Costumed gorilla helped liven up the first night of the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

Two hours before anything hit the screen, AAFF’s opening reception attendees milled around the Michigan Theater lobby, where a DJ spun music on the stairway landing, and partygoers downed wine and coffee and various hors d’ouevres on offer.

The mood carried through to the short breaks between the films in AAFF’s opening night program. During one pause, attendees whistled like birds, and then cooed like pigeons. The animal noises grew louder, until a bleating lamb joined in, as did a clucking chicken. 

After some opening remarks by Michigan Theater executive director Russ Collins; AAFF Board of Directors president Bruce Baker; and AAFF executive director Donald Harrison, the 48th fest kicked off with a backward glance to film poem, “Angel Blue Sweet Wings,” with Aretha Franklin’s “Dr. Feelgood” as its soundtrack. 

4 of the evening’s 11 films fall into AAFF’s animation category. Joanna Priestley’s “Missed Aches” explores the disastrous potentials of spell-check programs; Naoyuki Tsuji’s “The Place Where We Were,” tells the story of a couple that wants a child; Laurie Hill’s inventively fun “Photograph of Jesus” and Caveh Zahedi’s hilarious “The Unmaking of ‘I Am a Sex Addict’”.

Documentary lovers got to see Vanessa Renwick’s “Portrait #3: House of Sound.” And Ann Arbor’s own Jack Cronin got to watch his black and white experimental doc, “Sleeping Bear” – filmed at the Sleeping Bear Dunes Natural Lakeshore – on the big screen.

Experimental films included, “De Mouvement,” by Richard Kerr, and Kent Lambert’s “Fantasy Suite.”

Ann Arbor Film Festival Director Donald Harrison