First, let me guarantee that this blog will not focus on film festivals every week. I’m clearly having a difficult time letting the Milwaukee Film Festival go, but by next week, I’ll be over it. Promise. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about the feedback I’ve read, heard, and even written regarding this year’s festival. One thing people are saying repeatedly is that during the festival, Milwaukee felt more open to, and connected with, the world. Milwaukee is just small enough that it often feels isolated or disengaged from movements and people in other cities. Perhaps this is especially noticeable with the Hollywood-centric film business. However, I think a lack of interaction with tourists in our hometown also affects this. I work at UWM, so I often meet visitors to Milwaukee, but outside of the university, many people I know were born and raised in Wisconsin. I rarely run into tourists while I’m out and about, which differs from my experiences in other cities where regions are constantly colliding and communicating. So, this week I decided to open my own world to see what people are contrasting the Milwaukee Film Festival with. Naturally, I took it as an opportunity to visit our nemesis city, Chicago, where the 46th Chicago International Film Festival is currently underway.
Comparing Milwaukee’s film festival to Chicago’s is kind of like comparing apples to oranges (or apples to organs, as my computer just suggested I write), since Chicago is a larger and vastly wealthier city with many more resources and a MUCH longer festival history (46 years versus two-ish). To counter these things, I have my personal bias toward smaller festivals. My favorite non-Milwaukee festival experience was the intense and intimate Roger Ebert Film Festival, held every spring at one old theater in Champaign, IL. The films are hand picked by Ebert, and the filmmakers, critics, and audience members become like family after seeing the same faces repeatedly in the theater lobby. By day three, I felt like Ebert’s wife’s confidant, and I nearly wet myself when Werner Herzog nodded at me and acted as if he would casually say hello. (I’m miserable at meeting my heroes, so I ran.) My benchmark, though, is SXSW in the mid-1990s when it was still a whippersnapper of a festival. Sure it had the backing of the music festival (which itself was a different animal then), but as a film fest, it had to generate its own buzz utilizing local theaters and smaller-name films AND hold its own against the music fest. I lived in Austin during the 1990s, so I got to see it as a baby behemoth. All of this information is simply to say: here’s where I’m coming from.
My conclusion is that we’re in a good place, Milwaukee. Here’s why: The Chicago film fest is entirely in one theater—a giant AMC multiplex. We attended Golden Slumber, a Japanese film aptly described as North by Northwest meets Groundhog Day—though nowhere near as good as either of those films. We paid $10 for parking, bought our tickets from the festival counter, got our parking validated at the AMC booth, and then took an elevator upstairs to the actual theater. I attended with Columbia College Assistant Professor Zoran Samardzija, and granted, I didn’t know anyone there aside from him, but I also didn’t see people standing around talking about the films the way I do in Milwaukee. That’s not to say people weren’t, but the space is so spread out that I assume people went elsewhere to do it. (Their Filmmakers Lounge is in a large sports bar/pool hall/bowling alley ala Milwaukee’s iPic.) In other words, my first impression was that this isn’t a festival geared toward highlighting interesting theaters or enjoying and exploring the city—it seemed solely focused on seeing movies, though I assume more vibrantly on weekends and at night. That’s fine, I’m just interested in film festivals being a celebration of everything I love all at once!
Since I only attended one screening (again, I know, unfair assessment), I combed through their program booklet to learn more while considering the local feedback I’ve seen about the Milwaukee fest. I read that people wanted more big-name movies. Chicago has a handful that, yes, Milwaukee missed out on: Danny Boyle’s latest 127 Hours, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, and Julie Taymor’s The Tempest. However, Chicago did not show Kelly Reichardt’s latest, Meek’s Cutoff, which screened last week at the New York Film Festival. Chicago also charges a whopping $30-$40 for the opening night film, and an additional $110 if you want to attend the post-film reception! Their centerpiece film (127 Hours) cost $25 per ticket plus another $25 to attend the after party. Suddenly, Milwaukee’s $50 Metropolis with the Alloy Orchestra tickets seem incredibly reasonable. Sure, part of this has to do with cost of living. Since Milwaukee was just ranked the fourth poorest city in the nation, it makes sense that we would not have the same level of disposable income as Chicago. However, at $10 per ticket with little parking hassle, we’re doing A-Ok.
We do have some film overlap. About ten films playing Chicago also played Milwaukee, including Uncle Boonmee, which sold out in 30 minutes in Chicago. (Zoran said had he anticipated this, he would have made the effort to see it in Milwaukee.) Milwaukee had some films this year that screened in Chicago last year, and Chicago’s lineup included some lower-scale films I would have loved to have seen in Milwaukee: John Cameron Mitchell’s latest Rabbit Hole and Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy. To counter, we had the fabulous Marwencol, His and Hers, Enemies of the People, and The Red Chapel—none of which screened in Chicago this year or last. This is typical of festivals: all miss some great films and program some stinkers. My point, then, is simply to remark that Milwaukee is doing pretty well. Maybe we don’t get all of the big movies right away, but we have plenty of undistributed gems to make up for it… which might be better anyway, since the bigger-name films will get distribution and make their way to Milwaukee soon enough. Since I wrote about The Cinema Club last week, I should also note that two films in the Chicago festival previously screened at Milwaukee’s Cinema Club—one at least five months ago!
What does Chicago have on us, then? The big one for me is better gear. They have a great logo and fitted women’s t-shirts with designs women actually want to wear. I forgot to mention this on my wish list, but we are seriously lacking good merch. (I would love to see a Dwellephant-drawn shirt for next year: two monsters sharing popcorn—done. Throw a monster up on a onesie, and you’ve got yourself Take One merch.) I also love the idea of Chicago’s Surprise screening. They show an unannounced but buzzed film for free only to audiences wearing festival merchandise! Tickets are available an hour before the show, so it becomes an event—and a way to promote the festival through merchandise sales and advertisement. This sounds SO fun to me!
What else does Chicago have on us? I’d say not so much. Sure their film schedule is bigger and longer, they have more panels, more stars, and a larger educational outreach program (as they should after 46 years), but we totally make up for those things with outrageous and inclusive parties. Inclusive is a key word here, as it seems Milwaukee Film is trying to keep prices affordable. I would love Milwaukee to continue working on this inclusivity by adding a more centrally located theater, like The Times or Rosebud, to grow their audience and encourage people to travel to parts of the city outside daily routines. But moreover, like SXSW the Milwaukee Film Festival highlights Milwaukee’s strengths by partnering with local businesses and organizations as much as possible. (Sure Marcus is a giant corporation, but at least it’s a local giant corporation.) This was not immediately evident to me in Chicago.
My feeling is that if we retain the energy and excitement for and about Milwaukee that we already have during the film festival, and maintain connections to local businesses while encouraging them to create specials and throw parties in celebration of the fest, plus add a few more big-name visitors, we’re totally on track to SXSW cachet. Do we want to get SXSW big? Not in my dreams. But, part of the reason SXSW Film grew like it did (and Austin’s film industry with it) was that up-and-coming filmmakers—like Quentin Tarantino—loved the vibe of the city and wanted to return. In my dreams, that we can do.
Next week: the 2010 Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival!
