2026 FESTIVALApril 8-18, 2026Lansing, MI

Exploring Joy as Resistance and Our Natural Connections

*FREE EVENT*

Presented in partnership with Lansing Community College’s Take a Stand! Sit In! initiative and Mid-Michigan Environmental Action Council’s NEA Big Read, this event features short films centered on the themes of joy, resistance, nature, hope, courage, and connection.

Join us for a powerful event kicking off with a ‘community sing’ of resistance songs followed by film screenings and a panel discussion with artists.

  • A Full Body Act
  • Becoming Air
  • Organic Network
  • A Sparrow’s Song

A Full Body Act

Low vision dancer Renata Mara meets with the musical duo O Grivo for an artistic experience where sound is the element that unites the characters. The film documents the dimension of sound in the life of each individual, highlighted by the particularities of a dancer who, deprived of the sense of vision, attributes other values ​​to the sound universe of urban everyday life, connecting her inner world to the livable world in the city where she lives.

  • DIRECTOR
    Mariana Fagundes
  • YEAR
    2024
  • RUNTIME
    24 Minutes
  • LANGUAGE
    Portuguese

Reclaiming Bear River

Over 150 years after suffering the worst massacre in U.S. history, the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation has purchased their ancestral homeland — called Wuda Ogwa, or Bear River — with a vision to return it back to nature.

  • DIRECTOR
    Kevin Krug
  • YEAR
    2025
  • RUNTIME
    18 Minutes
  • LANGUAGE
    English

Becoming Air

Take a deep breath. As you exhale, imagine that in about three years, anywhere you would go on the planet you will find molecules that were inside you in this moment.

  • DIRECTOR
    Alisi Telengut, Diego Galafassi
  • YEAR
    2024
  • RUNTIME
    6 Minutes
  • LANGUAGE
    English

Organic Network

Organic Network follows Flint in summer 2024, now in recovery from the water crisis and COVID-19 Pandemic, and the state of urban farming and food sovereignty within the city. Organic Network serves as an epilogue to two previous MSU documentaries: Kings of Flint and Flint River Farm.

  • DIRECTOR
    Elena Shepherd
  • YEAR
    2025
  • RUNTIME
    10 Minutes
  • LANGUAGE
    English

A Sparrow’s Song

Inspired by a true story, a widowed air raid warden in the midst of World War II struggles to overcome grief and rediscover joy in her life—until she finds a dying sparrow she hopes to save.

  • DIRECTOR
    Tobias Eckerlin
  • YEAR
    2025
  • RUNTIME
    9 Minutes
  • LANGUAGE
    No Dialogue
Check out other upcoming events
  • Tue, April 14 8:30 PM
  • Central United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall
More Info