Artists have meditated on notions of “home” for centuries, and on Friday, Sept. 30, filmmakers, poets, readers, listeners and viewers will gather for the fourth annual FILMETRY Festival, which, this year, will feature short films adapted from poems informed by explorations of what it means to dwell somewhere. FILMETRY will feature 12 short films premiered live at 7 pm at the Lansing Public Media Center. The event is free and open to all, and it is sponsored by the MSU Department of English, MSU Libraries, MSU Film Studies Program and the Lansing Public Media Center.
This year marks the fourth event for FILMETRY, which was co-founded by Cindy Hunter Morgan and Peter Johnston, who both teach in the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University. Johnston is an MSU Film Studies Professor who specializes in teaching digital media and film production methods and manages the Film Studies program’s lab space and equipment. Hunter Morgan teaches creative writing. Each year, they’ve done something new with the event. This year, they worked with a themed issue of MSU Libraries Short Edition, a journal which Hunter Morgan also helped found. Johnston shared selected poems from the “Home” issue in a call for submissions to filmmakers, who were invited to adapt those poems into films. The idea, according to Hunter Morgan and Johnston, was to connect the FILMETRY project with the MSU Libraries Short Edition project, engage with a recent home-themed exhibit at the MSU Broad Art Museum, and expand the important ways FILMETRY helps build relationships across the MSU campus community and across wider communities of artists. This year, for the first time, filmmakers and poets from throughout the world will be represented in the event.
For more information, visit the FILMETRY website.