Lake Michigan Film Festival Kicks Off Tonight
The Lake Michigan Film Festival will bring a variety of projects from independent and student filmmakers to the area from Thursday, Feb. 29 through Sunday, March 3.
The festival focuses on films from across the states of Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin and Illinois. The opening film “That’s Funny” by Alex Grossman, will be shown Thursday, Feb. 29 at 7 p.m. at the Hannah Community Center, followed by nearly 40 other films throughout the remainder of the festival at Studio C theater in Okemos.
The Lake Michigan Film festival is run by the East Lansing Film Festival organizers each year, with the mission of featuring a more localized variety of films that are produced in the Lake Michigan area or made by filmmakers from the region.
“They used to focus one day on just Michigan made films at the [East Lansing Film Festival],” Lake Michigan Film Festival Director Erika Noud said. “We had so many great local and regional films that we decided to create a separate festival where we can show these local and regional films without competing against one another because they’re shown at the same time.”
The films being shown, narrowed down from over 100 submissions, cover an array of styles, genres and themes. The majority of the titles being featured are either documentaries or short films.
There is an emphasis on student films at the festival, with submissions from students attending many colleges and universities in the represented states. Those colleges include Michigan State University, the University of Michigan, Grand Valley State University and the Motion Picture Institute, among others.
Even with the high volume of documentaries and short films, event organizers assure visitors that all preferences will be accommodated.
“There’s something for everyone, and it’s an opportunity to see things that you might not see anywhere else” Noud said.
Over 30 of the featured filmmakers are planning to attend the festival, making the event far better attended by the featured creators than the larger East Lansing Film Festival. Creators and films previously shown at the Lake Michigan Film Festival have gone on to see great success, including documentary “The Pez Outlaw” which has since been acquired by Netflix, where it has gained national exposure and recognition.
There will be three categories of awards at the festival: best short film, best documentary and best student film. The winner of each category will receive a $200 cash prize.
Tickets can be purchased at the door. More information about the Lake Michigan Film Festival can be found here.