NOVA24 festival emerges to connect Detroit photographers and filmmakers with the world

Every year, over 150 photo and film festivals take place in major cities around the world.

In Detroit, however, many lens-based artists are told they need to leave the city to find success, especially since there is no large-scale photo and film festival in the Motor City.

Mara Magyarosi-Laytner and Raymar, both local artists, curators, and educators, decided to change that. The pair created NOVA24 in 2023 to connect Detroit’s photo and film community through exhibitions, film screenings, artist talks, and workshops, hoping that artists, curators, publishers, and more will connect, collaborate, and create a launch point for future relationships.

The inaugural festival is happening now, running from July 5 through August 1, with over 40 events in about 18 local spaces. Among the many events, NOVA24 includes a weekly film series at the Carr Center celebrating photographers of color, a group exhibition at The Congregation titled Femme Voyant celebrating Black femme creators, and Takisha Jefferson’s exhibition Testify at Michigan State University’s Detroit center. Community engagement-based events include a photo and film educator meetup, filmmaker karaoke, film premieres, fashion walks, and many more.

The co-founders met when Magyarosi-Laytner was Raymar’s photography teacher during high school and haven’t lost touch since.

“She built the photography program from scratch, essentially, in that entire building, and that was how we met,” Raymar says. “Through my college career, we kept in contact, and when I got out, she gave me a tip off about this job that opened up next door to her because she’s a photography teacher at a new school and a film teacher position was opening. So, I did an interview for that, got that job, and now we teach alongside each other.”

Last year, Raymar and Magyarosi-Laytner realized that Detroit didn’t have a large-scale film festival like other major cities. So, they asked themselves, “Could we do this?”

“We then decided that we felt like we could do this, off of audacity and a dime, essentially,” Raymar says.

Magyars-Laytner adds: “And connections, like the community between us.”

Previously, in 2022, Magyars-Laytner earned her Master’s in Fine Arts in Photography and exhibited her work internationally. When she showcased her collection at the Toronto Film Festival, which has been established for nearly two decades, she realized she had never been informed about the event in her earlier programs, even though it was in a city just a few hours away. During the event, she witnessed the strong support Toronto has for its photographers and the lack of such support locally.

“They have exhibitions in front of City Hall, major photographers are coming from all over the world, and they have a photo laureate,” she says. “It was insane for me, going to this space and having the show there, and feeling this support from this other city that the photo community hadn’t experienced in the same way in Detroit. So, when I came home from that, I was energized to see what was going on with other photo festivals.”

Fast forward to now, film festivals like those in Denver, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati, alongside Detroit Month of Design, act as blueprints for NOVA24.

“We realized that there needed to be some kind of central communication point for our photo and film crew, and that the festival had to be long enough to hold ground,” Magyars-Laytner says. “This is how people communicate, this is how all the curators and book publishers and the movers and shakers of the industry find out who they’re going to use for the next five years.”

The mission of NOVA24 is to not only showcase the work of Detroit photographers and filmmakers, but also to feature international artists, positioning Detroit as a “destination for creatives.”

“It’s really just a desire to create more of an umbrella of opportunity for us here, not so that we aren’t going to still travel… but we should be able to do that as an option, not as a necessity,” Raymar says. “I think the general vibe is to expand NOVA24 into being this fully international platform for everybody to see how we in Detroit do this, but also just kind of mixing in and introducing us to those other spaces.”

Currently, some NOVA24 events are hosted in spaces that don’t conventionally showcase photographers, while others are in photo spaces that don’t get much attention, such as Photo House in Southwest Detroit. The festival’s closing ceremony will be held in a brand-new gallery opening in the Guardian Building called Promenade.

“Ultimately, as we move forward in the festival, we really want to make sure that we're just continuing to highlight and push forward the important, innovative work that people are making,” Magyars-Laytner says. “We want people to be proud to be included and be a part of this.”

Other goals include having more outdoor exhibitions, increasing funding, doubling down on dedication, and involving more people from the photo and film industry, so artists can be connected with the other important pieces of the art world.

“We have the CONTACT Photo [Festival], we have the Sundance Film Festival, you know, those names ring a bell,” Raymar says. “We want to eventually get to a place where we have our own platform based here for everybody else to see.”