Rochester Hills Museum hosting film festival

The Rochester Hills Museum at Van Hoosen Farm will host a February Film Festival on three Friday's during the month that will feature unique people and places in Michigan and America.

The movies will be shown February 2, 9 and 16 at the the Calf Barn at the museum, starting at 7 p.m. The cost is free for members and $5 for non-members.

"Up a River," a Kristen Lee Ojaniemi Film, which was nominated for the West Michigan Eclipse Award for Best Documentary in 2016, will kick off the film series. The cultural documentary focuses on more than 100 hunting and recreational camps within the Ottawa National Forest in Michigan's Upper Peninsula that were to be removed, destroyed or abandoned by January 1, 2017. The movie is about the people who built decades of tradition around the camps. The film documents the end of an era for many people with ties to the camps.

"River to River: Iowa's Forgotten Highway," by Four Wall Films, will be screened on Friday, February 9. The film takes viewers along US Route 6 in Iowa, a two-lane stretch of road from Davenport on the Mississippi River to Council Bluffs on the Missouri River. Traveled by Bonnie & Clyde, Jessie James, Nancy Drew and Jack Kerouac, the stretch of road was built in just one day by 10,000 farmers and businesses across the state, and is part of the longest transcontinental highway in America.

The award winning film by Kelly and Tommy Rundle gives viewers a nostalgic classic car journey through yesterday's soda shops, filling stations, general stores, drive-ins and roadside attractions unique to classic two-lane blacktop highways used to traverse the country before the development of the nation's interstate system.

"Letters Home to Hero Street," will be shown on Friday, February 16. The film focuses on a young Mexican-American veteran's personal view of World War II as told through the letters and V-Mail (Victory Mail) he sent home to his family on 2nd Street in Silvis, Illinois.

"Frank Sandoval was just beginning a new job at the Rock Island Arsenal when he was drafted by the Army in 1942," a description of the film states. "He sent dozens of letters to family and friends during the two years he was in the service, and in the more than 100 letters that remain, tell a story of one man's epic journey from Illinois to India."

"Killed on the Irrawaddy River in Burma in June of 1944, Frank becomes one of eight veterans of WWII and the Korean War killed in combat from the same block-and-a-half long street – more than any other street in America."

The film was made in memory of Sandoval, Tony Pompa, Claro SOliz, Joseph Sandoval, Peter Masias, William Sandoval, Joseph Gomes and John Munos.

Guests may purchase tickets at the museum's website or calling the museum at 248.656.4663.