Author: Erin Smith

Dive Deep at the 41 North Film Festival, November 6-9, 2025

This year’s 41 North Film Festival invites audiences to engage with a slate of over 20 creative and thought-provoking films that explore the complexities of contemporary life—from the depths of the natural world to the heights of human resilience. The festival features a diverse lineup of acclaimed and emerging filmmakers whose work takes up urgent social questions through compassionate, sometimes fierce, and always artful storytelling. Panels and guests will offer context and perspectives on many of the films. The festival will be held November 6-9 in the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts, with additional films screening in Fisher 135 in partnership with MTU Film Board. All films are free and open to the public. Donations and volunteers are appreciated and welcome.

The festival opens Thursday, 11/6, with Folktales (Ewing/Grady, 2025), which follows teenagers at a Norwegian folk school in the Arctic as they navigate the path to adulthood (with a little help from each other and their sled dogs). Balancing the generational scales is Cat Town, USA (Napolitino, 2025), the story of an elderly couple who run a retirement home for senior cats (Friday, 11/7).

Our featured presentation on Friday evening is Underland (Petit, 2025), loosely based on Robert Macfarlane’s bestseller of the same name. A poetic meditation on what lies beneath the earth, the film weaves together three stories of underground exploration. A discussion with featured social geographer and urban explorer, Dr. Bradley Garrett, will follow.

On Saturday, 11/8, How Deep Is Your Love (Mortimer, 2025) takes us on a voyage with scientists who study and catalog deep-sea species in ocean territories that may soon be mined. In the evening, the festival presents Natchez (Herbert, 2025), which examines questions of historic preservation in a town defined by and dependent on its conflicted antebellum past.

Sunday afternoon, 11/9, the rocky terrain of disability advocacy and accessibility is traversed by two films. Best Day Ever (Knight/Berne, 2025) highlights adaptive mountain biking, and the lessons learned when a Vermont community builds an adaptive mountain biking trail system. Following is Reid Davenport’s new film, Life After, which examines the implications of Medical Aid In Dying (MAID) legislation for disabled people, who may suffer pressure to end their lives rather than receive the necessary support to live them.

The festival’s final two films take us back to the animal kingdom with Flow (Zilbalodis, 2024), the Oscar-winning animated feature. This lyrical and hypnotic film tells a completely wordless story about a cat who must work with other species to survive a great flood. Closing out the festival on Sunday evening is the hilarious and educational documentary, Listers: A Glimpse into Extreme Birdwatching (Reiser, 2025).

Film Board will partner again with the festival and screen two films in Fisher 135: Rian Johnson’s  2006 neo-noir film, Brick, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and OBEX (Birney, 2025), a fantasy film set in pre-Internet 1987, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last January.

Sponsored by the department of humanities, the department of visual and performing arts, the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts, and the College of Sciences and Arts. For more information, check the festival website or contact Erin Smith, ersmith@mtu.edu.

Groundbreaking Documentary ENO at 41 North Film Festival

Eno and director Gary Hustwit at the 41 North Film Festival

The 41 North Film Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary, November 7-10, at the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts. Headlining this year on Saturday, November 9th, is the groundbreaking generative documentary Eno about visionary musician and artist Brian Eno, directed by Gary Hustwit (Helvetica, Rams, Objectified) who will be in attendance at the festival.

A pioneer at the intersection of technology and art and a self-proclaimed “sonic landscaper,” Brian Eno has been an innovative and highly influential figure, shaping the sounds of artists such as David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads, and Coldplay. Drawing inspiration from its subject, the film Eno also blends art and technology through its use of a bespoke generative software developed by Hustwit and creative technologist Brendan Dawes. The software uniquely sequences scenes from Hustwit’s interviews and footage, along with Eno’s own archive of hundreds of hours of never-before-seen footage and unreleased music. No two screenings are alike, each one offering different scenes, order, transitions, and music.

Hustwit has been presenting the film live around the country and the world since its premiere at the 2024 Sundance film festival and will present two unique iterations of the film at 3:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. The 3:30 p.m. screening will include a Q&A with Hustwit and Brendan Dawes (via Zoom) following the film. This event is co-sponsored by the College of Computing and the Institute of Computing and Cybersystems. Look for announcements about other featured events and the full festival program in the coming days. 

The 41 North Film Festival is sponsored by the Department of Humanities, the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, and the College of Sciences and Arts.

41 North Film Festival, Nov. 2-5

Presenting another year of cinematic explorations and provocations, the 41 North Film Festival returns November 2-5 to the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts. With a lineup of over 20 films, the festival includes panels, special guests, music, and more. This four-day event is free and open to the public.

The opening night film, Time Bomb Y2K (Becker/McDonald, 2023), takes a sometimes hilarious look back at a significant moment of global technological anxiety. Assembling archival footage from 1997-2000 as the world prepared to face the “Y2K millenium bug,” the filmmakers offer both a time capsule and an opportunity to reflect on technological dependency and its implications. Continuing the discussion about technology on Sunday with a different set of questions is Another Body (Hamlyn/Compton, 2023), about a college student who takes us on an investigation into deepfake pornography after she finds herself a victim of it. Both films will offer panel discussions following the films. 

Elephant 6 Recording Co., Friday, 11/3, 7:30 p.m.

On Friday night, the spotlight turns to the Elephant 6 Recording Company (Stockfleth, 2022), an inspiring story about the music collective that gave rise to such bands as Neutral Milk Hotel and the Apples in Stereo, among many others. Core member of the collective, Robert Schneider, who is now part of the Michigan Tech faculty in mathematics, will be joined by Schneider and producer Daniel Efram for a Q&A. A reception will follow this film in the Rozsa Lobby with music by Liquid Mike, helmed by alum Mike Maple (CCM ’19).

Saturday afternoon offers films that expand our field of view on history, culture, and current events. In King Coal (Sheldon, 2023), Elaine McMillion Sheldon takes a poetic look at the people and places of central Appalachia where she grew up; Black Barbie: A Documentary (Davis, 2023) examines Black female representation through the history of Black dolls; and The Mission (McBaine/Moss, 2023), investigates the legacy of colonialism and the death of John Chau, whose missionary zeal led to a fatal encounter in 2018.

The Erie Situation, Saturday, 11/4, 7:30 p.m.

Saturday evening, the festival presents The Erie Situation (Ruck, 2022), which takes a hard look at the confluence of science and politics around a great lake’s toxic algae problem. Co-sponsored by the Great Lakes Research Center, the film will be followed by a panel discussion and Q&A with filmmaker David Ruck.

32 Sounds, Sunday, 11/5, 7:00 p.m.

More lyrical and contemplative offerings this year include the charming Hummingbirds (Castaños/Contreras, 2023), which follows two friends (one documented, the other not) on their adventures in Laredo, Texas, and the festival’s closing night film, 32 Sounds (Green, 2022), a meditation on the power of sound.

In partnership with the festival, MTU Film Board will be offering Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City in Fisher 135 over the course of the weekend.

Major sponsors of the festival include the department of humanities, the department of visual and performing arts, and the college of sciences and arts. For more information, contact Erin Smith, ersmith@mtu.edu.

The 41 North Film Festival returns Nov. 3-6

All That Breathes
All That Breathes (Sen, 2022) on Saturday, 11/5, 3:00 p.m.

The annual 41 North Film Festival will be held Thursday, 11/3, through Sunday, 11/6, at the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts. The festival once again offers an exceptional opportunity for people to gather together and watch thought-provoking, entertaining, and award-winning films from around the world that explore a range of issues, ideas, and personalities. Along with over 20 films (both features and shorts), there will be special guests, educational panels, and other attractions.

The festival has something for everyone, with films that examine the progress and perils of scientific research, as well as those that shed a light on the achievements and challenges of small communities much like our own. This year’s cast of characters includes artists and art thieves, hockey players and range riders, big wave surfers and social justice warriors, as well as a beleaguered laundromat owner who finds herself plunged into the metaverse.

High school students are the focus of two films in the program: Hockeyland (Haines, 2021), which follows high school players on the Iron Range in Minnesota, and Boys State (Moss/McBaine, 2020), a timely and rollicking tale about the lessons of civic engagement at the American Legion’s annual Boys State competition in Texas.

Highlights from this year’s program include 2022 Sundance award winners All That Breathes (Sen, 2022), The Territory (Pritz, 2022), Fire of Love (Dosa, 2022), and I Didn’t See You There (Davenport, 2022). Reid Davenport, who won Sundance’s U.S. Documentary Directing Award and has cerebral palsy, provides us with a literal point of view focused on his daily encounters with ableism, along with his meditation on the legacy of the circus freak show. A panel discussion will follow on disability and being looked at without being seen.

I Didn't See You There
I Didn’t See You There (Davenport, 2022) on Saturday, 11/5, 12:30 p.m.
Hockeyland
Hockeyland (Haines, 2021) on Friday, 11/4, 7:00 p.m.

The festival will also present several films that focus on scientific research including The Human Trial (Hepner/Mossman 2022). Lisa Hepner and Guy Mossman tell a very personal story about the patients and scientists seeking a cure for diabetes with an up-close look at research development. Fire of Love profiles French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft and their life-long love affair with volcanoes, while All That Breathes takes us to New Delhi where two brothers attempt to save the black kite population being devastated by the city’s collapsing ecology. Michigan Tech researchers and community members will participate in Q&A sessions following these films.

Indigenous land rights and culture are taken up in several films this year, including The Territory, which provides an on-the-ground look at Uru-eu-wau-wau people’s fight against the encroaching deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Two Michigan stories, Bad Axe (Siev, 2022), and The Sentence of Michael Thompson (Anderson/Thrash, 2022), examine social justice issues closer to home.

See the full line-up of films and events at: 41northfilmfest.org. The festival is free and open to the public. Students will need to bring their HuskyCard. No ticket is necessary for others attending the festival this year. For more information, email festival director, Erin Smith, at ersmith@mtu.edu. Major sponsorship for the festival is provided by the Department of Humanities, the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, the College of Sciences and Arts, and the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts.

Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows Study Amtrak

Three Humanities undergraduates have been awarded Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) for 2022. All three will be carrying out their research in conjunction with the study-away program, “Amtrak Tourism: Trains, Cities, & Sustainability” led by Mark Rhodes, Assistant Professor of Geography in Michigan Tech’s Social Sciences department. Students in the Amtrak Tourism program travel on Amtrak for a three week tour of the western United States and study topics related to human geography, sustainability, and the urban environment along the way.

Lena Lukowski’s project, “Locating Tourism Rhetoric: A Comparative Study” pays attention to the connection between location and tourism rhetoric in different cities across the United States. She is interested in seeing how the way in which tourism is discussed changes with the landscape and location. Lukowski is pursuing a double degree in Mechanical Engineering and Scientific and Technical Communication.

Riley Powers’s project, “Public Tourism Infrastructure and Accessibility: Comparison of Metropolitan, Micropolitan, and Rural Structures” will focus on public tourism infrastructure accessibility design, with a particular focus on the infrastructure encountered by students participating in the Amtrak Tourism study-away program. Powers’ work includes consulting with those who plan and design infrastructure as well as those who are impacted by disparities in accessibility. Results of the study will be shared with stakeholders locally in the Houghton/Keweenaw area, with the aim of highlighting ways to improve accessibility for public tourism in our own community. Powers is a Scientific and Technical Communication major.

Davi Sprague’s project, “Understanding the Relationship Between Rail Communities and Rail Infrastructure” seeks to answer the question, how did rail and train stations influence the urbanization, industrialization, and deindustrialization of rail communities and how are these communities planning for the future? Sprague, a Scientific and Technical Communication major, will combine archival research with filmmaking to produce a short video documentary that features historical and contemporary sources as well as highlights from the study-away program itself.

The SURF fellowship program is administered by Michigan Tech’s Pavlis Honors College. Fellowship recipients conduct a research project under the guidance of a Michigan Tech faculty mentor during the summer semester and, at the conclusion of their work, present their research at the Michigan Tech Undergraduate Research Symposium, or at a professional conference in their field. 

Gabriel Edzordzi Agbozo Receives 2022 CCCC Outstanding Dissertation Award in Technical Communication

PHOTO BY: BRADLEY PEARCE/UNCW

Dr. Gabriel Edzordzi Agbozo (RTC ’21) has received the 2022 CCCC Outstanding Dissertation Award in Technical Communication for “Spatial Technologies, (Geo)Epistemology, & the Global South: Addressing the Discursive Materiality of GhanaPostGPS through Technical Communication.” The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) is a constituent organization within the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Dissertations for this award are evaluated according to five criteria: originality of research, contribution the research makes to the field, methodological soundness of the approach used, awareness of the existing research in the area studied, and overall quality of the writing.

The selection committee noted: Dr. Agbozo’s dissertation is a rich study of the GhanaPost Global Position System. Agbozo makes a compelling case for how the field thus far has had a limited perspective on “technology take-up within a globalizing context,” and how, historically, researchers have engaged with global spaces in problematic ways. The committee was especially impressed with the originality of Agbozo’s research and its contributions to broadening the field’s borders and working towards developing, as Agbozo argues, a “global perspective.” Drawing from a mix of surveys, interviews, and observations, and employing decolonial and multimodal lenses of critique, Agbozo’s dissertation is methodologically rigorous, with a robust analysis that works to build new theory and innovative pedagogical practice in technical communication. The committee also appreciated the ways Agbozo’s research amplifies marginalized voices, communities, and scholarship.

Agbozo will be announced as the recipient of the CCCC Outstanding Dissertation Award in Technical Communication during the CCCC Awards Presentation on Friday, March 11, during the 2022 CCCC Annual Convention.

Dr. Agzobo is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at UNC–Wilmington.

The 41 North Film Festival Returns

Wildlife Photographer Vincent Munier and writer Sylvain Tesson seek the elusive snow leopard in The Velvet Queen, screening Saturday, 11/6, at 7:30 p.m. as part of the 41 North Film Festival.

The 41 North Film Festival will be held November 4–7, 2021, featuring four days of award-winning independent film at the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts. Highlights from this year’s program include: Storm Lake (Risius/Levison, 2021), a story about a family-owned and operated small-town newspaper that recently won a Pulitzer Prize. The Storm Lake Times editor, Art Cullen, and filmmaker Beth Levison, will join for a virtual Q&A following the film. The film will screen on Friday, 11/5, at 7:30 p.m. On Saturday, 11/6, at 7:30 p.m. the festival will present The Velvet Queen (Amiguet, 2021), which follows acclaimed wildlife photographer Vincent Munier‘s Tibetan trek in search of the elusive snow leopard. On Sunday, the festival offers the family-friendly, Lily Topples the World, the story of young domino artist Lily Hevesh, whose incredible domino creations have earned her over three million Youtube followers.

Other films include Sundance documentary winner Summer of Soul, Writing with Fire (winner of 17 international awards), Academy-Award nominee The Mole Agent, and a host of other thought-provoking, entertaining, and inspiring films. As always, expect music in the lobby between films, as well as other special events and guests.

The festival is free and open to the public. MTU staff, faculty, and students from other schools can reserve a ticket (only one needed for entire festival) by visiting https://tickets.mtu.edu or calling the SDC Ticketing Office at 906-487-2073. MTU students should bring an ID to gain admittance. The festival will follow the Rozsa Center Covid-19 Policies. Please visit the festival website for the full program and additional information.

Humanities Undergraduate Attends Society for Technical Communication Summit

Professional development opportunities that students can take advantage of while they are in school contribute significantly to student success after graduation. For Julia Barnes, Scientific and Technical Communication (STC) major, a recent opportunity to hear from professionals in her field was a great way to continue to build her expertise and her network. Barnes attended the 2020 Society for Technical Communication Summit in May. 

While she was looking forward to a trip to Seattle, WA to attend in person, Covid-19 restrictions resulted in a shift to a virtual conference. However, the result was no less impactful for Barnes. “I was able to visit sessions that covered a wide range of topics from project tracking to giving feedback. I learned a lot and engaged in meaningful conversations with the other attendees as well.” One benefit of the virtual format? “All of the sessions have been recorded and the slides are available to download until August or so. So many of the topics this year are relevant, no matter the workplace or profession. I’m going to continue tuning into sessions so that I can hear what other technical communicators have to say.”

STC undergraduate students from Michigan Tech have been able to attend the Summit annually over the past several years thanks to the encouragement and support provided by Nancy Hoffman, a member of the Society for Technical Communication and generous friend of the Humanities department. The department thanks her for helping provide these valuable opportunities for our students.