After working nearly three decades as an attorney, followed by 13 years leading the Wisconsin Humane Society, Anne Reed settled into retired life in September 2022. She took up acrylic abstract painting as part of what she describes as a personal art journey and made a couple of trips to France, a treasured travel destination.
“I redid what had been my daughter’s bedroom so I’d have more room to paint,” Reed said.
But Reed’s full-fledged retirement didn’t last long.
After a little more than a year out of the workforce, Reed agreed to become interim chief executive officer at Milwaukee Film following the January departure of Jonathan Jackson, who had led the organization since its founding 16 years ago.
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Six months later, Reed agreed to fill the job on a permanent basis, even though it meant an end, at least temporarily, to the joys of a well-earned retirement.
“I really enjoyed being retired, and I look forward to being retired again,” Reed said. “I’m 66 years old, and I want time to travel and do all that, but this role just drew me the more I learned about it.”
Reed said she felt a connection to Milwaukee Film when she found out the organization was considering rescuing the Downer Theatre, much like its earlier effort to secure the future of the historic Oriental Theatre, another iconic East Side institution.
“I live close to the Downer Theatre, and I was very disappointed when it closed,” Reed said.
“The reason nonprofits have existed is to do the things that the for-profit economy doesn’t support. Whether that be health care for people in need or adopting animals or putting on amazing cultural events in the city. It keeps evolving. Neighborhood theaters now clearly fall in that category. A strong nonprofit, Milwaukee Film, stepped forward when the Oriental Theatre was fragile and restored it and kept it alive and going forward along with the full variety of all that film brings, which is Milwaukee Film’s mission. I thought all of that was wonderful.”
When Reed connected with Milwaukee Film to find out more about the effort to reopen the Downer Theatre, she learned of the organization’s pending need for interim leadership.
Reed immediately noticed similarities between Milwaukee Film in its evolution and the state of the Wisconsin Humane Society when she arrived in January 2010.
“Every organization, somewhere in its lifespan, needs to move from a visionary stage to a sustaining systematic stage,” she said. “It feels really familiar.”
While in the interim role, and as a nationwide search for Jackson’s replacement launched, Reed began to recognize ways her skills and experience could benefit Milwaukee Film on a long-term basis.
“The more I learned about the work, the more it confirmed what I’ve already thought, which is that the film festival must always stay. It’s a treasure in this community and we need to hang onto it,” Reed said. “I felt like I could be helpful. I told everybody that I probably have a couple years left in me to do this job. I definitely want a full retired life again. So, when people hear in a couple years that I’ll be retiring again, they shouldn’t worry that there’s something wrong at Milwaukee Film. That’s the plan here from the start. When you hire me at this point in my life, you’re not getting 15 years of service.”
In addition to the annual festival, Milwaukee Film organizes year-round educational and community programming, manages an Artist Services program, and operates the Oriental Theatre and Downer Theatre. The organization hosts forums and other events and educates local youth about film and film studies.
“I can’t tell you how excited we are with Anne’s enthusiasm, leadership and stellar expertise in jumping into this position as she has done and navigating a path for us through these past months,” Milwaukee Film board chairwoman Susan Mikulay said. “The executive committee is confident that Anne is the best individual to help take our organization to the next level.”
Still, Reed knows that some will wonder how a lawyer with no film background is qualified to lead the organization.
“The cool thing about arts groups is that you need both business and artistic leadership,” she said. “Cara Ogburn, our artistic director, is deeply involved in the industry and understands film, the business of film, the making of film and the power of film. That blows me away pretty much daily. I bring business experience and nonprofit experience. Everybody can be confident that, just because I carry the CEO title and I lack artistic chops, Milwaukee Film is on solid ground.”
Over the duration of this year’s 15-day Milwaukee Film Festival, which ran from April 11-25, nearly 33,000 people attended 379 screenings across the city.
Attendance rose from 29,718 in 2023 and was up considerably from 18,734 in 2022, when the festival was partially virtual. However, attendance remains far off pre-pandemic times. In 2019, the year before the lockdown, the festival drew 87,618 attendees.
“Yes, you want to grow attendance, of course, but attendance is just part of what we’re doing,” Reed said. “You want something like this to be better than before and financially sustainable so that there can be a next year. For me, it’s not about a specific number to hit as far as attendance, it’s about what can make it better and bigger.”
Expanding the geographic reach of the Milwaukee Film Festival is one of Reed’s goals.
“People do travel to come to the festival,” she said. “There’s lots of room to grow that and get more people to come up from Chicago and across from Michigan and down from the Twin Cities.”
To make that happen, Reed said she has engaged in conversations with Visit Milwaukee, the city’s tourism and convention bureau.
“It’s straight-up marketing, while making sure we make it very clear how good the underlying product is,” Reed said. “The product is there. It’s legit. The film festival is a significant cultural event. It’s a road many people have walked before – how to make your product more visible.”
This year’s festival was the first under Reed’s leadership.
“I was blown away. The degree to which this community loves and treasures and clears time for and fully makes sure that they each experience this festival – I really had no idea,” she said. “There are people who want two copies of the program book so they can rip one up and spread it all over their dining room table. People buy an extra set of Post-it notes just for this. There are people who clearly take time off work to attend. All of that really struck me.”
Reed also said she has been struck by the generosity of the filmmakers who take part in the festival.
“We had almost 90 people travel from out of state not only to take part in the Q&As for their own films but also to participate in panel discussions for local filmmakers. That was deeply impressive to me.”
Reed also discussed what she views as the overall power of film.
“There’s the power to create a really wonderful cultural event in this city. The power to bring us together, like those moments that we had as children and young adults. All those first dates and sneaking away with friends to get into the theater,” she said. “The way that film brings us together is important, but something that I was really focusing on at the festival is the power of film to open minds on various topics. You can read an article about a topic or listen to someone tell you about it. You can watch something on a small screen. But when you walk into a film at a theater, it’s all around you. It’s visual. It’s musical. It’s narrative. It’s acting. It’s the vibe of the person sitting next to you. I had people tell me they walked out of a film with a different opening in their mind about a topic than they had walking in.”
Although the Film Festival is the organization’s signature program, Milwaukee Film has many other offerings, such as programming throughout Black History Month and the “Love Hurts” series that ran in February, designed as “Valentine’s Day for skeptics,” Reed said.
New this fall will be the Dialogues Documentary Festival, a weekend-long event showcasing top documentaries and generating conversations around them. The festival will run Sept. 26-29.
Children also remain a vital and important focus of Milwaukee Film.
“I’m amazed to keep connecting with the question of how many kids in Milwaukee have never been to a theater and how many have never experienced the moments we all had in a theater,” Reed said. “We can fill Farwell Avenue with buses and put 1,000 kids at a time into the Oriental Theatre and give them that moment and know that it will matter.”
A native of Chesterton, Indiana, Reed moved to Milwaukee in 1981 after earning a law degree from Cornell Law School. She joined the Milwaukee law firm of Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren, where she remained until taking the top leadership role at the Wisconsin Humane Society.
Her husband, Thomas Reed, manages the public defender’s office in Milwaukee. The couple’s daughter, Kate, is communications coordinator for the Milwaukee Bucks.
The Reeds share their home with their dog, Sam.
“I never adopted an animal the whole time I was at the Humane Society because if I adopted one, that was one, but if I ran the place right, that would be 10,000,” she said. “Almost on my way out the door, a series of accidents connected us with little Sam. Everybody asks us what kind he is, and we say he’s just a little brown dog.”
In what she fully expects to be her final job, Reed wants to do her part to keep Milwaukee Film a vital part of Milwaukee’s ongoing rebirth.
“We’ve now lived here for a very long time, and we’ve come to love Milwaukee and love the journey that we have been part of, the city’s journey,” Reed said. “When we think back to the early 1980s, Milwaukee was great enough then to attract us, but a lot of cool things have happened here since. Certainly, there are things here that must get better. But the fact that there are so many wonderful things about this city is a reason to work even harder on that than we might otherwise.”
Other than virtual sessions she spends with her sisters each week, Reed’s return to work has left her with almost no time for painting.
“Now, I paint for an hour a week with my sisters and then resubmerge myself in Milwaukee Film,” she said.
