The Reality Factory

We tip our hats to a great Michigan film festival to the south—the venerable Ann Arbor Film Festival, now in its 52nd year. Some of the finest experimental films in the world screen at AAFF, and we’ve chosen our favorites to play in this not-to-be-missed program. Take a walk through Berlin in “Der Spaziergang;” trawl for sand deep in the river bed in the award winning “Lagos Sand Merchants;” see Bill O’Reilly high art in “The Reality Factory;” and experience a one-of-a-kind cinematic experience with “Eleven Forty Seven.”

We tip our hats to a great Michigan film festival to the south—the venerable Ann Arbor Film Festival, now in its 52nd year. Some of the finest experimental films in the world screen at AAFF, and we’ve chosen our favorites to play in this not-to-be-missed program. Take a walk through Berlin in “Der Spaziergang;” trawl for sand deep in the river bed in the award winning “Lagos Sand Merchants;” see Bill O’Reilly high art in “The Reality Factory;” and experience a one-of-a-kind cinematic experience with “Eleven Forty Seven.”

In 2008, the passing of Proposition 8 revoked marriage rights for same-sex couples in California just months after the state Supreme Court legalized it. Here’s your all-access pass behind the scenes of the five-year journey to overturn Proposition 8, a landmark legal battle over one of the most vital civil rights issues of our time. This rousing Sundance award winner by filmmakers Ben Cotner and Ryan White follows history in the making from the very beginning of the battle to the climactic moment when two LGBT activist couples and their larger-than-life lawyers from opposite sides of the political spectrum (who had previously butted heads in the 2000 Bush v. Gore case) team up together to beat the right wing, in front of a right wing Supreme Court.

As a teenage programming prodigy, Aaron Swartz emerged on the tech scene at the tender age of 14 when he helped author the now-ubiquitous blogging technology RSS. Just a few short years later, he became a major voice for an open internet by helping to create the alternate-copy right platform Creative Commons, and co-founding Reddit. His unquenchable thirst for knowledge and passion for freedom of information set him on a path to become one of the pioneers of internet activism. But shortly after being prosecuted by the FBI for his efforts in making millions of academic articles publicly available, Swartz tragically took his life at the age of 26. Director Brian Knappenberger (We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists,”TCFF, ‘12) pays tribute to Swartz’s life in this timely, powerful documentary, a must-see for anyone invested in the future of a free and open internet.