Special Events
Each year the State Street area is host to a series of special events including our own world-class art fair. We are honored to be the neighborhood where the Book Festival, the Summer Festival, and the Film Festival take place.
The Ann Arbor Book Festival’s mission is to promote reading, heighten awareness of literacy challenges, and showcase the rich culture of the written word in Michigan and beyond. The first Book Festival, held in the spring of 2004, was formed as a response to the very successful first community read.
The Book Festival will turn the page on its fifth anniversary at its annual event on May 15-18, 2008. The Book Festival is a community-based celebration organized by a large group of volunteers to showcase the written word in Ann Arbor.
True to its name, the Ann Arbor Book Festival is a festive occasion with a very serious purpose: to promote a culture of literacy in the greater community. Each year the festival features a broad range of activities and events that appeal to visitors of all ages and interests. These include poetry readings, children's author presentations and activities, panel discussions, and programs featuring various writing genres.
The AABF is a 501(c) (3) organization and is funded through a combination of grants, corporate sponsorships, and individual donations. As the Festival grows, other activities and events will take place during the calendar year to bring focus to the event and to promote awareness of the Festival and its mission.
The Ann Arbor Summer Festival is an exhilarating celebration of performing arts, outdoor entertainment and community spirit. Each year, the three-week event offers dozens of performances, activities, exhibitions, parties, and more with eclectic music, dance, theater, film, visual arts and family fun. The Festival was incorporated in 1978 as a town-gown non-profit organization and presented its first full season in 1984. Governed by a thirty-four member Board of Trustees, half appointed by the University of Michigan Board of Regents and half by the City Council of Ann Arbor, the Festival was established to support two concurrent and complimentary performing arts programs, one indoor and one outdoor, on the campus of the University of Michigan.
Now celebrating is silver anniversary, the Festival invigorates the neighborhood and community with a series of presentations. The Mainstage series occurs in the Power Center and Hill Auditorium, and includes ticketed performances of music, dance, theater and comedy that are national and international in scope. The second series, Top of the Park, takes place on Washington Street and the Ingalls Mall on the central campus, and presents films and concerts free to the public.
Begun in 1963, the Ann Arbor Film Festival is the oldest film festival in North America that showcases independent and experimental films. Each year world-class filmmakers come to Ann Arbor to jury hundreds of entries to the festival. The resulting winners are showcased in a week long series of screenings at the historic Michigan Theater. Thousands of influential filmmakers have showcased early work at the AAFF incluning such film luminaries as Kenneth Anger, Agnes Verda, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Gus Van Zant, Barbara Hammer, Lawrence Kasdan, and George Lucas.
The Ann Arbor Film Festival receives more than 2,000 entries annually from more than 300 countries and serves as one of a handful of Academy Award-qualifying festivals in the United States. The AAFF is a pioneer of the traveling film festival tour, which each year visits more then 15 theaters, universities, and museums across the country. In December 2007, Variety president and publisher Charlie Koones named the AAFF one of the “10 Film Festivals We Love” in a list that was culled from over 6,000 festivals around the world.
Two of filmdom legends of the documentary, Ken Burns and Michael Moore, premiered “Huey Long” and “Bowling for Columbine” at the AAFF.