Wisconsin Film Festival 12 things you should know before Thursday's Wisconsin Film Festival announcement

The 2010 Wisconsin Film Festival (April 14 to 18) will announce its lineup Thursday through its website and a guide published by Isthmus, giving fest-goers a little less than a month to plan around a schedule of 192 films screening at eight downtown venues. Even though festival director Meg Hamel's incredibly busy putting together the finishing touches on the schedule, she found time to speak with The A.V. Club today and share with us some handy info and insights. (We also added some of our own.)

The Festival is longer this year. Hamel hasn't committed to officially breaking the festival out of its four-day, Thursday-through-Sunday format, but is adding what she calls "bonus screenings" on Wednesday, April 14, and some during the day (as in 1 and 3 p.m.) on Friday, April 16. The festival is still treating Thursday, April 15 as "Opening Night." "This is an experiment," Hamel tells The A.V. Club. "First of all, people have to show up."

This theme is "It Changes You." Hamel takes a certain creative pride in the festival's graphic design and promo materials. "Last year's [theme], of course, was chickens," Hamel says. "What did chickens have to do with the movies? Nothing. And sure enough, lots of people came and watched movies." This year, Hamel and local design firm Swink developed a visual theme of moths buzzing around a light bulb (right now only the bulb is live on the Fest's site; moths will be added soon). They change colors as they approach the light, as a somewhat-intentional metaphor for the festival's effect on audiences. "One of the things that I particularly find pleasing about this is the festival audience here in Wisconsin is smart enough that there's really no need to use any kind of imagery that's associated with the movies," Hamel says.

New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis will be on hand to present a screening of Collateral. 77 Square broke the news last night. The point of screening a Michael Mann action film from 2004, Hamel says, is "to talk about, how is the film constructed? What are the choices of how far away from the person or the actor is from the character? How is the film built using all these different elements of sound and light." In the end, she hopes it'll "help the audience finds ways to become smarter film viewers," not to mention avoid putting Dargis through a dry, predictable interview about her profession.

Prepare to hear mostly from lesser-known members of the film industry. "With this festival, I've always prepared to bring filmmakers who are less familiar with the audience," Hamel says, "To provide that platform for filmmakers, to become accustomed to what that feels like to screen your film publicly. For Wisconsin filmmakers and first-time filmmakers, that's a little more relevant. It's the exception rather than the rule to have quite familiar people from the film industry coming here."

Follow the Festival on Twitter. @WiFilmFestival not only offers occasional glimpses at Hamel's apparently insane schedule, it's also let slip with plenty of programming updates and assorted festival trivia. The truly Twitter-addicted can patch in to the #wifilmfest hashtag.

Word is already out about several titles. The festival features Bong Jon-ho this year with his mystery-drama Mother (which The A.V. Club's Noel Murray praised in a recent review)—but also with an entire series of the Korean director's previous work. Other films that have slipped out ahead of time include Waking Sleeping Beauty (a documentary about Disney's animation studio) and 1962 fantasy adventure The Magic Sword, which will feature an appearance from director and UW grad Bert I. Gordon.

Continuity! Hamel likes selections that shot back to fan favorites from previous festivals. OSS 117: Lost In Rio will help the fest re-connect with people who enjoyed last year's goofy spy-adventure comedy OSS 117: Cairo, Nest Of Spies. Those who enjoyed the buddy-cop-movie-plus-cross-Canadian-comedy-of-manners Bon Cop, Bad Cop in 2008 might want to return for Father And Guns, a French-Canadian film about a pair of cops who happen to be father and son.

There will be a free WFF party on Saturday, April 17 at 10 p.m. in the Orpheum lobby. "It will not be about VIP-ness," Hamel says, and local DJs Mike Carlson and Nick Nice will be spinning music and video.

If a film you want to see is in a smaller theater, think about buying ahead of time. Hamel says she obviously can't predict which films will sell out, but "films usually sell out because they are in a theater that has a smaller capacity. The Cinematheque [in Vilas Hall] is tiny, so films usually sell out there."

The 2010 lineup is crime-ridden. "What I always find surprising is that I step back and look at the final programming," Hamel says. "There are trends that I see, which may be just coincidence… for example, this year, it seems there are a lot of films about crime. But it's not like this was the year I decided there would be crime stories."

Tickets go on sale at noon on Saturday, March 20.

We want to hear what you want us to preview. Each year, local A.V. Club editors and freelancers tear through the schedule and choose as many movies as we can to preview. We try to cast a wide net, and the Film Fest people are nice enough to burn off screener DVDs for as many as possible. If you're especially curious about something, lobby for us to preview it—and soon!—by leaving a comment here and/or dropping us an @ on Twitter. We'll do our best to follow up on your suggestions. We'll start running previews of various films as soon as we can.