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FTVM graduation RSVPs are due THIS FRIDAY, April 8, 2022, for the celebration on
Friday, April 29, 2022, at 4:00 p.m. in the Michigan Theater
If you are a graduating FTVM senior and did not yet RSVP, please do so here.
Also, don't forget to add your voice to our snapshot campaign by contributing a photo here 
Questions? Please contact rohdeb@umich.edu
A BIG THANK YOU TO OUR RECENT GUESTS!
TV Writers and Producers Janet Leahy, Lisa Albert, Lisa McQuillan, and April Shih
photo credit, Mary Lou Chlipala
 
On Tuesday, March 29, 2022, FTVM hosted the Inaugural John H. Mitchell Critical Conversations Symposium, Leveling the Playing Field: Why Diversity Matters. The symposium featured our first John H. Mitchell Visiting Professor in Media Entertainment, Janet Leahy, in conversation with industry writers and producers Lisa Albert, Lisa McQuillan, and April Shih about the importance of having new voices in writers' rooms and creating diverse stories on television. The symposium, moderated by Director of Screenwriting Jim Burnstein, included a welcome by Department Chair Yeidy M. Rivero, an introduction by Associate Dean for the Humanities Alexandra M. Stern, and a Q&A with the audience, featuring a wide array of insightful questions from FTVM students. 
Frances Willard Professor of Screen Cultures at Northwestern, Lynn Spigel
On March 31, 2022, FTVM welcomed Professor Lynn Spigel, who gave a talk based on her forthcoming book TV Snapshots: An Archive of Everyday Life (Duke University Press, August 2022). 
Drawing on her collection of over 5,000 TV snapshots, Spigel demonstrated that people in the 1950s through the '70s did not just watch TV; instead, they used the television set as a setting for the presentation of self, family, and gender. 
Co-Founder and CEO of Spire Animation Studios, Animator Brad Lewis
photo credit, Mary Lou Chlipala
 
On Friday, April 1, 2022, University of Michigan alum Brad Lewis met with FTVM screenwriters and Mitchell Scholars in the FTVM conference room. Lewis described his journey from theater school to the top of the animated film world, producing such classic films as Antz, How to Train Your Dragon, and Ratatouille, and ultimately building his own animation studio, Spire. Mr. Lewis walked students through his process of writing and producing Trouble, including a sneak preview by showing them an animated storyboard sequence.
Award-winning Non-fiction Writer Doug Stanton 
Award-winning writer Doug Stanton talked to FTVM screenwriting students on Friday, March 18, 2022, about how they can find stories in non-traditional sources, including social media, and create Intellectual Property (IP) upon which they can build their own screenplays and 
television shows. Mr. Stanton also discussed his process for turning his best-selling book In Harm’s Way into a screenplay for producer Mark Gordon.
photo credit, Mary Lou Chlipala
UPCOMING FTVM EVENTS
FTVM Honors Screening
Darlings, Written & Directed by Mitchell Salley
Tuesday, April 19, 2022
Michigan Theater Screening Room 
6:30 p.m. 
 
Mitchell Salley's Darlings is a half-hour thriller that centers on two sisters, Evelyn and Mallory, one an actress and the other a playwright. The film begins with their duo on the brink of breakout success, but tension brews when Mallory begins to branch out, creatively and socially, and Evelyn realizes she could lose everything. As dark secrets from the sisters' childhood threaten to surface, Evelyn is further sent down a path of desperation and obsession, and she will stop at nothing to once again command an audience.
FTVM Honors Reading
The Manner of Women, Written by Kate Glad
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
North Quad, Studio A
6:30 p.m. 


 
Kate Glad's original feature The Manner of Women explores themes of timelessness and solitude in the American West when a woman and her young son living in the Colorado Territory have two visitors in two years. Please join us for  a staged reading of the screenplay and a Q&A with the writer!
THIS WEEK'S NEWS 
FTVM 366: Visualizing the Motor City
Tours Detroit's Historic Movie Venues
photos courtesy of Phil Hallman

This semester, Matthew Noble-Olson's course, Visualizing the Motor City (FTVM 366) has collaborated with Film Studies Field Librarian Philip Hallman on a research project about film exhibition in Detroit. On Saturday, April 2, 2022,  the class took a field trip to Detroit to tour some of the old movie palaces in the city. The trip included visits to the Detroit Opera House (formerly the Capitol Theatre), the Fox Theatre (pictured, above at right) the Michigan Theatre (pictured above, at left), and the Redford Theatre. 
PhD Candidate Joshua Schulze Awarded
 Graduate Fellowship for Sweetland Writers' Program
Congratulations to PhD Candidate Joshua Schulze who was awarded a Graduate Fellowship for the Sweetland Fellows Program in Winter-Fall of 2023. The program brings together graduate students and faculty from multiple disciplines who share a commitment to integrating writing in their courses and involves attending a weekly seminar, designing a syllabus, and teaching one section of English 125 in the Fall semester.
FTVM 2022-23 Honors Cohort Announced!
The Department of Film, Television, and Media is pleased to announce the students
who have been accepted to the FTVM Honors Program for the 2022-23 academic year:
Rose Albayat and Jonah Sobczak
Congratulations to both of you!
Congratulations to the Undergrad Recipients of the Webber Glover Round 2 Awards!
The Department of Film, Television, and Media is pleased to announce the students
who have received the Webber Glover Award (Round 2): 
Julissa Cardiel
Cassidy Caulkins
Brendan Dewley
Julianna Garber
James LeBuke
Scott McMillan
Makaylah Owens
Adela Papiez
Sydney Spaw
Eddie Zajdel
Attention Undergrads!
Reminder: NEW Comedy Writing Contest Deadline Approaching!


FTVM is pleased to announce a new comedy writing contest - the Deb Lacusta and Dan Castellaneta Award for Excellence in Comedic Screenwriting or Playwriting. Long from and short form submissions are due at 5:00 p.m. on April 18, 2022 -- submit your work for a chance to win prizes ranging from $500 - $3,000! To check out submission guidelines, please visit our website. 
 
To view a full list of spring scholarships, awards, and grants, please click here. 
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
FTVM Alum Liann Kaye (Honors '11) Releases Mini-Series The Blessing
FTVM Alum Liann Kaye is a Chinese American filmmaker who just released her mini-series The Blessing. Liann started out directing music videos on U of M's campus for alumni such as Carlos Valdes (The Flash), Darren Criss (Glee), Theo Katzman (Vulfpeck), Charlene Kaye (San Fermin), and more. Her award-winning short film "The Blessing" premiered at festivals across the country last year, winning "Best Comedy" at the New York Short Film Festival and also won a grant of 20K from the NYC Women's Fund last February to serialize the project. 
Since then, she completed the series, signed with Issa Rae’s Management Company, ColorCreative, and released the project on Youtube in Februrary 2022. She is now pitching her feature screenplay, Electable, which was a finalist in the Athena Lab, where she got to be a mentee of Sofia Alvarez (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, 2018 & 2020) and the Blacklist x WIF feature film residency.
FTVM Alum Alex Ebel Wins WGA Award
Congratulations to FTVM Alum Alex Ebel ('09) who won a Writer's Guild of America Award in the Children's Episodic, Long Form, and Specials category for her episode "The Tale of the Midnight Magic" (Are you Afraid of the Dark?) on Nickelodeon. The epsiode was co-written by JT Billings and premiered on Nickelodeon on March 12, 2021. (#205)
"Getting to work on the reboot of a show I loved as a kid was a thrill, in and of itself...
but winning a WGA Award for it?  Truly a mind-melting moment!" 
-Alex Ebel (FTVM '08)
THIS WEEK'S FEATURED PHOTO
On Thursday, March 31, 2022,  FTVM students, staff, and faculty gathered in Studio A for the biannual FTVM open house/declaration event to talk with incoming majors and interested undergrads about our department offerings, internships, and the honors program.
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University of Michigan Department of Film, Television, and Media · 6330 North Quad · 105 S. State St. · Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285 · USA

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