This year’s fest is a brazen, incendiary celebration of art — specifically, the art of cinema, cinema that is not afraid to take risks, to challenge the conventional wisdom, to move an audience so profoundly that everyone will feel transported to a place where it’s safe to think and explore and rebel.

We remain dedicated to finding only the best films from around the world and bringing them to you here in the beautiful north country. We have more films than ever before, including some very special surprises:

A Tribute to The Beatles — We’ve lined up rare prints of “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!” plus a brand new feature based on The Beatles’ formative years as we remember the band on the 40th anniversary of their breakup.

A Salute to Cuban Film — We’re flying in movies and their makers from Cuba for this special spotlight on a country with a vibrant and mostly unknown (as least in America) film industry.

3D Comes to TC — But only for really great movies like the unconventionally hilarious “Cane Toads: The Conquest” and the mind-blowing concert doc “U2 3D.”

Short Films Get Their Due — This year we’re redoubling our efforts on the short film front to bring you seven diverse programs, including two special appearances by the most acclaimed, prominent filmmakers of the genre, Jon Alpert and Academy Award nominee Rory Kennedy.

Our Favorite Filmmakers Return — As part of a sizeable group of returning filmmakers, we will have two U.S. Premieres of foreign documentaries with the directors present: “Draquila – Italy Trembles” by our own TCFF board member Sabina Guzzanti and “Czech Peace” by the Eastern European mischief makers who were the hit of our first fest with “Czech Dream.”

New and Improved Film School — We’re doubling the number of Film School classes offered this year and relocating to a great venue, Northwestern Michigan College’s Scholars Hall. We’re even planning a master class with famed animator Bill Plympton, one of America’s all-time great artists, who has a short in this year’s festival.

TCFF Film Forum Series — You know how it is when you leave an awesome movie that has just rocked your socks and you say, “Man, I’d sure like to go somewhere and talk to others about what we just saw?” Well, now you can! Eight festival screenings this year will be part of a new Film Forum series. Chat with fellow festivalgoers at our free after-the-movie community discussions in our outdoor Film Lounge in Lay Park on Union St.

New Ticket System and Vouchers — We have a new ticketing system, and even though this is a transition year, we hope to vastly improve the ticketing experience. And we’re adding a voucher system, so if you don’t know what you want to see, or if you want to get into sold out shows in the standby line, buy a voucher at the regular ticket price, good for any regular film.

Lifetime Achievement Award — We will honor two of the most important leaders of the independent movie industry for the last 30 years, the co-presidents of Sony Pictures Classics, Tom Bernard and Michael Barker, the men who brought us “Waiting for Guffman,” “The Fog of War” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” among many others. They’ll be here in person.

As you can see, we’ve really upped the ante this year and I’m convinced you are going to love this festival. There’s no doubt you will be frustrated by the inability to see everything. You’ve got some hard choices to make — but not really, because every film on this year’s schedule is truly fantastic. You could literally throw ten darts at the schedule to pick ten random films, and you couldn’t go wrong. So pack in as many movies as you can and enjoy this year’s festival.

Yours,
Michael Moore
President and Founder, Traverse City Film Festival

A list of the 2010 Traverse City Film Festival Films:

OPEN SPACE
Twister
Finding Nemo
Help!
Raising Arizona
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Mary Poppins

OPENING AND CLOSING NIGHT
The Kids Are All Right
Nowhere Boy
The Girl Who Played With Fire

TCFF 3D!
Cane Toads: The Conquest
U2 3D

COMEDY & DRAMA FROM HOME & ABROAD
Apart Together
A Brand New Life
Castaway on the Moon
Cherry
Cherry Blossoms
The Concert
Farsan
The French Kissers
The Happy Poet
Heartbreaker
In the Beginning
The Infidel
Lebanon, PA
Legacy
The Man Next Door
Me and Orson Welles
Mid-August Lunch
Please Give
The Secret in Their Eyes
Solitary Man
Tiny Furniture
The Trotsky
Welcome
When We Leave
Will You Marry Us?

DANGEROUS DOCS
8: The Mormon Proposition
11/4/08
12th & Delaware
American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein
Auto*Mate
Budrus
Cleanflix
Collapse
Czech Peace
Draquila – Italy Trembles
The Elephant in the Living Room
GasLand
Google Baby
Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suess
His & Hers
How to Fold a Flag
Iranian Cookbook
The Miscreants of Taliwood
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
The Oath
Restrepo
Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage
Smile ‘Til It Hurts
South of the Border
Teenage Paparazzo
The Tillman Story
Waiting for “Superman”

MIDNIGHT
Shorts for Midnight
Clash
Tucker & Dale vs Evil
Zonad

A SALUTE TO CUBAN FILM
Dreaming in Blue
Horn of Plenty
Strawberry and Chocolate
Viva Cuba!

SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Dodsworth: Jeff Garlin’s Gems
Mike¹s Surprise
Reel Injun
The Last Command

KIDS FEST
The Secret of Kells
Kirikou and the Sorceress
Oblivion Island
Eleanor’s Secret

THE BEATLES AT THE MOVIES (A 40TH ANNIVERSARY)
A Hard Day’s Night
(Help!)
Nowhere Boy

SIZZLIN’ SHORTS
Short Documentaries
Shorts by Jon Alpert
Shorts by Rory Kennedy
Shorts by U of M Students
Short Fiction 1
Short Fiction 2
(Shorts for Midnight)