
The Michigan Beer Film explores the artistic and economic explosion of the Michigan craft beer industry in 2013. Shot over the course of 18 months, the film documents several breweries at different stages of the craft brewing journey, from a 1 barrel system to 800 fermenters. From Sawyer to Marquette, Leelanau to Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo to Detroit; craft beer is making an impact. The Michigan craft beer scene embodies an authenticity and determination that not only can Michigan connect with, but America as well.
0.0A moving portrait of traditional Finnish American culture in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, highlighting that fragile community of memory connecting ourselves with parents and grandparents. It uses the “biographical model” of folklore filmmaking to tell the story of Erikki Vourenmaa, a 92-year-old Finnish immigrant, and his family living near Ironwood, Michigan. This three-generation farm family works, celebrates, reflects, and grieves together. The film explores the meaning of family, ethnic history, aging and intergenerational bonds. It contrasts between the immigrant elder, his American-born son and the partially assimilated grandchildren to illustrate change and continuity in the "sauna belt" of the Lake Superior Region. As Dr. Sharon Sherman concluded, “Loukinen’s focus on the bonds between generations will strike emotional chords about family relationships and ethnic identity for numerous cultural groups.”
6.8Wisconsin's tribe's ongoing fight to protect Lake Superior for future generations. "Bad River" shows the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa's long history of activism and resistance in the context of continuing legal battles with Enbridge Energy over its Line 5 oil pipeline. The Line 5 pipeline has been operating on 12 miles of the Bad River Band's land with expired easements for more than a decade. The Band and the Canadian company have been locked in a legal battle over the pipeline since 2019.
0.0For many fans, they simply belong together: football and beer. But is that really just a harmless connection of sport and pleasure? Because football clubs and breweries are often closely connected in Germany. Every club in the second and first division of the Bundesliga, without exception, is being sponsored by a brewery and also many amateur clubs are reliant on the money of the beer industry. And yet, alcohol causes great damage in Germany: 1.6 million people are addicted to alcohol, more than 14,000 die annually in direct consequence of alcohol consumption. This film corresponds to the state as of November 16th, 2022. At that point in time, Qatar had allowed the selling of alcohol in and around world cup stadiums before and after the games. A few days before the beginning of the World Cup, an alcohol ban was announced for these areas, nonetheless.
0.0A tribute to the Alamo Drafthouse located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, that was forced to close after three years when its lease was abruptly and unexpectedly terminated by its landlord. Employees and customers reflect on the impact the theater had made on its community in such a short amount of time.
6.2Steeped in a rich tradition dating back to their inaugural meeting in 1897, this rivalry extends beyond the pursuit of a Big Ten title, and is renewed each year through the pageantry and colliding cultures that distinguish the two schools.
0.0A Beer-Documentary that sheds some light on the exploding beer culture in and around the city of Philadelphia. Beeradelphia will showcase not only beer of course, but brewerys, home brewers, beer clubs, Brew pubs, beer authors and beer historians, bottle shops and distributors and of course interviews with the region's most famous beer personalities and of course more beer!
“A Two Hearted Tale” is a heartfelt look at the history of the iconic trout label adorning Bell’s Two Hearted Ale, the Michigan-born beer that is the most popular IPA beer in America, and the label’s eccentric artist, Ladislav Hanka.
0.0The annual ice carving event and competition features over 100 statues carved from a blocks of ice. Visitors can watch artisans create their works from start to finish with tools of the trade including chainsaws.
0.0Kelly Finger-McNeela was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis her freshman year of high school. The only thing on her mind was living a "normal" life. Her disease threatened to make that impossible.
6.7British documentarian Nick Broomfield creates a follow-up piece to his 1992 documentary of the serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a highway prostitute who was convicted of killing six men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. Interviewing an increasingly mentally unstable Wuornos, Broomfield captures the distorted mind of a murderer whom the state of Florida deems of sound mind -- and therefore fit to execute. Throughout the film, Broomfield includes footage of his testimony at Wuornos' trial.
7.6American Movie documents the story of filmmaker Mark Borchardt, his mission, and his dream. Spanning over two years of intense struggle with his film, his family, financial decline, and spiritual crisis, American Movie is a portrayal of ambition, obsession, excess, and one man's quest for the American Dream.
0.0A short documentary concerning a group of friends who get together, eat shawarma and drink beer. They talk utter nonsense at times, yet they couldn't be happier.
Filmed in the white working-class suburbs of Detroit, Spook House reveals a community reveling in the macabre. Front lawns are transformed into cemeteries, kitchens become mausoleums and dismembered ‘bodies’ are prepared for cannibal feasts. Cameron Jamie’s camera tracks the celebrants as the nights become longer and darker.
6.4In America, size matters. The bigger you are, the more power you have, especially in the business world. Anat Baron takes you on a no holds barred exploration of the U.S. beer industry that ultimately reveals the truth behind the label of your favorite beer. Told from an insider’s perspective, the film goes behind the scenes of the daily battles and all out wars that dominate the industry.
5.0Amid the radical politics and cultural upheaval of the late 1960s, a series of brutal murders targeting young women gripped the twin university towns of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Michigan. Home to the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University, the communities grew increasingly anxious as police seemed unable to stop the killer—or killers—responsible. Through interviews with law enforcement, political figures, and women who lived through the fear, this independent documentary examines not just a series of crimes, but the social and political tensions that enabled them—many of which still resonate today.
0.0Lambic is a style of beer that has been brewed in Belgium since hundreds of years ago, and today it still remains under that almost magical halo around its production process and the mysterious yeast that make it possible. Lambic: about time & passion is a project that we started as a way of giving voice to lambic beer and to those characters that play an important role in the development and preservation of this ancient style of beer.
The Last of the Little Breweries, a student film documenting the history of the Spoetzel Brewery in Lavaca County, Texas, was produced and directed by University of Texas at Austin student Frank Binney (later a professor in the Radio-Television-Film Department) in 1976. Tracing Bavarian-born brewmaster Kosmos Spoetzel's journey through Egypt, Canada, and San Francisco before landing in Shiner, Texas, in 1915, it won an Achievement Award in documentary at the 4th Annual Student Film Awards (now known as the Student Academy Awards) in 1977.
7.9Depicts the story of Jalen Rose and his other Fab Five teammates, Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson. Called by some “the greatest class ever recruited,” the five freshmen not only electrified the game, but also brought new style with their baggy shorts, black socks and brash talk. “The Fab Five” relives the recruitment process that got all five of them to Ann Arbor, the cultural impact they made, the two runs to NCAA title game, the Webber “timeout” in the 1993 championship and the scandal that eventually tarnished their accomplishments.
5.5Nestled in the woods outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a sleepaway camp for kids who are nonspeaking. To express themselves, they must use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices that translate their composed messages into audible speech. Follow the lives and experiences of these campers as a series of immersive, vérité-style character studies.
