LA artist Gabriela Ruiz’s immersive visual inquiry considers how images function on and off the screen, and how our memories real and curated are at the center of our personal and cultural identities.

British-Iranian theater maker Javaad Alipoor and Iranian musician, writer, actor, and podcast host King Raam's show “Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World" follows the murder of Iranian cultural icon Fereydoun Farrokhzad after 10 years in political exile.

Photographer Lynn Goldsmith's latest book explores the 1980’s, a decade where more new forms of music and fashion were all popular simultaneously.

Co-founder of the Annual Exhibitions of Artists in Michigan Prisons Janie Paul uses philosophical, aesthetic, and political lenses, to share and explore various modes of resistance employed by imprisoned artists that combat the dehumanization of prison.

My Love Affair With Marriage is a New York Times Critic’s Pick animated feature about a spirited young woman determined to find love in the bewildering world. Director Signe Baumane will go on a storytelling journey exploring the making of the film, which took seven years.

Nkeiru Okoye is an American-born composer of African American and Nigerian ancestry. Her new commission When the Caged Bird Sings is a collaboration between UMS and the U‑M School of Music, Theatre & Dance. When the Caged Bird Sings fuses elements of oratorio, theater, and opera in a multi-movement musical ceremony, which Okoye describes as ​“a gathering” that invokes the ritual of the concert experience as a ritual of community.

Artemio Rodríguez is a Mexican artist who was born in Tacámbaro, Michoacán. Rodriguez’s talk will cover his journey from his beginnings in rural Mexico to his experience crossing the US border, becoming part of the Chicano Art and Mexican printmaking scene, his rise to recognition and giving back to his community. 

Creative provocateur Machine Dazzle has been dazzling stages via costumes, sets, and performance since his arrival in New York in 1994. An artist, costume designer, set designer, singer/​songwriter, art director, and maker, Machine describes himself as a ​“radical queer emotionally driven, instinct-based concept artist and thinker trapped in the role of costume designer, sometimes.”

As part of the 62nd Ann Arbor Film Festival, this special program will showcase a curated program of Lynn Hershman Leeson’s short films curated by Julia Yezbick, followed by a staged conversation between the filmmaker and curator.

Designer, curator, cultural facilitator, choreographer, performer, teacher, and more - Shantell Martin’s work has entranced audiences around the world in its intuitive energy, skill and bravura.