M33M

The Michigan Movie Makers Micro Movie Marathon or M33M is a twice/thrice yearly festival of regional movies up to 3 minutes long. Major Awards are audience selected in Summer and Winter.

M33M Laurels

2015 Winter
Pleases the Goddess – Olivia Buzzell, Charlotte Gruman, SHE
Allure of a Tumble Down Shack – Olivia Buzzell, Charlotte Gruman, SHE
Crossing Chasms – Olivia Buzzell, Charlotte Gruman, SHE
Golden Reboot – Tevin Miles, The Doctor Going to the TCFF
 

Ballot and Movies /  Thanks / Process

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2014 Winter
Super or Extra Like – Patrick Kelly and Jim Kenney,  Gun Safety
Standard Like – Richard Brauer, Dogman2 Trailer
Almost Like – Dan Kelly with Fuzzy Cat,  Secrets of Shaving with a Disposable Razor
Golden Boot – Carol Schaefer-Hill, Drawers of Memory

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2013 Winter
Fulcrum of Heaven – Kirk Ciaglaski and Scott Ciaglaski, The Ouroboros Escape
What Would Tesla Do? – Mida Chu, Shh…utter
Tall Blonde Girlfriend – Lena Maude Wilson, Flash Samplings

 

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2012 Fall (Great Lakes Bioneers)
Arianna Wasserman, Rusty Collection
Cody Stowe, Pollution an Over Exaggeration Animation
Cameron Web, EPA Super Soldier

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2012 Summer
Mostly Michigan – Andrea Claire Maio, Back to Your Senses Episode Excerpt, Zoe
Secret Coherency – Ben Woody and friends Cinemaphobia
Testeriffic – Jim Kinney and Patrick Kelly, Wild Horses

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2012 Winter
Schrödinger’s Cat – Patrick Kelly, Jesus on the Floor
Brilliant Beginnings – Jimmy Tuffts, CLIP_028
Nest of the Northlings – Jeff Lange, What’s in a Michigan Wetland

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2011 Summer
Surreal So Real – Yordan (Danny) Lazarov, Imitator
Supreme Extremes – Patrick and Luke Kelly, Wild Survival
Beyond Awesome – Jamey Barnard, Roseville Cemetery

Major Awards Explained

The frequency of M33Ms is variable, to say the least. What started out as a semi-annual affair went thrice yearly with the addition of the environmentally themed Great Lakes Bioneers M33M in the Fall, where Major Awards are selected by a JURY BEFORE screening. Now we’re lucky if we get one in a year. The vagaries of volunteerism.

If we do Summer and Winter, Major Awards are selected by the AUDIENCE immediately AFTER screening, based on criteria atypical of film festivals. Each Major Award is a sort of micro story to engage and challenge the audience, so the selection process is much more than a mere popularity contest.

Found objects with slippery iconic potential are occasionally presented as trophies for each Major Award, which enables the organizers to pass along assorted house clutter, inappropriate Christmas presents, and the odd talisman of dark power.

The M33M Major Award is swiped from A Christmas Story, the 1983 film inspired by Gene Shepard who was also it’s narrator.

Major Awards A-Z

Allure of a Tumble Down Shack That boarded up farmhouse barely glimpsed in passing, shaded by a copse of poplar, overgrown and almost forgotten. Your mother pulls over the Suburu and takes your hand, through a dusting of snow you both trudge up and peer through the cracks in the planks, seeking a way in. A movie that seeks a way in, bringing you along.

Beyond Awesome and the FIREPLACE TENDER, reminding us of the ancient origins of storytelling, when the shaman tended the fire and told the tales that kept the tribe strong.

Brilliant Beginnings recognizes emerging movie makers. Like a whiff of something wonderful or the fizz and sputter that precedes the upward whoosh of a handcrafted D engine bottle rocket, Brilliant Beginnings is awarded to the movie that is not quite a shoe, but so much more than a sock. Brilliant Beginnings is symbolized by a pair of RED PLAID KNITTED KNEE HIGHS, complete with thin rubber soles and fuzzy shin tassels.

Chasm Crossing Winter is the bridge between the past and the present year, what we were and what we think we might now be. Which movie crossed your chasms, was a whisking from inspiration to inception, nearly to now, that blurred your wishing with wow.

Fulcrum of Heaven  “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” Freakin’ Archimedes. Move the world, big whoop. If we’re getting ambitious, why not just lever heaven? Imagine a movie smack in the center of everything, a divine fulcrum by which, with the lever of our imagination, we could jostle the cosmos.

The Golden Reboot (Annual Summer) The Golden Reboot goes to the best bumper that didn’t win the Traverse City Film Festival’s bumper contest. Here’s a slightly ranty elaboration.

Like (Facebook® Fuzzy Logic Version) 2014 Winter honored the ubiquitous Like of social media. FB may or may not be considering adding a little more fuzzy logic to the Standard Like, specifically Almost Like and Super Like. Quick to glom onto anything remotely trendy, the M33M committee assigned marbles to each shade of Like.

Mostly Michigan for the movie that elegantly reveals a place and/or feature unique to our fine state. Maybe there’s goosebumps, a sly grin or a swerve in your personal navigation because NOW… you know.

Nest of the Northlings is awarded to the project that either proposes or reveals a righteous regional aesthetic for northwestern Michigan. Imagine a gun show crossed with the Bioneers – what can encompass the totality of our magnificent mix? To represent the Nest of the Northlings,  a TWO DOLLAR BILL from an imaginary utopian Northern Nation that we might someday aspire to be, the paper ancestor of the Toonie.

Pleases the Goddess That which delights the devine feminine in all her manifestations, as water can be both yielding or implacable, whether warmed by devotion or chilled by arrogance.

Supreme Extremes and the FIBERGLASS SUITCASE, symbolic of auspicious opposites. The suitcase is a metaphor for the Tao – it is the emptiness within that makes it useful. The solid implies space, and the thing is all about the nothing. Supreme Extremes acknowledges a movie’s fortunate balance of motion and stillness, conquest and failure, shadow and light, sharp and soft, tragedy and humor.

Schrödinger’s Cat, refers to the famous thought experiment proposed by Erwin Schrödinger in which a cat is simultaneously dead and alive. Schrödinger’s Cat is awarded to the movie that audience members cannot decide whether they love or hate. The award is embodied by a SUN BLEACHED THIGH BONE possibly belonging to a feral cat but more likely a racoon, discovered by James Weston Schaberg and Mykl Werth on a blustery dune hike.

Secret Coherency  Apparent randomness and chaos yields a nugget of enlightenment. No mere mish mash of accidental composition, edgy color correction, dismal lighting and over the top acting. A shining through the mistakes and cliches seems to suck you in. Whether flabbergasted or nonplussed, you never once had time to remind yourself that there’s less than 3 minutes to go.

Surreal So Real and the CURSED CERAMIC MONKEY LAMP. The awfulness of the CCML is compelling – it’s so freaky and disturbing one can hardly look away. This perfectly symbolizes the quest for distilled experience that only those with great courage and a constant fixation on the infinite dare undertake. The kind of folks who create movies that can bend our perception to the point where it wraps back around mobius-wise to perfect reality, to truth, to the now.

Tall Blonde Girlfriend  Small minded people assert that blondes are ditzy, especially if they are tall and attractive. The Tall Blonde Girlfriend goes to the movie that is not only lovely to look at (or especially sweet on the ears) but in contrast to the dominant culture cliche is also clever, smart and packing serious special sauce. Ok, could be Tall Blonde Boyfriend.

Testeriffic Maybe it’s just a little tiny experiment, a sketch, a romp in the sandbox, a hint at future triumph. You wish you could pledge $5 to that project’s Kickstarter, so long as the movie maker goes for it! More chances, bigger risks. They’ve got to slide more chips into the pot, bet their whole darn stack. Whatever that was… you want MORE.

What Would Tesla Do?  “Over One hundred years ago, a Serbian-American inventor by the name of Nikola Tesla started fixing things that’s weren’t broken.” For deep background on Tesla read theoatmeal.com, meanwhile, here’s the Major Award metaphor. What Would Tesla Do? recognizes pokey genius and the movie that delivers the goods without caring whether you even ordered any goods in the first place. A movie that is simply amazing without trying to be, without giving a hoot about what anyone else thinks. A movie that will end up alone and broke in a New York City apartment after a lifelong smackdown of mediocrity.

 Rights and Privileges

The following is an abridged list of Rights and Privileges accorded to Major Awardees. The complete list is confidential because the full and fabulous blessings accorded could be short circuited through temerarious disclosure.

1) Inclusion on the M33M Major Awards page.

2) Use of the M33M laurels on social media with authorized link back M33M Major Awards page, for verification.

3) VIP status at the Annual Official Chinese New Year Dance Parade on Crystal Lake in Beulah, Michigan, late January – early February, (contingent on adequate ice thickness).

4) Multi-incarnation subscription to Michigan Movie Maker email updates, please provide updated Akashic archive ID from previous lives when applying.

5) Stewardship of handmade trophies commemorating and symbolizing the inherent premise of each unique Major Award