Free Films All Weekend: The 41 North Film Festival Is On at MTU’s Rozsa Center
This week The Mining Gazette reported that Michigan Tech’s 41 North Film Festival is underway in Houghton and runs through Sunday. Most screenings are at the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts on campus, and every film and event is free and open to the public. The festival opened Thursday with a farmers market in the Rozsa lobby, a documentary about Tech alumnus Kanwal Rekhi, and Fork in the Road, a film inspired by Wendell Berry’s writing.
The weekend lineup has something for nearly everyone. Saturday starts at 12:30 p.m. with a shorts program called Winter Is Coming, then the family-friendly Cookie Queens (Girl Scouts) at 2 p.m., Carl Sagan: We Are Made of Star Stuff at 4:30, and Wild Inside, about Flaco the owl, at 7:30, followed by a discussion with Michigan Tech wildlife ecologist David Flaspohler and environmental ethicist Michael Paul Nelson.
Sunday brings Boatbuilders at 12:30 p.m., Runa Simi (a Peruvian radio host dubbing The Lion King into Quechua) at 2:30 with a panel afterward, Joybubbles at 5 with open captions and open audio description, and the closing film, Everybody to Kenmure Street, at 7. As Erin Smith told the Gazette, “We hope people will come for a film that interests them.”
Why it’s worth your weekend
Early November is a quiet stretch in the Keweenaw. Color season is done, the snow hasn’t settled in, and a lot of visitors assume there’s nothing going on. Events like this prove otherwise. A free, walk-in film festival is an easy afternoon or evening plan for anyone in town for a campus visit, a Huskies game, or deer camp prep, and the post-film discussions with Michigan Tech faculty are the kind of thing you won’t find at a multiplex.
If you’re staying with us in Chassell, the Rozsa Center is a short drive up US-41 into Houghton, so you can catch a matinee, grab dinner downtown, and be back at the cabin by the fire the same night. Check the festival site before you go, since times can shift.
Read the full piece at The Mining Gazette, and find the complete schedule at 41northfilmfest.mtu.edu.
Planning a fall or winter trip to the Keweenaw? Skip the booking fees and book direct at vaultventures.co. Cabins, campsites and homes near MTU, Chassell and beyond.