INAATE/SE/ re-imagines an ancient Ojibway story, the Seven Fires Prophecy, which both predates and predicts first contact with Europeans. A kaleidoscopic experience blending documentary, narrative, and experimental forms, INAATE/SE/ transcends linear colonized history to explore how the prophecy resonates through the generations in their indigenous community within Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. With acute geographic specificity, and grand historical scope, the film fixes its lens between the sacred and the profane to pry open the construction of contemporary indigenous identity.
British 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.
Steeped 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.
Nestled 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.
Depicts 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.
In this sports documentary, Connor Stalions addresses the allegations surrounding the Michigan football sign-stealing scandal for the first time.
Lake Effect is a two-year Michigan ski film highlighting the joys of backyard adventure and the shifting perspective of Mike King, a professional skier who for a decade has only sought adventure from the peaks of mountain tops in the far reaches of the West. In 2020 when Covid encouraged lockdowns & travel restrictions, Mike's life on the road came to a screeching halt. This abrupt change inspired Mike to take the hurdle as an opportunity to rediscover the unique, untapped terrain, ski culture, and the people thriving right here in his home state of Michigan. Throughout filming Lake Effect Mike realized you don't need to travel far to have an epic adventure. Rather some creativity, curiosity, and the willingness to walk out the door to the abundance that starts right in our backyards.
A character-driven, action-packed documentary about Detroit, told through the eyes of the Detroit firefighters, the men and women charged with the thankless task of saving a city that many have written off as dead.
Wisconsin'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.
An in-depth look at one of college sports' fiercest rivalries, Michigan-Michigan State, and how this in-state battle has only grown to new heights over the past decade in both football and basketball.
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.
A Lake of the Isles homeowner and a Minneapolis chainsaw sculptor shape meaning (and a twenty foot tall pencil) from the twisted trunk of a fallen oak tree. But this pencil isn’t meant to last. Every year, thousands gather to sacrifice a part of the pencil in a sharpening ceremony, and in the process renew the collective promise to “do something.”
Follows a predominately Arab-American high school football team from Dearborn, Michigan during the last ten days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and unearths the story of a community desperately holding onto its Islamic faith while struggling to gain acceptance in post 9-11 America.
This Traveltalk series short begins in Chicago, where the narrator and his crew board a cruise ship. After a 20-hour trip up Lake Michigan, they arrive at Mackinac Island, near the southeast tip of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. On the island, we see many of the attractions for which it is famous. These include Arch Rock, Old Fort Mackinack, and a hotel owned by Chauncey Depew. No automobiles are allowed on the island. Transportation is limited to bicycles and horse-drawn carriages.
When the immigrants came to America, their cultures entered the "great melting pot." In Michigan's Upper Peninsula Finnish immigrants mixed their musical traditions with many other cultures, creating a sound that was unique to the "Copper Country."
Further Sasquatch encounters.
Since Little League Baseball was founded in 1939, about 40 million kids have played the sport. The list includes future Hall of Famers like Carl Yastrzemski, Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan, and hundreds of other future Major Leaguers. But of all the kids who ever played Little League, the best of the best was a boy you’ve probably never heard of: Art “Pinky” Deras. In the summer of 1959, he led the team from Hamtramck, Mich., to the Little League World Series title, and in the process, he put together a Little League season the likes of which we might never see again. His amazing story comes to life in “The Legend of Pinky Deras: The Greatest Little-Leaguer There Ever Was,” a new film from Blue Hammer Films. Pinky received a ton of national publicity back in 1959, but then he fell off the map. In the half-century since he lit the Little League world on fire, there have been no films about him, no magazine stories, not even a single newspaper article.
A man hikes 550 miles across the North Country Trail in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula from July through February, experiencing it in all of its seasons.
Follows the story that is shaking up Democratic Party politics nationwide, highlighting the role of power and money in a system many believe is broken but can be fixed.
Mackinac Island, Michigan, is a tiny island in the center of the Great Lakes. Besides being a world favorite "Horse Drawn" and "Victorian Era" summer destination, the island holds another treasure few have ever seen: its wild, magical and beautiful winters. The 72-minute film Ice Bridge follows islanders' unique and quirky lifestyle throughout an entire year while tracing the formation of the spectacular phenomenon known as the "ice bridge" (a three-mile span of ice that allows islanders to cross to the mainland).