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Posted May 3, 2019 by Mike Tyrkus in Features
 
 

Highlights of the Cinetopia Film Festival 2019 Lineup

The Cinetopia Film Festival has released their comprehensive annual film schedule for 2019. This year’s festival will run from May 10 thru May 19, and will feature twenty Michigan premieres, four Midwest premieres, and three U.S. Premieres. Cinetopia continues across southeast Michigan this year with screenings at the State Theatre, University of Michigan-on campus, Arab American National Museum, the Senate Theater, Cinema Detroit, The Maple Theater and Emagine Royal Oak.

Cinetopia Film FestivalSpanning over ten days, this year’s Cinetopia Film Festival brings more than 60 films to the Detroit, Dearborn, and Ann Arbor areas. The festival represents the best feature-length dramas, comedies, and documentaries from the world’s best film festivals, including Sundance, Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Berlin, SXSW, and Tribeca.

The Cinetopia Film Festival opens at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor on the evening of Friday, May 10 with festivities beginning at 5:30pm and a kick-off party followed by the Michigan Premiere of the film, Before You Know It, starring Alec Baldwin and Mandy Patinkin at 8:00pm. Writer/director Hannah Pearl Utt will host a post screening Q&A session. The festival concludes on Sunday, May 19th with a screening of the thought-provoking and family-friendly documentary, Autonomy at 2:00pm. After the film, audience members will be invited to participate in a special Q&A session with Eddie Alterman, the editor-in-chief of Car and Driver magazine. To close out the night, a post-movie block party will take place at the world’s first autonomous vehicle testing facility Mcity.

Highlights of the more than sixty films (many making their U.S. or Michigan premier) being screened at this year’s festival include:

 

FONOTUNE

FONOTUNEIn another time and place, where people barely communicate and an impending apocalypse is in the air, lone drifter, Mono, makes an odyssey to experience mysterious rock star Blitz’s final cosmic performance out in the Big White Nothing, a desert surrounding the city. Here, people escape from reality, and each other, through music. A constant companion in their headphones is Radio, nihilistic DJ of radio station FONOTUNE, playing his own joyous soundtrack to destruction! On his journey, Mono shares fleeting connections with a gang of strangers: Teen-hooker Stereo, lo-fi cowboy Analog, and the sassy Bubblegum. Their paths finally collide in an audiovisual showdown with the mythical musician many thought dead or long-gone. They each carry Blitz’s cassettes and vinyl; a strange and electrifying call-to-arms where he proclaims “the Universe is my Rock-n-Roll! Destruction is my music!”. The final explosive result is an incendiary performance to remember! And it may finally make them feel something.

BEFORE YOU KNOW IT

BEFORE YOU KNOW ITStage manager Rachel Gurner (writer/director HANNAH PEARL UTT) still lives in her childhood apartment—along with her off-kilter actress sister, Jackie; eccentric playwright father Mel (MANDY PATINKIN); and deadpan preteen niece Dodge—above the tiny theatre they own and operate. Level-headed and turtleneck-wearing Rachel is the only thing standing between her family and utter chaos. Then, in the wake of a sudden family tragedy, Rachel and Jackie learn their presumed-deceased mother is alive and thriving as a soap-opera star. Now the sisters’ already-precarious balance turns upside down, and Rachel must figure out how to liberate herself from this surreal imbroglio.

CROSSING BEYOND

CROSSING BEYOND“Flowers bloom on every border” wrote Korean poet Ham Min-Bok, a metaphor which inspired acclaimed documentarian Yi Seung-jun to explore how the Olympic values reach across borders of all kinds to deliver hope. Crossing Beyond follows a select group of athletes from diverse backgrounds—British snowboarder Billy Morgan, Ghanaian skeleton racer Akwasi Frimpong, ice hockey player Park Yoon-jung and the unified Korean team, Austrian ski jumper Daniela Iraschko-Stolz, and Afghani Alpine skiers Sayed Alishah Farhang and Sajjad Husaini—as they navigate the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018. It tells the stories of athletes compelled to confront personal, social, political and geographical boundaries in the face of daunting challenges. YI SEUNG-JUN captures the Olympic spirit and soul of this edition of the Olympic Games, celebrating their essence by asking deeper questions about the value of sport beyond the podium.

AUTONOMY

AUTONOMYCelebrated journalist and author MALCOLM GLADWELL lead the first comprehensive documentary look at self-driving cars in Autonomy. The film is a cinematic exploration of the world of automated vehicles—from their technical history to the personal narratives of those affected by them to the many unanswered questions about how this technology will affect modern society. Autonomy features interviews with industry pioneers and scenes with cutting-edge “AVs” in action around the world. Inspired by a special issue of Car and Driver, Autonomy reinforces the context of where the “car” meets the coming revolution in mobility, presenting an essential primer on the subject and how it will affect you.

For more information on the 2019 Cinetopia Film Festival, please visit:

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Mike Tyrkus

Mike Tyrkus

Editor in Chief at CinemaNerdz.com
An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.
Mike Tyrkus

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