Nearly three weeks after the third annual Milwaukee Film Festival wrapped up its run, film fans here in the city can rejoice in the fact that another film festival is about to get underway.
The 2011 Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival launches its 24th annual presentation tonight (Thursday, October 20) with an opening night screening of writer-director-editor Andrew Haigh’s film, Weekend (pictured above). Relative newcomers Tom Cullen and Chris New play two young gay men whose casual weekend tryst develops into something far more than either of them expected.
According to the festival program, “Thanks to the precisely measured dialogue, the quiet coaxing of the beautiful camerawork, the whole artful reach of the film’s naturalistic approach, the stuff of life ascends into something heightened…Weekend is one of the greatest films we have ever shown…”
Weekend is Haigh’s second film, following his LGBT-themed 2009 feature debut, Greek Pete, which chronicled a year in the life of a male prostitute in London. Weekend has been recognized by a number of film festivals already, having won the “Grand Jury Award for Outstanding International Dramatic Feature” at this year’s Outfest in Los Angeles, and the “Emerging Vision Audience Award” earlier this year at Austin’s South By Southwest (SXSW) Festival. The film screens tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the historic Oriental Theatre, with a post-screening reception at Beans & Barley. Tickets are $15 for the general public/$10 for students and seniors; opening night ticket stubs guarantee admittance into the post-screening reception at no additional cost.
The 24th Annual Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival continues through Sunday, October 23 with three additional days of features, documentaries and programs that celebrate the diversity found within the LGBT community here at home and around the globe. All remaining festival offerings (unless noted) will play at the UWM Union Theatre, located on the second floor of the UWM Union (2200 E. Kenwood Blvd.).
On Friday, October 21, there will be a free afternoon screening of The HIV Story Project, Still Around, a video anthology that paired an individual living with HIV who wanted to tell his story with a filmmaker. At 7 p.m., a collection of shorts centered around women entitled “Without Girls There’d Be No World: An Evening of Women’s Shorts” plays, then at 9 p.m., it’s the fellas time to take center stage with “Snogging a Bald Guy and Other Intimate Proposals: An Evening of Men’s Shorts.”
Other films and programs running during this year’s festival include: Orchids: My Intersex Adventure, which chronicles an Australian filmmakers’ trek across the continent in search of other intersex people; Gen Silent, a harrowing examination of the discrimination senior LGBT citizens face in the elder care system and the fear that drives some of them to go back into the closet; Tomboy, a French film about a preteen girl who passes as a boy; Hit So Hard: The Life and Near Death Story of Patty Schemel, a chronicle of the red-headed, lesbian drummer of the Courtney Love-led band, Hole; the BBC’s adaptation of Sarah Waters’ acclaimed WWII-set novel “The Night Watch”; I Am, a beautifully-shot documentary that details the experiences of Sonali Gulati, a lesbian filmmaker who returns home to India following her mother’s death, whom she never came out to; and Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same, the feature film debut from writer-director Madeleine Olnek, an interplanetary romance between a lonely female greeting card store employee and an extraterrestrial that she thinks is an earthling. This clever, oddball comedy was just nominated for a Gotham Award in the “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” category. It’s nominated alongside Scenes of a Crime and Without, as well as two films that played this year’s Milwaukee Film Festival: writer-director Sophia Takal’s Malick-esque Green and directors Eric Strauss & Daniele Anastasion’s mesmerizing documentary The Redemption of General Butt Naked.
The festival’s closing night film, Gun Hill Road (above), casts veteran character actor Esai Morales as an imprisoned husband and father who discovers, upon being released after serving a three-year stint, that his wife (Judy Reyes of “Scrubs”) is embroiled in an emotional affair with someone else and that his teenage son, Michael, is transgendered and passing himself off as a girl named Vanessa. The film is said to contain great performances from Morales, Reyes, and newcomer Harmony Santana as Michael/Vanessa. It screens at 7 p.m. at the UWM Union Theatre. Tickets are $9 for the general public/$7 for students, seniors, and members of the UWM campus community.
Head over to arts.uwm.edu/lgbtfilm or facebook.com/mkelgbtfilm for additional festival information, including a complete schedule.
