Local talent takes center stage tonight at the Milwaukee Film Festival
Valley Maker
If you check out a movie at the Milwaukee Film Festival tonight, you’ll likely see a few bleary-eyed zombies stumble out of the theater. These are people who maxed out their passes—and their brains—watching 20-odd films since the festival began last Thursday. To see them is a little like being a citizen pondering returning war veterans—proud of their service, jealous of their courage. To see them is to think, “I haven’t seen enough.”
But there are still four days left and a ton of movies to see, including a big slice of Milwaukee cinema. Some local filmmakers will show off tonight at the Oriental in “The Milwaukee Show.” A smorgasbord of contrasting styles in the city’s films, the selection will feature experimental cinema, fiction narratives, documentaries, and animation, all in a 90-minute package. It will be followed by the “Cream City Cinema Party” down the block at Landmark Lanes. There, you’ll find a free Grolsch beer with a ticket stub or pass, and a discussion of “our favorite Milwaukee-made films.” It’s a discussion sure to reignite the eternal debate of Milwaukee film: American Movie, or Mr. 3000?
There are a handful of other local films over the next few days, as well. Friday night, the Oriental will première Jon Salimes and Anthony Lopez’s rock ’n’ roll road-movie documentary, Points Of Interest. The film will be followed by a Q&A with the directors, as well as a concert from Juniper Tar at the Milwaukee Ale House at 11:30 p.m.
Valley Maker, another beautifully photographed travel doc from a local filmmaker, will have its second screening of the festival on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. at the Downer Theater. The film is a visual diary kept by Sean Kafer as he travels down the Mississippi River on a homemade wooden raft from Wisconsin to New Orleans.
Perhaps one of the most interesting events of the entire festival, the “Work-In-Progress Forum” (Kennilworth Square East, Saturday at 2 p.m.), will screen and discuss local films at every stage of production. Milwaukee native Jack Turner—USA Films and United Artists executive, and moderator of the forum—says the purpose of the screening is “not that they happen to be regional, just that they’re really good.” Among the films being discussed are Chris Thompson’s Jeffrey Dahmer documentary Jeff, Drew Rosas and Nick Sommer’s slasher film Billy Club, and Andrew Swant and Bobby Ciraldo’s Hamlet A.D.D., a sci-fi Shakespeare adaptation that will probably prove to be the city’s most ambitious movie yet.
The forum is a proud showing of local cinema, as well as a move for the financial advancement of that cinema. According to Turner, the goals are for “people to be impressed by the quality of the projects, learn a lot, and for someone to come away with corporate sponsorship for their film.” These are the movies you’ll likely see at future Milwaukee Film Festivals, but right now, you can see them in their infancy, and maybe help them mature into the movies they’re destined to be.
