The Ann Arbor Film Festival launches its 50th season in September with a five-part Retrospective Screening Series, which  presents influential and rare films from its five decades of ground breaking exhibition.

• September 22 - The first retrospective screening includes films by Alice Anne Parker (a.k.a. Anne Severson), including her 1971 film Near the Big Chakra, an influential feminist film that provoked a riot during its screening at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 1972. Severson will be in attendance and will be interviewed by artist and UM Art & Design professor Holly Hughes following the screening.

• October 20 – The AAFF 50th: Retrospective Screening Series continues with a program of short archival films selected and presented by guest curator Mark Toscano, film preservationist for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

• November 30 - David Gatten selects and introduces influential films from AAFF’s exhibition history. Gatten’s been attending AAFF for more than two decades as a filmmaker, visiting professor and 2007 festival juror.

• January 25, 2012 - Toronto filmmaker and 37th AAFF juror, Mike Hoolboom, visits Ann Arbor to present a program of significant films curated from the AAFF’s rich history.

Solar Flares Burn For You
Friday 16th September, 20h
Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, 42-44 Pollard Row, London, E2 6NB

An evening of psychedelic cine-sonic shape-shifting

Featuring:
*rarely seen psychedelic underground films from the BFI - pow!
*cosmic music by Raagnagrok - k-blamm!
*guest DJs Julian House and Jim Jupp (Ghost Box Records) - zonk!
*light projections by Bardo Light Show and Anti-Gravity Chamber - zap!

‘Solar Flares Burn For You’ presents a specially curated programme, of rarely seen short psychedelic and pop-art films (1967-73), all originally produced with the financial assistance of the BFI and now preserved in the BFI National Archive. To mark this triumphant return to the public psyche, the films will be screened at East London’s Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club on Friday 16th September from 8pm.

Famed for hosting underground burlesque nights, performance art and raucous music events, for this evening only the venue will be transformed into an immersive moving image environment to invoke the spirit of the original underground arts lab culture from which the films emerged.

Moving outside of the staid and reverential space of the traditional cinema theatre, ‘Solar Flares Burn For You’ will harness moving images and sonic experimentation to take you beyond the screen and into the fabric of a live happening in which all are welcome to participate.

With the 90 minute programme of short films forming the centrepiece of the event, the screening will segue into a special live music performance by Raagnagrok, visually augmented by a live mix of visuals by the Bardo Light Show and the Anti-Gravity Chamber.