Life Model Protégé

2025 • Canada • 11 min • Dr. Kelsey Leonard and Alejandro Miranda

Filmmaker in Attendance, Subject in Attendance, Family Friendly, Michigan Premiere, First Time Filmmaker

Across the salt-sprayed shores of Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, a gathering of Indigenous women comes together to rematriate wampum as a living system of justice, truth, and inherent relationship. Through practices of teaching, making, and collective remembrance, the film examines how patriarchal disruption, colonial extraction, and climate-driven coastal change threaten not only living shores but the relationships that sustain them.

2026 • USA • 5 min • Ryan Sullivan

Filmmaker in Attendance, Subject in Attendance, Family Friendly, Michigan Premiere, World Premiere

This short film explores the work of local Marquette artist, Niikah Hatfield, engaging with the philosophical questions of life and what it means to be alive through the process of ceramics, creativity, and living well. 

2026 • USA • 24 min • Steve Panton

Filmmaker in Attendance, First Time Filmmaker

Artists, researchers, and activists explore the relationship between their lived experiences and the patterns of uneven development in Metropolitan Detroit and its art ecosystem.