Mothlight Microcinema

About
 —
  1. an artist-run, nomadic film series screening experimental and avant-garde, fiction, documentary, and animated film + video in Detroit, Michigan since 2012.
  2. screening schedules and program line-ups can be found here and on our Facebook page
  3. Stay connected by subscribing to our newsletter!


Upcoming Events
MMC 2024 ++
  1. Gaza Ghetto (1984), Speakers: Umayyah Cable and Hannah Fahoome
  2. 16mm filmmaking workshop with Shanna Maurizi

Past Programs
MMC 2023 ++
  1. 16mm filmmaking workshop with the Detroit Narrative Agency
  2. 60th Ann Arbor Touring Program, Q&A with Jerrod Willis

MMC 2022 ++
  1. 59th Ann Arbor Touring Program, Q&A with Ahya Simone 

MMC 2021 ++
  1. Malni: towards the ocean towards the shore, Q&A with Sky Hopinka
  2. Film About a Father Who, Q&A with Lynne Sachs

MMC 2020 ++
  1. The Wolf House (virtual, co-presented with The Film Lab and Cinema Lamont)
  2. Vitalina Varela (virtual, co-presented with The Film Lab)

MMC 2019 ++
  1. Films in Space (Cosmos + shorts on 16mm)
    Curated by Raul Benitez

  2. Remember to Remember: New and Old Films from Niagara Custom Lab
    Curated by Derek Jenkins

MMC 2018 ++
  1. Chicagoland Shorts, Vol 4 
    Curated by Full Spectrum Features
  2. Based in Havana: Documentary Shorts
    Curated by Mary Pena
  3. Clicks Inside My Dreams: Short Films by Margaret Rorison, Q&A with Rorison
  4. Image Bearings: New Video Work by Women in the Midwest
    Curated by Sally Lawton, Q&A with Bree Gant

MMC 2017 ++
  1. The Maribor Uprisings, Q&A with Maple Raza
  2. Kairos Dirt and the Errant Vacuum, Q&A with Madsen Minax
  3. INAATE/SE/, Q&A with Adam Khalil
  4. ANTI-ETHNOGRAPHY, Q&A with Adam Khalil
  5. Untitled (Just Kidding), Q&A with Jesse Malmed

MMC 2016 ++
  1. Chicagoland Shorts
    Curated by Full Spectrum Features

  2. Films by Mothlight Filmmaker-in-Residence Jayne Amara Ross, Q&A with Ross
  3. Films by Ephraim Asili, Q&A with Asili
  4. SÖFNUN: Mothlight Microcinema in Iceland
  5. Seeking: Missed Connections & Loose Associations, Q&A with Chris Collins & LJ Freeza
  6. Films for One to Eight Projectors: Multiple Projector Experiments by Roger Beebe, Q&A with Beebe

MMC 2015 ++
  1. Itinerant Spaces: Films by Stephen Connolly, Q&A with Connolly
  2. Minority Report
    Curated by Nazli Dincel, Q&A with Sky Hopinka

  3. Frenkel Defects III
    Curated by Kevin Rice
  4. Handmade Emulsion workshop with Process Reversal (led by Kevin Rice)
  5. Cellular Cinema VI: Mothlight in Minneapolis
  6. Films by Filmmaker-in-Residence Dan Smeby, Q&A with Smeby
  7. Tale of Two Syrias: Films by Filmmaker-in-Residence Yasmin Fedda, Q&A with Fedda
  8. Paradise: Films by Filmmaker-in-Residence Lydia Moyer, Q&A with Moyer
  9. Failure: Experimental Animation by Kelly Sears, Q&A with Sears
  10. Projection Instructions: Selections from Filmmakers Coop Curated by Josh Guilford, performed by Mothlight

MMC 2014 ++
  1. Synchronicity, Q&A with Jason Sudak
  2. Films by Julie Murray, Q&A with Murray
  3. Films by Fern Silva, Q&A with Silva
  4. Form/Fragment, Q&A with Jen Proctor
  5. 51st Ann Arbor Film Festival Touring Program

MMC 2013 ++
  1. Moving: 16mm shorts
  2. On Holiday
    Curated by Brandon Walley
  3. Peninsulam, Q&A with Jack Cronin
  4. Handmade (Animation)
    Curated by Gary Schwartz, Q&A with Dustin Grella
  5. Portraits of America, Part II, Q&A with Katie Barkel & Oren Goldenberg
  6. Portraits of America, Part I, Q&A with Brandon Walley

MMC 2012 ++
  1. Maximal Minimal (16mm)


Mark







MMC31 11062017 / The Maribor Uprising
with Maple Raza


The Anthropology Learning Community (Wayne State University) and Mothlight Microcinema are pleased to present Maple Razsa and Milton Guillen’s interactive documentary, The Maribor Uprisings.

In the once prosperous industrial city of Maribor, Slovenia, anger over political corruption became unruly revolt. In The Maribor Uprisings—part film, part conversation, and part interactive experiment—you are invited to participate in the protests. Dramatic frontline footage from a video activist collective places you in Maribor as crowds surround and ransack City Hall under a hailstorm of tear gas canisters. As a viewer, you must decide collectively with your fellow audience members which cameras you will follow and therefore how the screening will unfold. Like those who joined the actual uprisings, you will be faced with the choice of joining non-violent protests or following rowdy crowds towards City Hall and greater conflict. These dilemmas parallel those faced by protesters everywhere as they grapple with what it means to resist. What sparks outrage? How are participants swept up in—and changed by—confrontations with police? Could something like this happen in your city? What would you do?How it works: Uprisings is live facilitated by the directors, beginning with a brief orientation to the discussion and decision-making practices to be used during the screening—practices drawn from the Maribor protests. After watching the film’s introduction, the audience confronts the first of several decision-points, where they must choose between diverging storylines. Brief discussions at these decision-points raise questions about the strategies and ethics of protest, forcing the audience to decide—with a quick show of hands—whether to resist force with violence or to remain peaceful in the face of repression. What audiences see, the emotional quality of their experience, perhaps even whether they feel personally implicated in unruly protest, will all depend on the choices they make.
Followed by a conversation about civil unrest between Maple Razsa, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of Global Studies, Colby College, and Andrew Newman, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Wayne State University.

Sponsored by the Dept of Anthropology and Anthropology Learning Community, Wayne State University.




Filmmaker's Bio:
Maple Razsa is an Associate Professor and Director of Global Studies at Colby College. He is committed to using text, images, and sound to embody the lived experience, as well as the political imaginations of, contemporary social movements. His films—including The Maribor Uprisings, Occupation: A Film About the Harvard Living Wage Sit-In, and Bastards of Utopia—have shown in festivals around the world. The Society for Visual Anthropology named Uprisings the Best Feature Documentary of 2017. Bastards of Utopia: Living Radical Politics After Socialism (Indiana University Press, 2015), the written companion to the film of the same title, won the William A. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology. Trained as a filmmaker and anthropologist at Harvard University, Maple has held fellowships from Stockholm and Harvard Universities, Amherst College, and been funded by IREX, NSF, Wenner-Gren, Fulbright and Truman Foundations.






Mark