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C.C. Little, Winchell House scrutinized for racist pasts, subject to vote Thursday

Students gather on the Diag to promote transgender rights and advocate for better access to healthcare for transgender people Monday.

University transgender community calls for increased medical care and resources Graduate Employees’ Organization to host call to action on Trans Day of Disposability representing graduate student instructors and graduate student staff assistants at the University of Michigan — is fighting for Daily Staff Reporters transgender health care coverage by & Daily News Editor raising awareness at their Trans Day of Disposability rally and putting Due to inadequate transgender pressure on the University Human care services, the Graduate Resources to take part in health Employees’ Organization — a union care negotiations. Through these AMARA SHAIKH, JORDYN BAKER & MATT HARMON

negotiations, GEO hopes to achieve more transparent information and health care coverage from at least two providers for the transgender community in Ann Arbor. GEO’s Trans Health Caucus has been meeting with Human Resources in special conferences to address trans health care coverage under GradCare, a health care plan

exclusively available for graduate students, including instructors, staff assistants and research assistants. Though GradCare covers transgender surgeries in general, it deems specific genital surgeries as cosmetic and refuses to cover those expenses. According to Jill Seale, a Transgender Resources and See MEDICAL, Page 3

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In a formal request to the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents Monday morning, University President Mark Schlissel called for the renaming of the C.C. Little Science Building after months of protests against the former University president’s history of eugenics research and involvement in the tobacco industry. The regents are set to vote Thursday on the recommendation. “The University community

makes a significant commitment to an individual or family when it names a space after a person and those who wish to change it carry a heavy burden,” Schlissel wrote in a communication released on the agenda for the upcoming Thursday meeting. “In this case, I believe that heavy burden has been met for the reasons articulated in the (advisory committee’s) recommendation.” Review of the building’s association with Little by the President’s Advisory Committee on University History began after an official request from University faculty and students to the committee to change the building’s name See RENAMING, Page 3

Schlissel: Building name changes to be After Uber Profs leave fatality, ‘U’ “exceptionally rare” going forward Canvas for

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Students and researchers weigh pros and cons of self-autonomous vehicles

The Michigan Daily and University President Mark Schlissel met Monday afternoon to discuss the University of Michigan’s role in responding to national movements concerning sexual misconduct and gun violence. Schlissel also commented on matters concerning the University and Ann Arbor specifically, including his recent recommendation for the renaming of C.C. Little Science Building and West Quad Residence Hall’s Winchell House, the racist blackface Snapchat incident, the Lecturers’ Employee Organization bargaining efforts for higher wages and benefits and the Detroit Free Press’s investigation into the University’s reported investment of endowment funds into the companies of prominent University donors. C.C. Little and Winchell House renaming Monday morning, the University Board of Regents released their agenda for this Thursday’s meeting in the Michigan Union, which included two recommendations from Schlissel to remove the names from the C.C. Little Science Building and West Quad’s Winchell House. The announcement has come after months of student protests, dialogues with administrators

ETHAN LEVIN

Daily Staff Reporter

A self-driving car killed a pedestrian last week in Tempe, Ariz. when an Uber SUV struck Elaine Herzberg as she was crossing the street with her bike at night. Since the accident, students and faculty involved with autonomous transport research at the University of Michigan have grappled with the implications of the fatality and how the event might alter the trajectory or research of driverless cars in the future. The University opened its own autonomous vehicle testing facility, Mcity, in 2015, a 32-acre urban environment on North Campus with freeways, roads, signs and artificial storefronts. Since then, the international research community has regarded Ann Arbor as a leading city for self-driving research and testing. Already, Uber has temporarily grounded public autonomous testing in four cities across the U.S. since the fatality yet current state and federal legislation does little to discuss the ethics See UBER, Page 2

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and investigations into the University figures the buildings were named after by the President’s Advisory Committee on University History. The administration came under fire for the names of the buildings after more research had been done and heavily publicized about Little and Winchell, and the social movements they supported through their work at the

University. Little, a former president of the University, was a renowned eugenicist who supported the sterilization of people he deemed inferior such as minorities and people with disabilities and a very large supporter of the tobacco industry, despite his background in science. Winchell, on the other hand, served as a professor and regent at the University in the late 1800s

and published many academic pamphlets alleging white people were physically predetermined to be the dominant race due to brain size and other various metrics, a sentiment that is now called racist and has been proven to be incorrect by countless studies. After the committee’s research and months of deliberation, the committee See SCHLISSEL, Page 3

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President Schlissel answers questions about recent recommendations to rename C.C. Little, addressing sexual assault on campus and how the University is adapting to gun violence at the Fleming Administartion Building Monday.

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Google Drive, personal websites utilized in favor of online education portals REMY FARKAS

Daily Staff Reporter

History lecturer Jonathan Marwil considers teaching a holy profession and the classroom a holy place. He rarely uses technology in the classroom such as PowerPoint as he feels it is one of the most boring ways of teaching. He himself does not own a cell phone. He said he lives in a simpler world and sees how cell phones impede the world of his students. For most students and professors, Canvas provides an easy mode of communication between and among each other, in Marwil’s class, he relies on email and if students need him, they know where to find him. Instead of using online portals, chooses to interact with his students in person. He says the profession of teaching has been complicated by the use of technology and is confident in his courses’ success without it. Most of the courses he teaches are discussion-based and he believes his students learn best by interacting and See CANVAS, Page 3

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UBER From Page 1 of publicly testing autonomous vehicles. In December 2013, Gov. Rick Snyder signed a bill into law that advanced the public testing of self-driving cars on Michigan roads. At the time, Snyder was one of several governors nationwide who promoted the testing of driverless vehicles in their states. Some feel as though the event could bring the testing efforts of Uber and other tech firms to a halt in Tempe and in other U.S. cities that support the technology. On campus, University students have expressed surprise in response to the fatality, but worry little will be done to prevent autonomous vehicle tragedies down the road. Engineering senior Charu Dwivedi said he thinks the Sudoku Syndication accident will be regarded

as a critical moment in the development of the driverless cars. “Especially with the speed and recklessness that Uber and other companies have been trying to push the technology, I wasn’t very surprised,” Dwivedi said. “I’d say it’s an important chapter that had to happen in the progression of autonomous vehicle technology.” Information senior Ethan Jannott, who has focused much of his undergraduate career investigating and designing autonomous vehicle interfaces, said he thinks the crash in Arizona was largely unpreventable. Though he was surprised the driverless Uber failed to detect the pedestrian crossing the street, he said it would have been difficult for a human driver to respond in time as well. “If it was a human in the car, it would have struck her in the same way,” Jannott said. “Because it was really dark, a

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person wouldn’t have picked hoping this kind of thing doesn’t up on the pedestrian either. occur,” Robert said. “I would That is only the first time an say, they’ve in some ways been autonomous car has killed a getting ready for when this does pedestrian, so it was bound to occur. When someone is killed happen at some point ... I think at the hands of an autonomous people may be slightly wearier vehicle the real question is, to accept the technology in the what’s next?” near future, but it’s not going to According to Robert, the affect the industry.” University holds a unique Tech companies and position in the discussion of automakers like Uber, Lyft, self-driving technology because Google, Waymo, General Motors of the resources from different Corp. and Toyota have invested schools that are connected with billions into autonomous vehicle Mcity. research acting on a hunch that “From the technical soon driverless car will be the standpoint, we can test the norm and humans behind the technology in a lot of different wheel will be a thing of the past. areas,” Robert said. “The larger Politicians, like Arizona Gov. picture is that we occupy a Doug Ducey, have welcomed unique position in our ability public autonomous vehicle to engage the public in this testing with “open arms and conversation. I think Michigan wide open roads” even as much across the board, we have a lot remains unknown about the of the ability to lead proactive technology. change in this field because of Jannott commented while the strength and diversity of it may seem dangerous to have our approach to autonomous legislation that encourages driving. The School of http://sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/ public testing of autonomous Engineering, the School of cars, it’s too important to Information, the School of reject. Public Policy are all getting “I think public testing has involved and chiming in on this to be done at some point,” debate.” Jannott said. “I think we’re Anuj Pradhan, assistant right on the cusp of where it’s research scientist at the totally accepted technology. University’s Transportation At the same time, the level Research Institute, is involved of autonomy that they’re at in investigating pedestrian is at a point where we can trust in autonomous vehicles. trust it. I think there should He said while the fatality definitely be more adoption was tragic, it will motivate of the technology around researchers to perfect future the country for safety iterations of the technology. reasons.” He noted that without failure Many members of the and accidents, those developing University’s research the autonomous cars would community have been struggle to polish their product anticipating a tragedy like for consumers. the one in Tempe for quite “When there’s a fatality, it some time. Lionel Robert, means that we are even more associate professor in the motivated to do our research School of Information, who well so that fatalities don’t occur presides over a University in the future,” Pradhan said. study investigating “Our research explicitly focuses interactions between on preventing these things from autonomous vehicles happening so when a tragedy and pedestrians, said the like this occurs, obviously we accident was something are very distressed, but overall which he and his colleagues for safety researchers, we just have been preparing for. get all the more motivated to “The industry has been make sure that something like holding its breath for a while this will never happen again.”

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CANVAS From Page 1 teaching one another in person. “I teach one course which is a lecture course, every other course I teach, I come to teach it by discussion, I don’t do much lecturing, and students tend to love that kind of course,” Marwil said. “I want discussion to happen within the four walls of the classroom rather than the walls of the web; (students) teach each other in class. History is a subject in which there aren’t any answers, just questions.” For students at many universities, logging onto Canvas is an essential part of their day. The Canvas tool, for most courses, has all of the information students need, including syllabi, assignments, and grades, bridging ridges the relationship between students and teachers by creating a resource in which students can submit and receive feedback and collaborate with one another through discussion posts. For most students, this tool is invaluable. However, some University of Michigan professors feel their course and their students benefit from not using Canvas. English professor John Whittier-Ferguson chooses to use Google Drive over Canvas because Google Drive allows students to access their classwork beyond their time at the University. In an email interview, Whittier-Ferguson said using Google Drive allows him to easily change things throughout the term and leave comments for students on work that remains owned by the student. “The overhead of every (educational) platform I’ve checked out (CTools, Canvas, Blackboard) gets in the way of my working with students on their writing and also gets in the way of my sharing materials with them through my syllabi,” Whittier-Ferguson wrote. “For the work I do with students, I see nothing at all that would recommend any proprietary education company platform over my minimalist, free, easily accessed approach.” Whittier-Ferguson feels not using Canvas makes things easier for students, as it allows them to gain access to course materials without

logging in and makes it easier for him to communicate with his students. He also finds the other educational platforms slower, more cumbersome and more complex. “I don’t need postings,” Marwil said. “I can contact students through Wolverine Access and they can contact me. I live in a simpler world, that’s why I don’t use Canvas, and when the world gets complicated, I will adjust to it.” Marwil has seen success with his style of teaching. He said he rarely has a student ask why he doesn’t use Canvas. Both Marwil and his students consider him a harsh grader but despite his grading, he said his students give him positive teaching evaluations and he considers that a testament to his teaching style. “It’s not that my classes are simple — they are not — but I have a certain simplicity and understanding about what teaching is about,” Marwil said. “It’s not rocket science and I think people who make it rocket science don’t know what they are doing. You should be able to walk into a classroom with a book and teach.” LSA freshman Andrew Armstrong, one of Marwil’s students, said he enjoys the course and feels the course is enriched without the use of Canvas as it keeps students on their toes. “I sometimes will look at Canvas and feel like I can slack a little,” Marwil said. “When you are not using Canvas, you can’t slack on assignments and you have to give it your all because you don’t know your grade.” Like Armstrong, LSA sophomore Lillie Heyman likes the alternative communication systems in her Gender and the Law class, taught by Asian Languages and Cultures professor Allison Alexy. The class uses Canvas, but most course information is located on a separate website. “I really like the website, I think it is much easier to navigate,” Heyman said. “I think that her website is much more organized and information is much more accessible, however, since every other class is on Canvas, my whole course load is not in one central location... (Also) the website is way more aesthetically pleasing, which is important to me.”

MEDICAL From Page 1 Retention Coordinator at Portland State University, obtaining proper treatments is imperative for a transgender individual’s wellbeing. “Let me be clear, these procedures are not cosmetic; they’re medically necessary,” Seale said. “The American Medical Association has agreed on this for a decade. Living in a body that fits with what you feel is right for you can save your life.” According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey Report of nearly 28,000 trans individuals across the nation, 55 percent of trans people requesting insurance coverage for help with gender affirming surgery were denied, 23 percent of the respondents avoided their physician out of fear of mistreatment, 40 percent of transgender individuals have attempted suicide in their lifetimes and 7 percent of trans people attempted suicide in the past year. According to Rackham student Vidhya Aravind, GEO Solidarity and Political Action Committee

SCHLISSEL From Page 1 recommended last September that Winchell be renamed, and last January the investigation on Little followed suit. In response to inquiries about why these announcements came so late after the committee had already submitted their recommendations, Schlissel said he spent those months gathering advice and seeking opinions from University figures and consulting previous examples of changing building names from other universities in order to make his decision. “When I get things, I discuss them with my executive team and others whose advice I rely on,” Schlissel said. “I’ve discussed this with students that I’ve met on various occasions, alumni, just wanting to educate myself. It’s not something the University’s done before but other universities have done this, so I wanted to read up and look at and talk to people who have gone through similar thought processes at other universities

co-chair, GEO attempted to contact University Human Resources six times over the course of several months before the office agreed to conduct negotiation sessions. Despite extensive bargaining discussions, Human Resources only agreed to speak about trans health care coverage five times over a span of three years. “In that first conference, we asked for a list of all the trans health care providers at University of Michigan Health System organized by procedure, so we could plan for our future negotiations,” Aravind said. “After delaying for three months, HR finally sent us a copy of our own benefits document, a link to the public facing and information devoid UMHS trans health care site, and a copy of a document we brought on our own to the first meeting. Worse than a failure to meet our request, this was insulting.” The Comprehensive Gender Services Program is the University’s center for transgender medical care, providing services ranging from family care to plastic surgery. However, members of the transgender community in Ann

Arbor are reportedly unsatisfied with CGSP’s level of care. According to Carta Monir, a local transgender woman currently seeking care through CGSP, the University advertises the center as a one-stop shop but does not deliver quality care. “I’m hopeful that HR will begin to understand how poorly the CGSP is regarded by the Ann Arbor trans community, and how low their standard of care is compared to other universities, even,” Monir said. “This is not a world-class transgender health system, and it’s my hope that HR would like it to be one, instead of the poorly-functioning hindrance it is right now.” When obtaining hormones and seeking genital surgeries, the process can allegedly take months despite the time-sensitive nature of the treatments. “The CGSP required a letter from my therapist and then went silent for weeks,” Monir said. “In the end, I waited months for something that could have been done in one or two days … Getting hormones isn’t anything compared to any of the more specific trans medical necessities.”

However, according to CGSP Director Sarah Wiener, the time frame completely depends on each case and how quickly they receive the therapists’ letters. “The time frame is really dependent on how quickly those letters come in,” Wiener said. “If they come in right away we can look at them and help the person get connected to a provider. It just really depends on the letters. We take up to 10 business days to review letters … So that people aren’t waiting too long for us to review a letter.” Wiener emphasized all 20 of CGSP providers function under the World Professional Association for Transgender Health Standards of Care, requiring either one or two letters from mental health professionals depending on the level of care. This model is more extensive than informed consent, entailing the individual seeking treatment to simply agree to the care and procedures. In addition to these standards, the CGSP’s lack of multiple providers for various surgeries limits patients’ options.

before becoming comfortable recommending that we do something that we hadn’t done before.” While many students see Schlissel’s recommendation as a gateway to dialogues about other buildings and honorary names on campus for people with problematic pasts, Schlissel made it clear he did not want this action to become the norm. He said these two cases provided a unique case for renaming University buildings. “This sort of thing will be exceptionally rare,” Schlissel said. “These might be the only two cases where we ever do this. It’s not clear. It depends what comes forward and the bar should be set very high. We don’t want the names of things to be changing as fashions change.” Sexual Assault and Misconduct Moving on to the issues of sexual assault and misconduct, such as those that have come to the forefront of national conversations with movements such as #MeToo, #TimesUp and the recent Larry Nassar trials, Schlissel addressed the

recent legislation passed by the Michigan Senate to extend the statute of limitations on cases in which sexual assault survivors are under the age of 16, increase Title IX resources to survivors and expand sexual assault prevention and education programs. Many raised concerned about a request from the Michigan Association of State Universities, of which the University is a member, that came days before voting to delay the legislation. While the bill received support on both sides of the aisle, MASU argued it would have “profound impact.” Legislators like state Sen. Margaret O’Brien, R-Portage, claimed the prolonging would “delay justice, or maybe the hope is to stop it entirely.” Schlissel stated this request did not signal any opposition to the legislation, but was put forward in order to ensure all aspects of the legislation were considered before quick passage. “The University doesn’t necessarily oppose any of that legislation, nor does the MASU,” Schlissel said. “There just wasn’t

a thoughtful analysis done of that full package of legislation.” When looking at the part of legislation that would increase the statute of limitations for reporting sexual assault or harassment, Schlissel argued this sort of proposal should be studied before coming to conclusions on possible benefits, due to its impact on trial proceedings. “Amongst the things they included was an extreme lengthening of the statute of limitations which in effect would say that if you had an event that happened 25 years ago you could bring forward a claim tomorrow,” Schlissel said. “Before suggesting that such a law would help us, it should be analyzed and there just was almost no time. There was a day, a half a day of hearings, and then it was brought forward, voted on and approved.” Schlissel went on to reference the trials of Larry Nassar, a former MSU and USA gymnastics doctor, and around 250 survivors who came forward with proof of endemic sexual abuse.

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Tuesday, March 27, 2018 — 3

was submitted to Schlissel last September. According to the request, the committee found Little’s research and advocacy on eugenics, coupled with his support for the tobacco industry, was not a history the University could support and memorialize, especially given the building’s connection to the field of science. The building currently houses the College of Pharmacy, among other departments. Associate history professor John Carson, who was a member of the group that originally requested the C.C. Little building’s name be removed, said he was enthused to hear of President Schlissel’s recommendation on Monday. “I think it’s exciting. I was very excited to receive a letter today from the president’s office saying that he had come to a decision and was recommending to the regents that the name be changed,” Carson said. “There’s a long way to go, but all steps matter, and this seems to be an important step in reminding us that history is an ongoing thing, and that making the University welcoming and open to the community is going to be a constant struggle.” Protests erupted around the C.C. Little building last semester in conjunction with a series of bias incidents attacking Black students on campus, as students, faculty and staff picketed multiple times to remove the name. LSA senior Anushka Sarkar, Central Student Government president, first officially brought the matter to the regents’ attention at their meeting last October. Ultimately, Schlissel agreed the name should be changed.

“The committee emphasized that Little’s support and participation in these campaigns had serious negative consequences noting that ‘his 1920s campaign for eugenic measures while University President — immigration restriction, sterilization of the ‘unfit,’ anti-miscegenation laws — and the 1950s campaign sowing doubt about the links between smoking and cancer negatively affected the lives of millions,’” Schlissel’s statement read. LSA Associate Dean Angela Dillard, who was also involved in the initial effort to change the name of the building, said she felt this decision showed the positive change that can come from conversation and protest on campus. “I thought it was a really important moment not only for the University itself, but to demonstrate the power of public history, the power of the humanities, to be able to help to shape debates and controversy, and then to help the University figure out how to do the right thing,” Dillard said. “It shows that it’s worth having conversation, debate, even protest, to get people to think carefully and critically about our history — what are we celebrating, what are we not celebrating, whose name is on a building, whose name isn’t on a building.” Back in October, students shut down the transit center named after Little. LSA sophomore Nando Felten told The Daily the name was a point of contention for him and many other Black students. “How would it be if you were going to say, if you were Jewish, and you say, ‘I’m going to Adolf Hitler bus stop?’ That’s not cool,” Felten said. “For Black people, this is not cool because if our great grandparents had to deal with him, we wouldn’t be

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

4 — Tuesday, March 27, 2018

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

56TH ANNUAL FILM FESTIVAL John Nelson on tech, effects behind ‘Blade Runner 2049’ MAX MICHALSKY Daily Arts Writer

On Wednesday, Mar. 25, Academy Award-winning Visual Effects Supervisor John Nelson (“Blade Runner: 2049”) gave an illustrated lecture on how he and his team created some of the 1,200 visual effects shots in his most recent Oscar triumph, “Blade Runner: 2049.” The festival is something of a homecoming for Nelson, a Detroit native who attended the University. In anticipation of the 56th installment of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Nelson spoke with The Daily over the phone to discuss the festival, his films and his career. The Michigan Daily: So first things first, I think some congrats are in order, as you’re a recent Academy Award winner. Congratulations, that’s incredible. John Nelson: Thank you, thank you! It has been a week, but I think our feet are finally sort of coming down to Earth now, you know? It has been a special week. You know, I won 17 years ago and I was up twice — I didn’t win — and being nominated is a true honor, it really is, but winning is really something, you know? TMD: Yeah, absolutely, and I imagine that winning an Oscar can’t be a feeling you ever really get used to. JN: Yeah, it’s like, the closest thing I can describe it as, is it’s like someone has come up behind you with a cattle prod and shocked you in the butt with 10,000 volts. You’re pretty electrified from the moment you hear the outcome because the whole night everyone is nervous until your award — anyone that’s up is nervous until the moment your award is decided — and you’re either gonna be really happy or you’re gonna be congratulating the winner and then going to the bar. TMD: So just to clear the air and get my fanboy-ish doting over with, I have to say: “Blade Runner: 2049” was one of my favorite films of the year. I mean, growing up watching the original film, it was incredible to see what you accomplished with this sequel. JN: Well thank you, thank you, it was a true labor of love for everyone because everyone had a great deal of respect for the original movie and for Ridley (Scott, director of the original “Blade Runner”). We’re doubly blessed because, you know, taking on a movie like this is a daunting task because you’re trying to do a sequel to a movie that is everyone’s favorite movie and it’s pretty difficult to do and do well, but fortunately for us we had — our new director Denis Villeneuve is pretty brilliant. So you have a master painter with the original, sort of, with Ridley, and then you have a new master painter with Denis. The reason the movie is so deeply felt and so intense is really because we have a great team — the producers put together a great team, and being led by Denis is really special. TMD: Right, I can imagine. So on the topic of the team behind the film,

if you don’t mind explaining what your role is on a project as the Visual Effects Supervisor, would you say that’s more creatively focused or more technically focused? JN: Overwhelmingly, I think my job is to creatively keep the movie on track, visual-effects-wise, but half of my job is to technically figure out things that are either too expensive, too dangerous or impossible to do by any other means. I’m involved from the beginning of pre-production and designing the shots through principle photography and shooting the shots for what we call our plates. A plate is an element that you shoot on set and then you combine it with a bunch of other elements into a finished shot. I’m involved in preproduction in the design, in working out technically how we’re going to be fast on set because some of our (shots) are incredibly technically challenging. The whole point of filmmaking is that the technique never overshadows the creativity, right, and you try to be creatively on-point with the story, so whatever you do echoes the story and drives it forward, it doesn’t call attention to itself as a technique. So I would say my job is probably 60 percent creative, 40 percent technique, but the technical aspect of my job is incredibly challenging, and so you find a lot of people who are half-engineer, halfartist doing my work. I come out of the camera department so I like to shoot a lot of stuff, as many elements as I can get, and you try to shoot as much as you can during principle photography and then in post-production you do all the stuff that is necessary, all the other elements that are combined with the photographic plate you have to generate, and in this day and age sometimes it’s faster not to have a photographic plate at all. I tend to, again because I come out of camera, I tend to like to have photographic elements — as many as I can get — before I go the full CG route. TMD: One thing that really stood out to me about the film is just how well the environment tells the story of what events transpired in between the original film and “2049.” How much of a role would you say storytelling plays in what you do with VFX? JN: I think it’s a tremendous thing. I mean, everyone who works in the movie business is good at craft and technique, and they kind of channel all of that craft and technique and everything they’ve learned and everything they’re good at into the service of storytelling. If you’re stepping over the line and drawing attention to yourself, it’s probably the wrong choice, and so I think storytelling is always on my mind. I will never review a shot outside of the cut of the movie, so when I get shots back from the effects vendors that I work with — and there are eight VFX vendors on this shoot — in three or four different countries, right, and I will always look at it in the cut. The cut is how you’re telling the story, how you want (the film) to be perceived. Storytelling is immensely important, I mean you look at the cities (in the film), but also at Joi or Rachael, and it’s

even more important. TMD: So speaking of Joi, her character is involved in some of the film’s most visually unique moments, such as the merging scene with Joi and Mariette, where you have them sort of superimposed atop one another. Care to walk us through how that scene was put together? JN: The merge is my favorite scene in the movie, and that was incredibly hard to do. It was one of those things where, like in many creative endeavors, you design it and then you say, “This is gonna be good, but we have to do it.” and then in the process of doing it you find new things that you drill into. For us, we shot both women separately, then we mapped them out to CG surrogates of themselves. Then we blended them together and we didn’t want the moment, the sequence to climax too early — no pun intended — we didn’t want the women all of a sudden to just go like this and be locked in and be perfect. So we had these moments, like shots, where it would start out of sync and at the end of the shot it would be in sync and at the start of the next shot it would be out of sync until this moment where he grabs her from behind and brings her to him and you get like three or four shots in a row where you see one woman’s performance, then another woman’s performance, then their eyes line up and they become a third woman that also is performing. Because we were using only computer graphics to supplement the photography we were filming, and we only used the CG to create a backdrop, like when you look through a glass of water you see the other side of the glass, that was the CG part. The art was in shooting and mapping and putting those performances together, and when the eyes of those women line up it is truly a magical moment. I mean, when I saw it, I jumped out of my seat and I said, “Yes! That is it,” and we have like three shots in a row where that happens and it’s really my favorite scene in the picture, so I always have to talk about it. TMD: Speaking as an artist, are there any films you can think of that have inspired you throughout your career or influenced your work? JN: Oh yeah, big time. You know, I grew up in Grosse Pointe Woods, and I was the head usher at the Vogue Theater on Harper and Cadieux in the East Side of Detroit. I watched “2001” probably a hundred times, “Fantasia” a hundred times, I think both of those films have influenced me greatly. As I grew up and decided to go to film school I watched a lot of David Lean movies, which still impress me — Denis and I both love David Lean’s shots which are big shots with small people for grand scale and to show the place of the human within this vast landscape, right? Plus, those shots are tremendously cinematic. John Box, the production designer, and David Lean they’re just — I mean, if you look at the films he made: “Bridge Over the River Kwai,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” all of the others, he’s just pretty fantastic. Let’s see, I’m a big Billy Wilder fan, I’m a big Preston Sturges fan, I like the movies of the ’30s, a lot of pre-code movies I think are really interesting. I like the Coen Brothers’ movies, I think they’re quite good. I like Chris Nolan’s movies,

I think they’re quite good. But you know, Stanley Kubrick had a huge influence on me, and I graduated from college in 1976 so I grew up watching them. I mean, I think maybe the first good movie I saw and realized the potential of cinema was “On the Waterfront,” I saw it with my family on a black and white TV in our living room and it just blew me away. “On the Waterfront” is really the power of visuals, acting, directing and music all together. It just makes this incredibly strong, emotional, cerebral statement. TMD: You mentioned growing up in the Detroit area, and I know you’re a University of Michigan alum, so why don’t we take a moment to talk about the upcoming Ann Arbor Film Festival? JN: Sure, you know when I started making movies (as a young filmmaker in Ann Arbor) I submitted them and they were accepted into the Film Festival. As both a screener and a filmmaker, I was involved and I think the AAFF is a tremendously creatively fertile place because there are no rules. The films that come in there are sort of oddball films that come in at tangential angles and it’s not like stuff you’ll see anyplace else. It’s always different, and I think it’s incredibly visually stimulating, I think that if you take a lot of that experimental film — a lot of the viewpoints of experimental film have sort of leached into society. You get something that could be, you know, non-narrative storytelling that could be almost kinetic storytelling. It’s really pretty interesting. Every year I go to the festival, I always walk away going, “Wow, that movie really was great,” you know what I mean? There’s some movies I don’t like, but there’s usually many films that I think are really, really, really great, and that’s the great prize of Ann Arbor: You have these things that are so unique and unusual. TMD: Would you say that these sort of avant-garde, experimental films may forecast what’s to come in the near future of filmmaking?

JN: I think it depends. It depends on how on the narrative cycle — like on the classic narrative cycle — how mainstream entertainment will buy into it. There certainly is, with Netflix and Hulu and whatnot, there’s more demand in other places. On HBO last night I saw one of the shorts that I voted on for the short films (at the Academy Awards). It was a 20 minute or half-hour film, and in the past those films would just get shown for Oscar things and then never shown again, but now it’s on HBO. Or you look at documentaries, like all of the documentaries were really good this year. They’re always really good, and documentary filmmaking used to be kind of a niche. When I was in film school people would know about Frederick Wiseman and other people like that, the Maysles brothers. Now there’s a lot of really good documentaries being done all the time, and they’re documentaries but they also have a real point of view. There are nonnarrative, experimental films leaching into society — you want to know where you see it a lot? To be honest, you see it a lot in television commercials, in stuff like rock videos, stuff that is just off-the-wall different. Where being more visceral and kinetic is okay, you see it a lot there, and that’s really sort of cool. I remember reading this one thing on Stanley Kubrick that he used to watch commercials and some of them he liked quite a bit, and I understand that. I mean, most of them are not good, of course, but some are really interesting in the way that they approach what they’re doing and that’s where you see it too. It’s a whole new world for creative entertainment and there’s a million different places to get it. Who knows, in the future, just like there’s an old movie channel, Turner, maybe there’ll be an experimental film channel and people can go there when they want. It has an effect when something is striking and tells a story in a new and different way, there’s probably an audience for it. If you can get enough people to see it there probably will be an audience for it.

‘The Big House’ IAN HARRIS

Managing Video Editor

The crowd roars. That familiar voice blares across the stadium, “Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the Michigan marching band ... Band, take the field!” It’s a ritual, a Saturday morning tradition, and has been the central hub of activity in Ann Arbor on weekends for almost a hundred years. It’s a University football game at “The Big House,” the largest football stadium in North America, and now the one with an equally large and ambitious documentary to boot. Filmed in collaboration between University students, Screen Arts and Cultures professors Terri Sarris and Abé Markus Nornes and visiting professor Kuzahiro Soda, “The Big House” is a complete and thorough examination of everything that happens on any given football Saturday, both on and off the field. The film features a number of segments, all of which are done in a style that places the viewing audience within the action to a startling degree. We follow, at various times, the band preparing to make its journey before the game, the preparations made by stadium staff for the visiting opponent, the parties and antics of students in the hours preceding the event and the trials and tribulations of the viewers watching the game from the stands as it unfolds. All this, and much more. “The Big House” is about as complete a depiction of a football Saturday in Ann Arbor as one could possibly hope for. The only facet of the day that appears to be missing is the experience of the players themselves, which doubtlessly seems like one of the few places in which the filmmakers might have had an access problem. Although the various scenes of life in the stadium are interesting, strangely enough, it is when “The Big House” leaves home that the film truly soars. The most engaging and

interesting segments of the film are the one’s that follow the variety of characters that populate the streets of Ann Arbor both before and after the game. From dancers, to people shouting about the town’s sins, to a particularly talented and funny street side drummer, these people bring a human element to the film and add some variety and humor to the film’s most entertaining segment. In other spots, it sometimes feels like the movie is repeating familiar beats. There are only so many shots of the crowd you can show before they all begin to seem the same. Some sequences feel like they outlive their running time but the film refuses to move on from them. Other times individual shots, such as one of a kid trying to sell M&Ms outside the arena, feel like they could be half as long as they are. Such is the nature of this style of filmmaking: To give the viewer a sense of totality to what they are witnessing. It will work for many, but there are some who will wish the movie moved a little bit faster. More than anything else, without necessarily meaning to, “The Big House” draws attention to the fact that all of this — the parties, the preparations, the alumni, the donations, the pomp and circumstance — is ultimately in service of watching a game play out on a field. When the movie takes a short chance to show us the view of the game from the sideline, for a second or two the audience might think, “All of this, for that?” It’s to the great credit of the filmmakers that this documentary makes no comment on any of the scenes it is providing, but asks the audience to draw the commentary on their own. The movie ends with what feels like a somewhat disconnected segment in which University President Mark Schlissel explains to wealthy alumni why they should continue to donate and thanks them for their donations. The film makes no attempt to bridge this sequence too much with anything that preceded it. It doesn’t need to. The audience can do the math.

4 — Tuesday, March 27, 2018

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

56TH ANNUAL FILM FESTIVAL John Nelson on tech, effects behind ‘Blade Runner 2049’ MAX MICHALSKY Daily Arts Writer

On Wednesday, Mar. 25, Academy Award-winning Visual Effects Supervisor John Nelson (“Blade Runner: 2049”) gave an illustrated lecture on how he and his team created some of the 1,200 visual effects shots in his most recent Oscar triumph, “Blade Runner: 2049.” The festival is something of a homecoming for Nelson, a Detroit native who attended the University. In anticipation of the 56th installment of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Nelson spoke with The Daily over the phone to discuss the festival, his films and his career. The Michigan Daily: So first things first, I think some congrats are in order, as you’re a recent Academy Award winner. Congratulations, that’s incredible. John Nelson: Thank you, thank you! It has been a week, but I think our feet are finally sort of coming down to Earth now, you know? It has been a special week. You know, I won 17 years ago and I was up twice — I didn’t win — and being nominated is a true honor, it really is, but winning is really something, you know? TMD: Yeah, absolutely, and I imagine that winning an Oscar can’t be a feeling you ever really get used to. JN: Yeah, it’s like, the closest thing I can describe it as, is it’s like someone has come up behind you with a cattle prod and shocked you in the butt with 10,000 volts. You’re pretty electrified from the moment you hear the outcome because the whole night everyone is nervous until your award — anyone that’s up is nervous until the moment your award is decided — and you’re either gonna be really happy or you’re gonna be congratulating the winner and then going to the bar. TMD: So just to clear the air and get my fanboy-ish doting over with, I have to say: “Blade Runner: 2049” was one of my favorite films of the year. I mean, growing up watching the original film, it was incredible to see what you accomplished with this sequel. JN: Well thank you, thank you, it was a true labor of love for everyone because everyone had a great deal of respect for the original movie and for Ridley (Scott, director of the original “Blade Runner”). We’re doubly blessed because, you know, taking on a movie like this is a daunting task because you’re trying to do a sequel to a movie that is everyone’s favorite movie and it’s pretty difficult to do and do well, but fortunately for us we had — our new director Denis Villeneuve is pretty brilliant. So you have a master painter with the original, sort of, with Ridley, and then you have a new master painter with Denis. The reason the movie is so deeply felt and so intense is really because we have a great team — the producers put together a great team, and being led by Denis is really special. TMD: Right, I can imagine. So on the topic of the team behind the film,

if you don’t mind explaining what your role is on a project as the Visual Effects Supervisor, would you say that’s more creatively focused or more technically focused? JN: Overwhelmingly, I think my job is to creatively keep the movie on track, visual-effects-wise, but half of my job is to technically figure out things that are either too expensive, too dangerous or impossible to do by any other means. I’m involved from the beginning of pre-production and designing the shots through principle photography and shooting the shots for what we call our plates. A plate is an element that you shoot on set and then you combine it with a bunch of other elements into a finished shot. I’m involved in preproduction in the design, in working out technically how we’re going to be fast on set because some of our (shots) are incredibly technically challenging. The whole point of filmmaking is that the technique never overshadows the creativity, right, and you try to be creatively on-point with the story, so whatever you do echoes the story and drives it forward, it doesn’t call attention to itself as a technique. So I would say my job is probably 60 percent creative, 40 percent technique, but the technical aspect of my job is incredibly challenging, and so you find a lot of people who are half-engineer, halfartist doing my work. I come out of the camera department so I like to shoot a lot of stuff, as many elements as I can get, and you try to shoot as much as you can during principle photography and then in post-production you do all the stuff that is necessary, all the other elements that are combined with the photographic plate you have to generate, and in this day and age sometimes it’s faster not to have a photographic plate at all. I tend to, again because I come out of camera, I tend to like to have photographic elements — as many as I can get — before I go the full CG route. TMD: One thing that really stood out to me about the film is just how well the environment tells the story of what events transpired in between the original film and “2049.” How much of a role would you say storytelling plays in what you do with VFX? JN: I think it’s a tremendous thing. I mean, everyone who works in the movie business is good at craft and technique, and they kind of channel all of that craft and technique and everything they’ve learned and everything they’re good at into the service of storytelling. If you’re stepping over the line and drawing attention to yourself, it’s probably the wrong choice, and so I think storytelling is always on my mind. I will never review a shot outside of the cut of the movie, so when I get shots back from the effects vendors that I work with — and there are eight VFX vendors on this shoot — in three or four different countries, right, and I will always look at it in the cut. The cut is how you’re telling the story, how you want (the film) to be perceived. Storytelling is immensely important, I mean you look at the cities (in the film), but also at Joi or Rachael, and it’s

even more important. TMD: So speaking of Joi, her character is involved in some of the film’s most visually unique moments, such as the merging scene with Joi and Mariette, where you have them sort of superimposed atop one another. Care to walk us through how that scene was put together? JN: The merge is my favorite scene in the movie, and that was incredibly hard to do. It was one of those things where, like in many creative endeavors, you design it and then you say, “This is gonna be good, but we have to do it.” and then in the process of doing it you find new things that you drill into. For us, we shot both women separately, then we mapped them out to CG surrogates of themselves. Then we blended them together and we didn’t want the moment, the sequence to climax too early — no pun intended — we didn’t want the women all of a sudden to just go like this and be locked in and be perfect. So we had these moments, like shots, where it would start out of sync and at the end of the shot it would be in sync and at the start of the next shot it would be out of sync until this moment where he grabs her from behind and brings her to him and you get like three or four shots in a row where you see one woman’s performance, then another woman’s performance, then their eyes line up and they become a third woman that also is performing. Because we were using only computer graphics to supplement the photography we were filming, and we only used the CG to create a backdrop, like when you look through a glass of water you see the other side of the glass, that was the CG part. The art was in shooting and mapping and putting those performances together, and when the eyes of those women line up it is truly a magical moment. I mean, when I saw it, I jumped out of my seat and I said, “Yes! That is it,” and we have like three shots in a row where that happens and it’s really my favorite scene in the picture, so I always have to talk about it. TMD: Speaking as an artist, are there any films you can think of that have inspired you throughout your career or influenced your work? JN: Oh yeah, big time. You know, I grew up in Grosse Pointe Woods, and I was the head usher at the Vogue Theater on Harper and Cadieux in the East Side of Detroit. I watched “2001” probably a hundred times, “Fantasia” a hundred times, I think both of those films have influenced me greatly. As I grew up and decided to go to film school I watched a lot of David Lean movies, which still impress me — Denis and I both love David Lean’s shots which are big shots with small people for grand scale and to show the place of the human within this vast landscape, right? Plus, those shots are tremendously cinematic. John Box, the production designer, and David Lean they’re just — I mean, if you look at the films he made: “Bridge Over the River Kwai,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” all of the others, he’s just pretty fantastic. Let’s see, I’m a big Billy Wilder fan, I’m a big Preston Sturges fan, I like the movies of the ’30s, a lot of pre-code movies I think are really interesting. I like the Coen Brothers’ movies, I think they’re quite good. I like Chris Nolan’s movies,

I think they’re quite good. But you know, Stanley Kubrick had a huge influence on me, and I graduated from college in 1976 so I grew up watching them. I mean, I think maybe the first good movie I saw and realized the potential of cinema was “On the Waterfront,” I saw it with my family on a black and white TV in our living room and it just blew me away. “On the Waterfront” is really the power of visuals, acting, directing and music all together. It just makes this incredibly strong, emotional, cerebral statement. TMD: You mentioned growing up in the Detroit area, and I know you’re a University of Michigan alum, so why don’t we take a moment to talk about the upcoming Ann Arbor Film Festival? JN: Sure, you know when I started making movies (as a young filmmaker in Ann Arbor) I submitted them and they were accepted into the Film Festival. As both a screener and a filmmaker, I was involved and I think the AAFF is a tremendously creatively fertile place because there are no rules. The films that come in there are sort of oddball films that come in at tangential angles and it’s not like stuff you’ll see anyplace else. It’s always different, and I think it’s incredibly visually stimulating, I think that if you take a lot of that experimental film — a lot of the viewpoints of experimental film have sort of leached into society. You get something that could be, you know, non-narrative storytelling that could be almost kinetic storytelling. It’s really pretty interesting. Every year I go to the festival, I always walk away going, “Wow, that movie really was great,” you know what I mean? There’s some movies I don’t like, but there’s usually many films that I think are really, really, really great, and that’s the great prize of Ann Arbor: You have these things that are so unique and unusual. TMD: Would you say that these sort of avant-garde, experimental films may forecast what’s to come in the near future of filmmaking?

JN: I think it depends. It depends on how on the narrative cycle — like on the classic narrative cycle — how mainstream entertainment will buy into it. There certainly is, with Netflix and Hulu and whatnot, there’s more demand in other places. On HBO last night I saw one of the shorts that I voted on for the short films (at the Academy Awards). It was a 20 minute or half-hour film, and in the past those films would just get shown for Oscar things and then never shown again, but now it’s on HBO. Or you look at documentaries, like all of the documentaries were really good this year. They’re always really good, and documentary filmmaking used to be kind of a niche. When I was in film school people would know about Frederick Wiseman and other people like that, the Maysles brothers. Now there’s a lot of really good documentaries being done all the time, and they’re documentaries but they also have a real point of view. There are nonnarrative, experimental films leaching into society — you want to know where you see it a lot? To be honest, you see it a lot in television commercials, in stuff like rock videos, stuff that is just off-the-wall different. Where being more visceral and kinetic is okay, you see it a lot there, and that’s really sort of cool. I remember reading this one thing on Stanley Kubrick that he used to watch commercials and some of them he liked quite a bit, and I understand that. I mean, most of them are not good, of course, but some are really interesting in the way that they approach what they’re doing and that’s where you see it too. It’s a whole new world for creative entertainment and there’s a million different places to get it. Who knows, in the future, just like there’s an old movie channel, Turner, maybe there’ll be an experimental film channel and people can go there when they want. It has an effect when something is striking and tells a story in a new and different way, there’s probably an audience for it. If you can get enough people to see it there probably will be an audience for it.

‘The Big House’ IAN HARRIS

Managing Video Editor

The crowd roars. That familiar voice blares across the stadium, “Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the Michigan marching band ... Band, take the field!” It’s a ritual, a Saturday morning tradition, and has been the central hub of activity in Ann Arbor on weekends for almost a hundred years. It’s a University football game at “The Big House,” the largest football stadium in North America, and now the one with an equally large and ambitious documentary to boot. Filmed in collaboration between University students, Screen Arts and Cultures professors Terri Sarris and Abé Markus Nornes and visiting professor Kuzahiro Soda, “The Big House” is a complete and thorough examination of everything that happens on any given football Saturday, both on and off the field. The film features a number of segments, all of which are done in a style that places the viewing audience within the action to a startling degree. We follow, at various times, the band preparing to make its journey before the game, the preparations made by stadium staff for the visiting opponent, the parties and antics of students in the hours preceding the event and the trials and tribulations of the viewers watching the game from the stands as it unfolds. All this, and much more. “The Big House” is about as complete a depiction of a football Saturday in Ann Arbor as one could possibly hope for. The only facet of the day that appears to be missing is the experience of the players themselves, which doubtlessly seems like one of the few places in which the filmmakers might have had an access problem. Although the various scenes of life in the stadium are interesting, strangely enough, it is when “The Big House” leaves home that the film truly soars. The most engaging and

interesting segments of the film are the one’s that follow the variety of characters that populate the streets of Ann Arbor both before and after the game. From dancers, to people shouting about the town’s sins, to a particularly talented and funny street side drummer, these people bring a human element to the film and add some variety and humor to the film’s most entertaining segment. In other spots, it sometimes feels like the movie is repeating familiar beats. There are only so many shots of the crowd you can show before they all begin to seem the same. Some sequences feel like they outlive their running time but the film refuses to move on from them. Other times individual shots, such as one of a kid trying to sell M&Ms outside the arena, feel like they could be half as long as they are. Such is the nature of this style of filmmaking: To give the viewer a sense of totality to what they are witnessing. It will work for many, but there are some who will wish the movie moved a little bit faster. More than anything else, without necessarily meaning to, “The Big House” draws attention to the fact that all of this — the parties, the preparations, the alumni, the donations, the pomp and circumstance — is ultimately in service of watching a game play out on a field. When the movie takes a short chance to show us the view of the game from the sideline, for a second or two the audience might think, “All of this, for that?” It’s to the great credit of the filmmakers that this documentary makes no comment on any of the scenes it is providing, but asks the audience to draw the commentary on their own. The movie ends with what feels like a somewhat disconnected segment in which University President Mark Schlissel explains to wealthy alumni why they should continue to donate and thanks them for their donations. The film makes no attempt to bridge this sequence too much with anything that preceded it. It doesn’t need to. The audience can do the math.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Tuesday, March 27, 2018 — 5

‘Those Who Come, Will Hear’ JACK BRANDON Daily Arts Writer

Language extinction, to many Americans, is often something they read about at a comfortable distance. There’s a certain empathy that they’re lacking for cultures that have been erased by the colonialism, whether it manifested as outright subjugation or more insidiously through structures like schools or other government mandates. Simon Plouffe’s “Those Who Come, Will Hear,” which premiered at the Ann Arbor Film Festival last week, finds speakers of Inuit languages near death in Quebec, and explores the ways they have responded to the powers that have eradicated their

ways of life. Plouffe profiles multiple cultures across the expanse of Quebec, but his search is never shallow. Instead of reducing the speakers to their shared plight, Plouffe looks at different responses of each culture, some more hopeful than others: the public school system, in one circumstance, that is reinstating its native language and ensuring that young people become literate, the bingo radio program that is broadcast in an indigenous tongue and a moment between mother and son as they attempt to recall an old prayer from memory. In its less direct moments, “Those Who Come, Will Hear” probes the connection between land and livelihood. Plouffe occasionally abstracts shots of nature, distorting the image and overlaying ambient sounds and

‘Honane’ MAX MICHALSKY Daily Arts Writer

Lifelong friends and directing duo Takuya Dairiki and Takashi Miura (“Fine as Usual”) travelled to Ann Arbor from Japan — their first time ever visiting the United States — to compete in the Ann Arbor Film Festival. In fact, I had the pleasure of sitting next to them at the screening. Both men had a calm, quiet disposition about them, undercut by a palpable excitement to show off their work. Their film, “Honane,” doesn’t feel like it was made for me to see; in fact, it doesn’t feel like it was made for anyone, and that’s one of the greatest compliments I could give this film. The movie consists of a series of phone calls between a man, Taro, and his Uncle Hiro. Over the phone, the two watch a collection of home videos taken by Uncle Hiro as he travels through the Japanese countryside. The uncle and nephew — played by Dairiki

and Miura and never actually shown on camera — have a rapport that is immediately recognizable as the kind that could only come from a decadesold bond. In a post-screening Q&A session, Dairiki and Miura explained that when the two were young they would wander through their neighborhood and shoot videos. Not videos of anything in particular, just things they found fascinating or important, the creation of art for its own sake rather than for an audience. This inspiration is evident throughout the film, as it truly feels like it was made solely for Taro and Uncle Hiro — the audience is just a fly on the wall. Uncle Hiro in particular is a focal point of the film. His camera is our lens into this world, and as such we are able to learn so much about his character solely by what he chooses to film. At times, we see the mind of a man enthralled with minutiae: tiny, condensed shots of the corner of a refrigerator, or a notch in a wooden handrail. At other times, we see a kind of wistful loneliness: neon signs for udon shops blinking at night, or the mostly-empty

monologues from indigenous speakers, who are never named individually. Instead, Plouffe focuses on the pure sound of the languages, on the intonation and pitch. As a result, it seems as if the land is speaking for all the voices that have been silenced in the past. Despite its focus on a largescale social problem, “Those Who Come, Will Hear” never attempts to proselytize to its audience. Plouffe does not introduce anything garish or confrontational: statistics, interviews with the government or any outsiders to the communities he visits. He suggests that these places are self-sufficient and unique, which colonialism has always challenged. While there are similarities that have emerged between the cultures of indigenous people and Europeans

parking lot of a pachinko parlor. As we watch these things he chooses to film, we learn about what Hiro finds beautiful. In some scenes, Hiro’s footage is interlaced with the sounds of someone playing drums in the distance. He claims that this is a drum-playing fairy that lives in the woods near his home. Watching Hiro’s videos and listening to him explain his film paints such an incredibly vivid image of him, and by the end it feels like he’s an old friend. The experience of watching “Honane” is like someone letting you in on a well-kept secret, like an existential conversation between old friends in the middle of the night, like driving with friends through your hometown in the summer. Watching Uncle Hiro’s videos, one can’t help but to think of the joy it is to feel connected to someone they’ll never meet solely through experiencing their art. Dairiki and Miura’s film seems more intent on communicating these fleeting, undefinable thoughts and feelings than it is on telling a story; the result is one of the most delightful indie films of the year.

‘Buddha.mov’ JACK BRANDON Daily Film Editor

On Wed., March 14, Maize Collective — in partnership with Universal Music Group and Innovate Blue — hosted the first of a series of three music business panels titled “Industry Insight: Songwriters, Producers and Studio Musicians.” Held at the University of Michigan Museum of Art’s auditorium, the panel provided aspiring Ann Arbor artists with tips

for success in the music business and featured an array of musicians, including Yungblud, a new signee to Geffen Records and rising hip-hop star, Evan Haywood, a musician and multimedia artist based in Ann Arbor, Kasan Belgrave, a Jazz Studies sophomore concentrating in clarinet and alto sax and DeNero Montez, a Detroit native singer and songwriter who has written for Justin Bieber. The panel, moderated by Veniece Session of Ann Arbor’s Neutral Zone, addressed songwriting

‘RONCO RUMOR REMOTO’ JACK BRANDON Daily Film Editor

The description given in the Ann Arbor Film Festival directory for the experimental Spanish film “RONCO RUMOR REMOTO / ROUGH REMOTE RUMBLE” is not very descriptive. It reads: “A stone falls from a wall, rolls down to the ground, and suddenly stops. At that moment, a cloud with a very similar shape passes over.” There is no more. There won’t be any more. There is nothing more to say, at least from the filmmakers. The 74-minute, dialogueless feature does more by saying nothing at all; it is a film that finds curiosity in fairly mundane actions, without relying on any

pomp or circumstance to create situations that seem truly at odds with normal expectations of everyday life. “RONCO” follows a man’s quest to recreate the shape of a rock he found in an old ruinous house out of the remnants of a larger ruinous village. It seems to deal thematically with the presence of patterns in nature, displaying on-screen the beauty that comes in tandem with a mathematically created universe. Not unlike how a cluster of neurons in the brain may resemble a cluster of galaxies across the universe, the fundamental pieces of this film are fractals — smaller, secular buds of some common stem. And it really is quite a beautiful film, however trudging, slow, boring, uneventful and quiet it may seem. The black-and-white cinematography collapses the

techniques, royalties, musical influences and the overall daily life of a career musician. Yungblud, who performed a few hours later at the Majestic Theatre in Detroit, was given the most immediate attention before leaving early for his show. His charismatic persona and unfiltered stream of consciousness was enticing, providing an example to the many aspiring musicians in the crowd of a young and fresh musician who successfully “made it” in the music business while maintaining his rambunctious attitude. When asked by Session — who herself has experience working with independent artists — if signing to a major label has

expansive dessert landscape down upon itself, changing the perception of scale and depth within the shots. Because much of the landscape is indistinguishable, it becomes difficult to tell what is being shown on screen; the long dark striations start to look less like the ridges carved in a glacial valley, and more like shadows formed by a small pile of dirt. The camera work is excellent, probably the most individually impressive piece of the film. There’s not much to say about performances. The three characters portrayed on the screen never share a word, they hardly even interact. The largest moment of expression between any two of them comes at the end, when the protagonist and his companion share a moment of great raucous laughter after pushing a boulder down the side of a small mountain. Their laughter brings them to tears, and as the moment begins to fade to memory, so does the screen to black.

after years of cultural exchange, Plouffe does not whitewash his subjects. At one point, a father and son discuss the naming conventions of tails while the father examines the carcass of an

otter at the dinner table. The beauty and honesty of “Those Who Come, Will Hear” is so beguiling that it becomes easy to forget the sadness and tension that underpins the speakers’

situation. Instead, Plouffe provides a view from the inside out. For these speakers, there is no use in brooding over the past. Resilience and preservation are not options — they’re promises.

‘Did You Ever Wonder Who Fired the Gun?’ SAMANTHA NELSON Daily Arts Writer

The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Honesty is the best policy. The truth will set you free. These platitudes, immediately recognizable to any American, emphasize just how much value our society places on authenticity. However, whether our actions align with our perceptions of truth is another story entirely. Much of America’s history, especially that regarding its treatment of African-Americans, is built upon lies, deception and brutality. Beneath a glossy exterior of “purple mountain majesties” and “amber waves of grain” there is rot, a suppressed darkness and a dirty and sickening reality that “America the beautiful” is much uglier than she is portrayed as being. Through his powerful and extremely personalized documentary, “Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?,” Travis Wilkerson punctures the underbelly of the 1940s American South, exposing the blatant reality of racial hatred and unjust violence that lies beneath, remnants of which permeate society today. Wilkerson begins his work with a clear objective: to unveil the truth about his great grandfather, S.E Branch, a white man guilty of murdering Bill Spann, a Black man in 1946 rural Ala.. Digging deep into his family history, Wilkerson travels around conducting interviews with the few willing relatives and townspeople he can find in hopes of confirming his great-grandfather’s crimes and searching for scraps of knowledge about Spann. With expert mixing of color and black and white

hindered his creative process, Yungblud replied, “To be honest, I figured out who I was before I got signed. And, if you know that and you deep down know who you are, then how are they going to change that? They signed you for a reason, because they like you and like your sound.” Next, Session asked Montez to elaborate on the songwriting process. He offered an easyto-comprehend explanation of songwriting and the business of copyright, stressing the importance of submitting your work to BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) or ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) as well

sequences, use of sound and incorporation of contemporary racial content, Wilkerson creates an impactful and haunting piece of art that leaves audience members reflecting long after the lights go up. In one of the most intriguing and creative segments of the film, Wilkerson intersperses old, cheery home videos of his grandparents and extended family, while simultaneously voicing-over the certificate of death that was filed for Spann’s murder. The loving family memories playing on screen are representative of the attractive surface level illusion of life in America at the time. But beneath this picture-perfect façade is the truth, a murder that really did happen, but went unacknowledged because the man who lost his life was Black. The film’s perspective is unique in that it uses the personal story of Wilkerson’s grandfather as a vehicle to unpack racism both at the time and today. Dispersed among clips unravelling the mystery behind Wilkerson’s great-grandfather’s crime are other segments reflecting on the contemporary racial situation in the United States. Sudden interjections of solid, blindinglywhite screens serve as literal “wake up calls,” jolting viewers to attention. A rhythmic, Africaninspired beat begins to play, as the names of African Americans — Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner to name a few — who recently perished at the hand of the law bounce across the screen, followed by phrases reading, “Say his name” and “Say her name.” The words feel like calls to action, sending chills down audience members’ spines.

as registering your lyrics with the Library of Congress. Haywood also interjected, advising the crowd to always run paperwork by a lawyer before signing, avoiding any chance that you as a songwriter would lose the rights to your masters. Later, after Yungblud left for his show and the panel grew more intimate, the floor opened for audience questions and the panel was asked to speak on how they remain original in their music while having artists they admire. Belgrave raised a point that was met with nods of agreement from both the panelists and the audience, saying, “Automatically, we are subject to music that comes before us so we

Perhaps most haunting however, is the evidence, or lack thereof, that Wilkerson collects on Bill Spann. Aside from his certificate of death and an unmarked grave stone, Wilkerson finds next to nothing on Spann. No family. No records. Nothing. Spann’s existence was buried along with him, discarded by a society that found no value in remembering him. The absence of information that Wilkerson obtains hints again at the theme of truth, or rather its concealment, that resurfaces consistently throughout the film. Wilkerson connects the disregard of Spann’s murder in the ’40s to the present day, suggesting that society still turns a blind eye to the reality of injustice and violence inflicted upon African Americans. Through the link he stresses between present and past racial climates, Wilkerson shatters the false belief that America is living in a post-racial society, illustrating that our past has in fact become our present. He compels viewers to not only hear what he has to say, but to listen. Ears open, heart pounding and blood boiling, audiences are filled with frustration at the incredible lengths that our nation has gone to not only commit, but deceive itself of the wrongs committed against African Americans. The truth that the United States has put off facing is a bitter and shameful one. We are a nation that fails to protect and defend all of our citizens. We have failed. But there is still time for change, a change that can only come when we all “Say their names” together. Sandra Bland. Trayvon Martin. Eric Garner. To “Say their names” is to speak the truth, and it is far past time to start speaking it.

are automatically paying homage to music before us. Music is always moving, always evolving so I think you have to hear things from the past to create new sounds.” The panel closed with Haywood offering young musicians a word of advice: “Keep making music, keep putting it out in any way,” he said. “No one will hear it at first and eventually you’ll start getting traction and building a fan base. Those fans will stick with you if you’re a nice person. Be kind and open and caring. Support your friends and make a community. Then, when you get that success, you will have friends holding you up.”

‘The Impossible Picture’ SOPHIA WHITE Daily Arts Writer

The memory is a subjective entity that is so personal and biased that it often becomes difficult to distinguish memories from complete imaginations. The idea of the intersection between the memory and the imagination is probed in the Austrian/German film “The Impossible Picture” by Sandra Wollner (“Viktor”). The picture is constructed in disconnected narrative fragments, almost vignettes, of everyday life in 1950s Vienna in a home where a secret women’s circle emerges. The title itself probably refers to the way that it is not possible to ever get the “full picture” of life, due to this subjective nature of memory, which beguiles the mind, making memories themselves unreliable.

The memory is not the only unreliable player in “The Impossible Picture.” Its narrator is unclear and switches, creating an ominous and ambiguous tale that makes it difficult for the audience to understand whose story is being told and who is telling it. Characters talk in code, obsess over death — especially the children — and question their existence. Formally, the home video style, shot on 8mm film, makes the characters seem close to us. We get an intimate peek into their lives, which are filled with mystery and taboo. The home video camera narrative produced by this shaky-cam, grainy film effect is joined by broken dialogue that cuts in and out. Together, these formal elements succeed in inserting us into the space of the private home, though Wollner may have brought us too close.

Wollner doesn’t hold back in displaying visceral and graphic images on screen, from dead animals to bloody innards and queasy subject-matter. With these aesthetics, Wollner creates a creepy dissonance, especially with the lack of a reliable narrator, which causes the audience to lack trust. Johanna, the possible narrator, says herself, “Memory is unreliable, it might as well be the future.” These existential doubts and questions were present on the screen, but they were too present. The film pushes almost too far in the abstract that it causes it to be hard to follow. A classic experimental film that leans maybe too far into the experimental, “An Impossible Picture” is an attempt to scrutinize the span of the memory, but it leans a bit too far toward the abstract for any real conclusions to be drawn.