaborated with MSU, where we did an exhibit featuring art from all seven continents. We have a poetry project where local poets attend films and write about the films. They are inspired by other art to create new art.”
Selby’s biggest goal for this year’s festival is simple: She wants people to have fun.
“At the end of the day, I hope people have an enjoyable experience, that they get to watch something or attend something memorable, whether it’s because they had a blast at one of our parties or because they cried their eyes out during the ‘Heavy Hitters’ shorts or because they just can’t believe how ridiculous some of the comedies are. I just want them to walk away with a memory of the festival so that hopefully we entice them to come back next year and explore more.”
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