Senior Lecturer

Associate Director, Department of Screen Arts & Cultures (formerly the Program in Film and Video Studies) 2000-2005.

Terri Sarris

My production interests include experimental media, documentary, narrative fiction, and everything in between. My recent creative projects include "buzzards steal your picnic," a 40-minute documentary profile of Frank Pahl, a Detroit composer and creator of self-playing musical automatons whom Nate Cavalieri of the Detroit Metro Times described as "a one-man quirk force....with the passion of a melodically-obsessed Willy Wonka." "buzzards..." was awarded "Best Michigan Film" at the Detroit International Documentary Festival in October 2007 and selected for screening at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 2008.

I have a particular interest in dance and movement on film and co-teach a class in "Screendance" with Peter Sparling from the Department of Dance. My short dance film "lift" was awarded "best short experiemental film" in the Imago Film Festival, 2006. I also teach single camera video and studio television production courses in the SAC Department, including an integrated studies and production course co-taught with Bambi Haggins on the Situation Comedy.

I am also very interested in education and outreach around issues of media literacy and media production. I was selected by the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID) as a faculty fellow for 2007-08 in connection with UM Alum Sultan Sharrief (who was selected to be a Community Practitioner at the Center). Our goal at the Center is to continue to develop the "EFEX Project" (Encouraging the Filmmaking Experience), which Sultan and I began in Spring 2006 with a spring course in Community Filmmaking (SAC 404) and with the summer production of the feature film "Bilal's Stand" from the award-winning script written by Sultan. The feature-length film was shot on Super 16 during 6 weeks in the summer of 2006. We plan to premiere the film theatrically in 2008 and have screened rough cuts of the film for metro-Detroit schools and groups as a trigger to discussion of issues of access to higher education. Making the film in Detroit was an amazing experience - we had a fantastic volunteer crew, a talented cast of Detroit and Ann Arbor actors, and met many many wonderful people who turned out to be extras or volunteers on the project. (Check out the website: www.studentefex.net) We hope to develop EFEX into a sustainable, on-going spring/summer project.

In my spare time, I enjoy writing narrative screenplays and recently completed two: "House on Fire" and "Splinter..." I also perform with the experimental musical trio "little bang theory." We play film music and original compositions on toy intstruments and have opened for the indie-bands Deerhoof and Danielson. I also make found object assemblages (inspired by artists Joseph Cornell and Hanelore Baron) that are sold at both "Found" in Ann Arbor and the Biddle Gallery in Wyandotte, Michigan.