Calling all Fans of Underground & Independent Cinema
On Sunday June 25 from 3-4 pm Book Beat will host a talk with Frank Uhle author of Cinema Ann Arbor. Uhle will discuss Ann Arbor’s reputation and history as a locus for underground and avant-garde film activities for nearly 100 years. He will be joined by musician Matthew Smith to moderate the discussion. Book Beat is located at 26010 Greenfield in Oak Park, Michigan 48237. Please call (248) 968-1190 for further information.
“Frank Uhle’s Cinema Ann Arbor is a whopping big gift – to historians, archivists and film lovers of every shape. Mind-bogglingly comprehensive, it is also deeply emotional for all the lucky folks, like me, who wandered through Ann Arbor’s magical portal into a life in the movies. Priceless, delightful, and necessary.”
—Lawrence Kasdan, writer, producer, and filmmaker
“Cinema Ann Arbor is a brilliantly reported, infectiously written piece of cultural history that tells the story of how one small Midwestern city, and the university it anchored, became to the college film society what Florence was to the Renaissance….Frank Uhle has captured the moment when cinema became, for a new generation, a kind of religion, with its own rituals and sacred texts and a spirit of exploratory mystery that has all but vanished from the culture.”
—Owen Gleiberman, chief film critic, Variety
“An invaluable and brilliantly detailed history of a unique regional film culture that touched the world, continuing to influence the lives of those who’ve been a part of it in any way. An absolute joy to read.”
—Elliot Wilhelm, Curator of Film, Detroit Institute of Arts
“Frank Uhle’s deeply researched and spectacularly informative book is an essential read for all movie lovers. Seeing thought-provoking art films on the U of M campus before the advent of videotapes, DVDs, and streaming was always a special event for me, and Cinema Ann Arbor perfectly captures the pioneering spirit of film presenters who kept me spellbound in the dark.”
—Martin Bandyke, WDET
About Cinema Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, long known for its political and cultural activism, has an equally compelling history of engagement with film and media. In their quest to show art and independent films and in their efforts to raise money in the name of artistic freedom, local and campus societies pushed the boundaries of conformity. Delving into almost one hundred years of rarely glimpsed history, Cinema Ann Arbor melds interviews, deep archival research, and over four hundred images into a vivid history of film in one extraordinary town. These stories, told with urgency and exquisite detail, are firsthand accounts of the unforgettable people who created Ann Arbor’s magnificent twentieth-century film scene.
Featuring interviews with filmmaker Ken Burns, Oscar-nominated editor Jay Cassidy, producer John Sloss, and more, this masterpiece provides insights into how a Midwestern college town developed a robust underground art film community that inspired those across the country. This is a must-have book for cinema and media aficionados, film archivists, and anyone interested in the cultural history of Ann Arbor.
About the Author
Cultural historian Frank Uhle writes about the fascinating people and stories behind beloved film and music projects, with an emphasis on his adopted hometown of Ann Arbor. A projectionist since the early 1980s, Uhle’s devotion to film was catalyzed when he joined one of the University of Michigan’s student film societies as an undergraduate. Membership in Cinema II provided a rigorous education in the movies and a warm, robust, and lasting community of fellow film lovers whose stories take shape across the pages of Cinema Ann Arbor. Uhle has shown films for various campus film societies, the University Drive-In, the Michigan and State theaters, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and along the way made experimental 8 mm films, helped archive the papers of Orson Welles, and served as proofreader for Psychotronic Video magazine. He’s also the host of a long-running radio program on WCBN that highlights Michigan music, and a frequent contributor to Pulp, Ugly Things, and other publications where he writes about film, music, business, history, and culture.