Tian-Jun Gu and Greg Wachtenheim, both students in the University of Michigan's screenwriting program, are blogging for AnnArbor.com from the 49th Ann Arbor Film Festival. Here are their reports from two Day 2 programs on Wednesday.

“Love’s Secret Domain” By Tian-Jun Gu

“Love and its truths revealed in argot and veiled signs.” That’s the 49th AAFF booklet introduction to “Love’s Secret Domain,” a block of films dedicated to exploring love in novel ways. While these films may reveal truths in “argot and veiled signs,” their meanings may end up perplexing viewers because “Love’s Secret Domain” contains some of the most challenging films that the festival has to offer. This is experimental, this is cutting-edge, this is the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

“Hand Soap” (2009), directed by Kei Oyama, is an animated film centering on an adolescent boy and his growing pains. Oyama displays the boy’s troubles in explicit and fantastical detail. From the very first shot, where frogs are being thrown at the boy and splattering the wall behind him, you are experiencing something foreign and familiar. It’s a typical bully scene, but the use of frogs-which represent good fortune in Japanese culture-adds to the irony of the moment. And throughout the entire short, moments such as these arise to remind us of our own adolescent curiosities and misfortunes. While we may have never envisioned a frog singing a pop song that we’d heard earlier in the day, the absurdity of such a sight goes hand in hand with the absurdity of adolescence.

Michael Robinson’s “These Hammers Don’t Hurt Us” (2010) combines scenes of Elizabeth Taylor in “Cleopatra” (1963) with Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time” music video. All of this ancient Egyptian imagery segues from scene to scene through the use of animated 3D ancient Egyptian structures and passageways. Robinson was present for a Q & A, and he stated that his original intent with the film was to show Elizabeth Taylor guiding Michael Jackson, who was close friends with Taylor, into the afterlife. This is an especially interesting piece because with Elizabeth Taylor’s passing today, the film holds an ominously prescient quality.

“Home Movie” (2009) by Braden King is a daring experiment in fiction, reality, and documentary to comment on his own absence in his family due to his filmmaking. King uses his wife and two sons as actors in the film. While his wife takes care of the kids, you can see that something eats away at her. During dinner, his wife asks their kids how they’d feel if they were to move to Holland, away from their father. The kids anxiously point out that their father is behind the camera, but his wife doesn’t acknowledge his presence. It’s an emotionally charged moment that provides far more insight into the life of a filmmaker than if it had been a traditionally constructed film.

King was also one of the participants in the Q & A. He mentioned that with his own film, it was a way to push past labels like “reality, fiction, and documentary” to see what works, and in seeing what works, it provided a different prism to view not only his own work but his life as well.

With all of the films in “Love’s Secret Domain,” that certainly seems to be the case. These are films that hand us a prism to refract love. And with all the highs, lows, and maddeningly ambiguous middles entailed with such an emotion, maybe if we take that prism at just the right angle, we may find a part of ourselves.

Tian-Jun Gu is a senior in the Screen Arts and Cultures program with a sub-concentration in Screenwriting at the University of Michigan. Although born in Shanghai, China, he considers himself a Michigander. Film has been an integral part of his life but never a path he planned on taking. Originally enrolling in the University of Michigan as an engineer, he fell back in love with film through Hubert Cohen’s “Art of Film” class and cannot see himself doing anything else now.

'Amplitude and Scale' By Greg Wachtenheim

As festival Director Donald Harrison pointed out, the purpose of the event “Amplitude & Scale” was to show music videos on a grander scale than their typical mediums of television and the internet. "Amplitude & Scale" certainly succeeded at its goal, displaying 10 music videos that were excellent across the board.

“Classically Trained” was the first music video featuring Clavius Crates and Silas Green. The director, Peter Dean, filmed Crates and Green on Super 8 film, which he studied extensively at Michigan State University. The film is memorable for its juxtaposition of contemporary hip-hop and the found footage of a classical orchestra, which highlights the surprisingly classical musical influences of these hip-hop artists. Additionally, the graininess of the Super 8 offers an old-school feel which makes this hip-hop video unique. Instead of rich rappers at mansion parties with strippers, this video features two young musicians in Encore Records and Wazoo Records, their typical Ann Arbor hangouts.

“Snow Globe,” performed by Roommate and directed by Kent Lambert, combined found footage film and video game footage to play in conjunction with its solemn song. The use of video game footage is not only novel, but it served to highlight the incredible violence of most video games. The film begins with a character choking his opponent and includes images of digital explosions which line up with grave lyrics such as “robot planes shoot flames and take lives away.” This video seemed to capture the essence of the event. Playing video games in your friend’s basement sure doesn’t compare to the magnitude of these images on the big screen.

The most memorable film of the event was “I Say Fever”, music performed by Ramona Falls, directed by Stefan Nadelman. This incredibly engaging video begins with beautifully gritty black and white animation of an old western town and saloon. As a mysterious man emerges from the shadows, revealing his bird head, the music picks up, a red strobe light brightens the screen, and the action begins. The video turns traditional western tropes on its head. Rather than firing bullets at each other, the townspeople rocket birds out of their guns that then rip the townspeople’s heads off, revealing animal heads beneath them. The video tells a compelling western narrative that climaxes with a duel between the rabbit-headed sheriff and bird-headed villain. A crowd favorite, “I Say Fever” elicited enormous applause from the audience.

Every music video in "Amplitude & Scale" can be found online. Although viewing them on a computer screen may not have the same impact as in the Michigan Theater, these music videos are truly great. Get out there and Google them because MTV doesn’t play music videos anymore. And who knows? With the increasing popularity of tech-savvy bands like Ratatat and Daft Punk, the concert of tomorrow might take place in the movie theaters of today.

Greg Wachtenheim is a senior at the University of Michigan, majoring in Screen Arts and Cultures with a sub-concentration in screenwriting and a minor in Spanish. His love for creative writing and film has inspired him to pursue a career in screenwriting.