
THE ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL IN THE AGE OF AUTHORITARIANISM
By Joe Miller
For me, the defining film of the 63rd Ann Arbor Film Festival was one that screened on the final night and didn’t receive any awards: The Geneva Mechanism: A Ghost Movie by Péter Lichter. Described as “the ghosts of celluloid return to haunt digital space,” it’s a five-minute-long meditation on an old film projector, shot in black and white and copiously manipulated and de- and re-constructed with digital effects that make it seem as though it’s intruding into our consciousnesses from across the spheres