Still in Its Infancy, the Wisconsin Film Festival Is Filling Seats and Earning Accolades
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Still in its infancy, the Wisconsin Film Festival is filling seats and earning accolades. By Michael Penn MA’97 22 ON WISCONSIN F THE 138 FILMS Organizers expect similar hordes programming all five Wisconsin festivals. shown during last this year, when the festival takes over “The way you pick a [standard] movie is year’s Wisconsin Film six Madison theaters from March 27 to that you wait for a review, or word of Festival, almost all 30. Mary Carbine ’86, MA’88, who mouth, or something to let you know went off without a directs the festival for the UW-Madison that it’s worth your time. At a festival, hitch. One that didn’t Arts Institute, its presenting organiza- you can’t wait for the buzz. The reason was a three-hour story about Inuit life tion, says she began fielding calls for it’s fun is because you have to just dive O tickets in December, two months before in and take chances. Sometimes you called Atanarjuat — The Fast Runner, which accidentally began without sound. the festival announced what films it misfire, but sometimes you have this For a few minutes, the film rolled word- would show. liberating, exhilarating experience, lessly on, until projectionists got the “There’s a real sense of excitement at because you had no idea that a film problem fixed and started it from the being able to see all these different types would take you to those places.” beginning. of films together in one event,” she says. It’s like a giant, celluloid buffet, Remarkably, no one seemed to mind. But it’s the kind of audience, rather where there’s every reason to try new There were no catcalls or disgusted than the size, that sets the festival apart tastes. And if the patient way in which groans from audience members. “People from your average trip to the local audiences digested the unintentionally just took in what was there,” says Liesel multiplex. This is no multiplex crowd, silent Fast Runner shows anything, it’s that de Boor, a filmmaker who was in the and these are no multiplex movies. Madison is ready for the unexpected. audience that night. “They were happy to In these days of test marketing and “I just thought it was the most watch it that way. It was almost like it was targeted demographics, genuine surprise incredible audience I’d seen,” says de a treat to get to see it in a different way.” hardly ever enters a movie theater. Major Boor, a Madison native who came back Those few moments of silence say a motion pictures are carefully tailored to from New York City to show her film, great deal about the kind of event that meet audience expectations, and when Cat Lady. “I remember thinking that this the festival has become. Starting in disappointments are expensive, spon- would only happen in Madison.” 1999 as a modest on-campus showcase taneity is expendable. Film festivals, on for a few obscure films, the festival has the other hand, typically piece together mushroomed into a regional happening, variegated rosters of foreign, independ- Few people will mistake showing more films to more people at ent, and experimental film. Surprise is Madison for a Midwestern tinseltown. more Madison theaters. Last year, the house special. Yet the trappings of civic cinephilia are about 18,500 tickets were sold for the “A festival is like a game,” says there. UW-Madison hosts frequent film four-day fete — a 30 percent jump James Kreul ’92, MA’96, a film studies series and owns one of the largest from 2001 and six times the number graduate student who has had a hand in archives of film history and ephemera in of people who attended the first year. Local arts writers have described it as a “monster hit,” a “critical and audience blockbuster,” and “a first-rate Midwest- ern cultural expo.” ERIC TADSEN But such thesaurus-mining praise only begins to get at the spirit that seems to take hold of downtown Madison dur- ing the festival. In short order, the event has become the kind of phenomenon that generates its own buzz. People stop each other in the street to talk about it. Gossip flows. Tickets are scarce. Nearly one- third of the movies shown last year sold out before the first reel ever ran, and many of the rest — like The Fast Runner, which nearly filled the Orpheum’s Main ERIC PEARLE Theatre — attracted long lines of people who sometimes queued up without know- The Wisconsin Film Festival earned its marquee billing last year, drawing long lines of movie ing what movie they were waiting to see. enthusiasts at the Orpheum and other downtown venues. SPRING 2003 23 the world. And downtown is home to the gloriously restored Orpheum Theatre, as ERIC TADSEN well as the Four-Star Video Heaven rental shop that Roger Ebert once called “the best video store outside Chicago.” “There has been a particularly long interest in film here, going back to the time when I was a young assistant professor,” says Tino Balio, executive director of the Arts Institute, who came to Madison in 1966. (See related story, page 27.) “In those days, you could see a foreign film on almost any night.” The ultimate hallmark of a movie town, though, is a film festival of its own. As many as 1,200 communities around the world have them, from the big and glamorous ones at Sundance and Cannes, to idiosyncratic little celebrations organ- ized around a specific director or theme. A film festival isn’t just about seeing the films — it can also bring chances to see the people (Get your tickets now for the New who made them. Last year, director Arliss Howard, right, and actress Debra Winger sat down Orleans Worst Film Festival, devoted to talk about their movie, Big Bad Love, with film critic Michael Wilmington. to the most dismal in new cinema.) Ideally, festivals are more than just tourism department, hosted a party April 1999. Then, with two months agglomerations of film. They bring for Hollywood insiders, many of them to go and still no big-name premiere to together communities of movie lovers, former Badgers who had gone on to anchor the event, the state gave up and united by popcorn and long hours of influential roles in movie production and canceled nearly all its plans. sitting in dark rooms, who give the events distribution. Because the business of the About all that remained was a sched- ethos and attitude. At Cannes, for film office is business — and, specifically, ule of films to be shown on campus, example, there’s an overwhelming air of generating some for Wisconsin — its which originally was supposed to be a celebrity, and who you see is as important officials were less interested in commu- side dish to the big feast going on up as what you see. At Sundance, industry nity-building than in getting the Holly- State Street. Sponsored by the Arts networking is the name of the game. At wood film industry to take notice of Institute and programmed by students Slamdance, an alternative festival that (and, in turn, make movies in) the Kreul and Weger, the films were mostly runs parallel to its more famous cousin, Badger state. off-the-radar independents and docu- it’s about slamming the films at Sundance. Over brats and beer, the partiers mentaries; there were certainly no Red- “Festivals are about celebrating the plotted an event that would put Madison fords among them. But the planners whole idea of film,” says Wendi Weger on the film map. A few months later, figured that, even if a Great Wisconsin ’98, one of the Wisconsin festival’s origi- state officials initiated the Great Wiscon- Film Festival was no longer possible, nal programmers, who now coordinates sin Film Festival, an event whose name they had a shot at a pretty good one. the New York Underground and Hamp- signaled its optimism. The big draw was “We had a good idea of what we tons film festivals. “There are loads of to be an appearance by Robert Redford, wanted to do, and we thought it would reasons that films get into commercial who had agreed to drop in to accept have been crazy to cancel the whole theaters, and many of those reasons aren’t something called the Cheesehead thing,” says Kreul, who was then a pro- based at all on the merit of the films.” Award — a self-deprecating honor gram assistant for the UW’s Cinemath- Festivals, she says, give films outside the that promised the sort of klieg-lighted eque film series. “We knew that if there mainstream a chance, while at the same celebrity that was sure to accompany any was no festival at all, if we let the whole time allowing audiences to appreciate a Hollywood megastar on State Street. thing end, there probably wouldn’t be fuller scope of creative work. But Redford later backed out, any film festival in Madison for a long Wisconsin’s foray into that realm beginning a string of setbacks that time. We had to take advantage of that began, as do all good Badger ideas, at a threatened to end the event before it momentum.” tailgater. In February 1997, the Wiscon- could begin. The festival was initially Kreul and Weger, then a senior com- sin Film Office, a division of the state postponed from October 1998 until munication arts major who coordinated 24 ON WISCONSIN the Wisconsin Union’s Starlight Cinema, went with Warhol.” To his surprise, so manager, and a public relations agent in stuck with the goal that guided their did a lot of other people.