What’s Award-Worthy This Year? Detroit Film Theatre Director Joins Detroit Today
Whether or not it wins, Elliot Wilhelm says Moonlight “is going to outlive all of us.”
Hollywood rolls out the red carpet this weekend, kicking off its 2017 awards season with the Golden Globes on Sunday. The films up for top awards range from a drama dealing with race in America, to a musical film about artists falling in love in L.A., to a dark comedy about a vengeful anti-super hero.
What should we expect from this year’s awards? What films should have been included? And is this all just a big glitzy waste of time?
Detroit Today host Stephen Henderson speaks with Elliot Wilhelm, curator of film at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) and director of the DIA’s Detroit Film Theatre (DFT), about his favorite films of 2016 and what to expect from this awards season. Wilhelm says Moonlight is his pick for film of the year.
“This is a film that’s going to outlive all of us,” says Wilhelm. “After 42 years of doing this job… you always think, ‘Oh, I think I’ve seen everything. I think everything is a retread of something else.’ But what you always secretly hope for every time the lights go down is that you are going to be once again astonished and walk out saying there are things possible that I had not realized… And I had it that afternoon when I saw Moonlight.”
Wilhelm also talk about the Detroit Film Theatre’s new year, which begins Friday night. The schedule also includes several nights in February and March giving you the chance to check out the short films and documentaries nominated for this year’s Academy Awards. You can find out more about the DFT’s schedule here.
Click on the audio player above to hear the full conversation.
