Blog Post
America's Music Film & Discussion: Swing Jazz
by hillary dorwart
Wednesday April 10, 2013: 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm -- Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room
Mark Clague, Associate Professor of Musicology and Director of Research at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, leads this screening and discussion session on Swing Jazz Music focusing on the documentaries: Ken Burns' Jazz: Episode 6: Swing, the Velocity of Celebration and International Sweethearts of Rhythm. This screening is part of AADL's participation in the America's Music film/discussion/concert series.
America's Music has been made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor.
Blog Post
America's Music Film & Discussion: Broadway And Tin Pan Alley
by hillary dorwart
Wednesday March 27, 2013: 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm -- Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room
UM Professor Mark Clague leads this screening and discussion session on Broadway and Tin Pan Alley Music focusing on the film "Broadway: The American Musical, Episode 2: Syncopated City (1919-1933)." Episode Two of this award-winning series on the history of Broadway focuses on the 1920s, Broadway's most prolific era.
America's Music has been made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor.
Blog Post
America's Music Project: Explore Popular Music March through May with Films, Concerts, and Talks
by mariah
AADL presents America's Music: A Film History of Our Popular Music from Blues to Bluegrass to Broadway, an eight-week series featuring documentary film screenings and discussions at the Downtown Library.
Wednesday evening sessions, led by Mark Clague, Associate Professor of Musicology and Director of Research, University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, will focus on various genres of twentieth-century American popular music, including:
- Blues and Gospel Music
- Broadway and Tin Pan Alley
- Swing Jazz
- Country and Bluegrass
- Rock
- Latin Rhythms From Mambo To Hip Hop
A final session on May 8 will center on the history of performances at Ann Arbor’s own Hill Auditorium.
Throughout the series, the Library and Kerrytown Concert House will present related concerts performed by some of the area’s prominent musicians.
The series begins March 13 with a concert by Mr. B and a film preview at the Downtown Library.
The Ann Arbor District Library is one of fifty sites nationwide to host the America’s Music series, a project of the Tribeca Film Institute in collaboration with the American Library Association, Tribeca Flashpoint, and the Society for American Music.
The AADL series is cosponsored by Kerrytown Concert House, UMS, WCBN 88.3 FM, and the Friends of the AADL.
America’s Music has been made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor.
Blog Post
Film And Discussion: The Award-Winning Documentary "Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football"
by hillary dorwart
Friday March 15, 2013: 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm -- Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room
The Downtown AADL screens the award-winning 2011 documentary Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football which follows a predominately Arab-American high school football team from Dearborn as they practice for the big game during the last ten days of Ramadan. Imagine having to fast while preparing for an athletic competition!
Dr. Matthew Stiffler, Professor at UM, and researcher at the Arab American National Museum, will lead the post-film discussion.
Blog Post
Film & Discussion: Broken On All Sides
by Bertha
Matthew Pillischer, director of this 2012 documentary, will lead a discussion after a screening of the film. Broken On All Sides: Race, Mass Incarceration and New Visions for Criminal Justice in the U.S. focuses on mass incarceration in the U.S. and racial inequalities in the criminal justice system. It discusses the theory that mass incarceration has become "The New Jim Crow" by targeting people of color and allowing much of the discrimination that was legal in the Jim Crow era to be applied to "criminals."
Using interviews with people on many sides of the criminal justice system--including Michelle Alexander the author of the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads book, The New Jim Crow-- the film attempts to answer and provoke questions about the American penal system.
Cosponsored by the UM Community Scholars Program.
Thursday, February 21 -- 6 - 8:30 PM -- Grade 9 - Adult -- Downtown Library Lower Level Multi-Purpose Room
Blog Post
A Selection of February’s Non-fiction Staff Picks
by cecile
Our incredible staff has been at it again. If you are in search an interesting read, look no further.
Here are just a few of this month’s non-fiction selections:
Chinese Lessons by John Ponfret, “which follows the lives of a group of Pomfret’s former classmates, is a highly personal, honest, funny and well-informed account of China’s hyperactive effort to forget its past and reinvent its future”.—NYT
Droidmaker by Michael Rubin “…really captures the 20-year technology journey that runs through Lucasfilm for a period and ends with Pixar Animation Studios. In short, it's the tale of relentless technophiles, visionary patrons and a film revolution.” Register UK
A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn by James Donovan is “A virulent stew of hubris, inexperience, misunderstanding of other cultures and misinformation overflowed into disaster. And Donovan puts it all into perspective without the biases of so many works about the battle's events and personalities.” –Billings Gazette
Ruffian: A Racetrack Romance by William Nack “As he writes in this short, fascinating, melancholy hybrid of turf history and personal memoir, “I have thought of Ruffian so often over the years that today she flits around like a ghost in all the mustier rooms of my reveries, a boarder who has had a run of the place.”’—NYT
Nine Suitcases by Bela Zsolt “This is by far the best book I've come across on the subject of the extermination of Hungary's Jews. Zsolt is and will be classified by literary historians as a minor novelist, whose tragedy was that his greatest story happened to himself.”-- Guardian
The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898 “Thomas has delivered an innovative, frequently entertaining and valuable retelling of an episode that set the pattern for more than a century of foreign military adventurism.” Washington Post
All of these titles are available at our Downtown location on the first floor Staff Picks shelf or by placing a hold and having them delivered to your preferred branch location.
Blog Post
Film & Discussion: Blacking Up: Hip-Hop's Remix of Race and Identity
by Bertha
Blacking Up explores racial identity through the lens of hip-hop music and culture.
This 2010 documentary examines the popularity of hip-hop among America's white youth, and considers whether this reflects
new racial understanding in white America or reinforces an ugly history of stereotypes.
The director, Robert A. Clift is a filmmaker from Washington, DC, whose previous film, Stealing Home: The Case of Cuban Baseball, appeared nationally on PBS.
He is currently writing his dissertation for the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University
A discussion will follow the film.
Cosponsored by the UM Community Scholars Program
Thursday, January 31, 6:00 - 8:30 PM -- Downtown Library Multi-Purpose Room
Blog Post
Film & Discussion: Award-Winning Documentary About A True "Horse-Whisperer": Buck
by hillary dorwart
Thursday January 24, 2013: 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm -- Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room
The Downtown AADL screens the acclaimed 2011 documentary Buck. Meet Buck Brannaman, a man who overcame an abusive childhood and is now a successful "horse whisperer." He travels nine months of the year teaching people how to communicate with their horses.
A post-film discussion will be led by Kimberly Cardeccia of Hidden Promise LLC., a Licensed Professional Counselor who has been involved with horses for 30 years.
Blog Post
Film & Discussion: Encounter Point
by hillary dorwart
Thursday November 8, 2012: 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm -- Downtown Library: 4th Floor Meeting Room
Created by a Palestinian, Israeli, North American, and Brazilian production team, this award-winning documentary Encounter Point is the story of an Israeli settler, a Palestinian ex-prisoner, a bereaved Israeli mother and a wounded Palestinian bereaved brother who risk their safety and public standing to press for an end to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.
For two years, the Just Vision film crew followed the stories of ordinary people who feel driven to work for an end to bloodshed and occupation in favor of peace.
A post-film community discussion will follow. This event is co-sponsored by the University of Michigan Community Scholars Program. This event is for Grade 9-Adult.
Blog Post
James Bond: Pushing 60 and Still Looking Good
by patrickpdunn
Everyone's favorite suave secret agent, James Bond, is headed back to the big screen with the upcoming release of Skyfall. The new flick stars Daniel Craig in his third outing as Bond, alongside a killer cast including Ralph Fiennes, Javier Bardem as the newest Bond villain, and Ben Whishaw in his debut as the gadget-master Q. The flick, which continues to dig into Bond's origins as seen previously in 2006's Casino Royale, has been receiving early critical acclaim as one of Agent 007's best. Opening in theaters everywhere November 9, Skyfall happens to come out exactly 50 years after the original Bond movie, Dr. No, which starred Sean Connery in 1962.
But before Skyfall arrives in theaters, AADL's collection offers plenty of ways to celebrate Mr. Bond's big birthday--and another even bigger 007 milestone. While Bond may be 50 in movie years, he's existed on the printed page for almost 60. Casino Royale, the original Bond story by Ian Fleming, was published in 1953 and is available via the AADL catalog. Fleming went on to write 14 James Bond books. His final one, Octopussy and The Living Daylights, was published in 1966, two years after his death. Fleming's series has been followed by numerous additional Bond books by authors including Jeffery Deaver, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, and Charlie Higson (who wrote the Young Bond series for teens).
And for those looking to get caught up on the movies, AADL has Bond flicks from the original Dr. No to 2008's Quantum of Solace. For true devotees, try the original 1967 film adaptation of Casino Royale, a wacky spoof of spy films with an all-star cast including David Niven, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, George Raft, and Jean-Paul Belmondo.