ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan’s Montage website highlights the latest news and features about the arts, creative endeavors, collaborative projects and upcoming events. This week’s top features on Montage (www.montage.umich.edu) include:

Educational partnership: For the fourth consecutive year, film experts and students from U-M will make an indelible contribution and be given an extraordinary opportunity at the Traverse City Film Festival held in venues throughout the northern Michigan tourist capital.

Statewide student filmmaker collaboration: Michigan Creative Film Alliance has launched its first major fundraising campaign to help finance their 2012 collaborative production, “Downriver.” For the past three summers, the alliance has brought together students and recent graduates from the film programs at U-M, Michigan State University and Wayne State University. Students share their expertise as members of a production team dedicated to making a high-quality film, employing real-world professional standards and practices.

Timeless fascination: An exhibit, “Murder Most Foul: Homicide in Early America,” at the William L. Clements Library explores the peculiar popular myths and attraction to heinous crimes. And, along the way, the exhibit offers insight into the cultural and criminal justice system of 19th-century America.

Getting creative about creativity: U-M’s ArtsEngine received a $500,000 Mellon grant to support an initiative that aims to integrate the work of artists and their creative practices into the culture of U.S. research universities.

Creating digital literary community: The Gayle Morris Sweetland Center for Writing, U-M Press and MPublishing have launched Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative. The collaborative includes a book series to publish digitally enhanced texts focused on the intersections between technologies and communications, and a community web space for scholars specializing in writing and digital rhetoric.

Art at the intersection: Meet Gunalan Nadarajan, new dean of U-M’s School of Art and Design. The current vice provost for research and dean of graduate studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore has led his institution in several interdisciplinary collaborations on research and community projects. Nadarajan is the first senior academic leader dedicated to research appointed to head an art school in the United States.