Ongoing

Fifth Annual Milwaukee International Film Festival: Sept. 20 – 30

The Milwaukee International Film Festival (MIFF) runs throughout the city from September 20 –30, and will screen at the UWM Union Theatre September 28 – 30. MIFF has gained a reputation for featuring the best films found around the world. The festival invites moviegoers of all ages, tastes and interests to explore its program of 150 films, most of which have never be screened in Milwaukee. This year MIFF spotlights Mexico with a blend of fiction, documentary and short films, and debuts a family program for kids ranging from pre-school age to teens. MIFF continues its popular high-profile Spotlight films, the one-of-a-kind Midwest Filmmaker Competition, award-winning World Cinema, the best in international short filmmaking and a New Visions program for those seeking to discover cutting edge directors and films.

For complete listings visit www.milwaukeefilmfest.org

Tuesday, September 25

UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
The Battle of Algiers
(La Battaglia di Algeri, Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy/Algeria, in French, Arabic and English w/ Eng. St. 121 min., 35mm, 1966)

One of the most influential political films in history, The Battle of Algiers vividly recreates a key year in the tumultuous Algerian struggle for independence from the occupying French in the 1950s. As violence escalates on both sides, children shoot soldiers at point-blank range, women plant bombs in cafés, and French soldiers resort to torture to break the will of the insurgents. Shot in the streets of Algiers in documentary style, the film is a case study in modern warfare.

9h30pm *FREE*
Iraq in Fragments
(James Longley, US, 110 min., 35mm, 2006)

A series of intimate, passionately-felt portraits: A fatherless 11-year-old is apprenticed to the domineering owner of a Baghdad garage; Sadr followers in two Shiite cities rally for regional elections while enforcing Islamic law at the point of a gun; a family of Kurdish farmers welcomes the US presence, which has allowed them a measure of freedom previously denied. Director James Longley spent more than two years filming in Iraq to create this stunningly photographed, poetically rendered documentary of the war-torn country.

“Iraq in Fragments” will also be shown at the UWM Union Theater on Wednesday, as part of the DocUquarium series and on Thursday.

Wednesday, September 26

DocUquarium Series – every Wednesday September 5-December 5
“Dive deep” into the newest independent documentaries this fall as filmmaker/professor Brad Lichtenstein opens up his film 301 class to the public. Nine premieres, guests every month and deep exploration guaranteed. A few highlights include Banished, King Korn, Miss Navajo, and Revolution 67. Check the complete schedule at http://www4.uwm.edu/docuwm/ and the blog at http://docuquarium.groups.vox.com/.

This Week’s DocUquarium:

UWM Union Theater
7h30pm *FREE*
Iraq in Fragments
(James Longley, US, 110 min., 35mm, 2006)

Docuquarium leaves last week's reality TV far behind and takes you to the heart of the war with Iraq in Fragments this week. You won't see a more stunning portrait of what life is like for people living in Iraq. This film has won a zillion awards, including Best Documentary, Best Documentary Editing and Best Documentary Cinematography at Sundance.

"This one demands to be seen...mesmerizes with its insight and, rarer still, its beauty."

-- Kenneth Turan, LA Times

"In beautifully shot, almost poetic images, it takes us inside this fractured country, letting us feel what its like from the inside from three points of view--Sunni, Shiite and Kurd. ... A fascinating glimpse of an Iraq the mass media never shows us, the movie is a quiet revelation."

-- David Ansen, Newsweek

"Iraq in Fragments is the latest entry in the crowded field of documentaries from that war. It is also one of the best, partly because it is more concerned with exploring daily life and individual destinies than with articulating a position. ... Whether you think the war is right or wrong, Iraq in Fragments is a necessary reminder of just how painful and complicated it is."

-- A.O. Scott, The New York Times

If you make just one of Docuquarium's movies this month, make it Iraq in Fragments.

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Basement Cinema
Mitchell Hall - Room B91

Basement Cinema is a student-run series of B and unusual commercial movies.
More information at http://basementcinema.wordpress.com
This week: Locked-Up with Linda Blair! After spitting up pea soup in The Exorcist Linda Blair went on to star in these two notorious women-in-prison films.

8pm FREE
Born Innocent
 (Donald Wrye, 1974, 98 min)

One of the most controversial films to ever air on television, this NBC world premiere movie, found Linda Blair running away from her abusive father and landing in a juvenile detention center. The abuse she endures behind bars is just as bad, perhaps worse. This grim teenage morality play was made infamous by a rape scene that would later be exorcised from later broadcasts. For thirty years the original cut of the film never saw the light of day. Now’s your chance to see just how ugly television could be, especially when it ironically tries to attack the so-called downfalls of society.

10pm FREE
Chained Heat
 (Paul Nicholas, 1983, 95 min)

“2000 women, stripped of all they had, except the will to survive,” screams the tag line to one of the more legendary women-in-prison films. Carrying on a long tradition of the genre an innocent young woman (Linda Blair) is sent off to sadistic hellhole. In this particular prison the women are separated by their race. Pitted against each other, it’s white vs. black, unless the prisoners can join together and fight for their freedom. The films features an amazing cast of B-film and exploitation veterans including: Sybil Danning, Tamara Dobson, John Vernon, Stella Stevens, and Henry Silva.

Thursday, September 27

UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
Iraq in Fragments
(James Longley, US, 110 min., 35mm, 2006)

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MIFF Event
Milwaukee Filmmaker Showcase and Tribute Party

7pm – Screening at the Oriental Theater
Program Running Time: 92 min
An stylistically diverse evening showcasing the work of talented Milwaukee filmmakers and is followed by an after-party.




Films to be screened:
Moviebonics (Lance Miller, Donald P. Unverich), Them's Trying Times to Be a Canine (Joe Kraemer), Kyoko Naturally (Chris Thompson), Doug Bert Doug (Kyle Vande Slunt), Perc. (Tate Bunker), What What (In the Butt), by Brownmark Films, 18/20 Hours (Cris Siqueira), Ruby (Adam Presti), The Cherry Tree (Carlo Besasie), Small Talk (Karen Lindholm-Rynkiewicz) and Table Talk (Andrew Rosas, Andrew Swant, Bobby Ciraldo and Kelly Hendzel).

9pm to 11 pm – Tribute party
Location: INOVA Gallery
Kennilworth Square East - 2155 N. Prospect Ave.
Ticket Cost: FREE w/ MIFF Movie Ticket or Pass

Friday, September 28

2pm FREE
Colloquia in Conceptual Studies
Sensational! Sensing Media Arts – Theory and Practice
Kenilworth Square East
1925 E. Kenilworth Pl., 4th Floor

Dr. Vivian Sobchack
The Dream Ol(Factory): On Making Scents of Cinema

Vivian Sobchack recently retired after 15 years as Professor of Critical Studies and Associate Dean of UCLA's School of Theater, Film & Television. Her most recent book, Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture, reflects her wide range of interests, including American film genres, philosophy and film theory, history and phenomenology of perception, historiography, gender, and cultural studies. Sobchack serves on the Board of Directors of the American Film Institute and was the first woman elected President of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. She received that organization's Distinguished Service Award in 2005.

Publications include Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film; The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience; and the anthologies Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick-Change and The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television, and the Modern Event, in addition to essays in journals such as Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Film Comment, camera obscura, Film Quarterly, and Representations. She has been an on-camera participant and voice-over commentator for several DVD features and featurettes, including Dark City, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (season seven), and several Warner Bros. DVD collections.

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MIFF Event
5h30pm - Life after the Festival Run
Location: Von Trier, 2235 N. Farwell Ave.
Ticket Cost: FREE

Don’t let your short film collect dust on a bookshelf or become a mantelpiece. There are plenty of new avenues for marketing and screening your short film after the festival run. Gain advice from industry professionals and filmmakers who can help you get the most out of your short film, advancing your filmmaking career and helping your pocketbook.

Saturday, September 29

MIFF Event
10h30am – Getting Your Indie Film Made and Seen On Public TV
Location: Milwaukee Art Museum, 700 N. Art Museum Dr.
Ticket Cost: FREE

ITVS is the single largest funder of independent work (documentaries, narratives, and animated works) on public television. Come learn about all the various funding opportunities available for independent filmmakers. ITVS Program Manager Kathryn Washington and ITVS funded producer and Milwaukee filmmaker Brad Lichtenstein will walk you through the nuts and bolts of getting your project funded for broadcast on public television.

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MIFF Event
3pm – Visions of the Future
Location: Milwaukee Art Museum, 700 N. Art Museum Drive
Ticket Cost: FREE

Wisconsin’s own film industry production leaders will discuss their vision for the future filmmaking in Wisconsin. Film Wisconsin, the new non-profit film office, will lead this panel, addressing how the industry is building for Wisconsin’s next chapter in television and film production with the aid of state tax incentives. Introduced by Dave Fantel and moderated by Scott Robbe, panel participants will include Randy Bobo, Steve Boettcher, Bob Donnelly, Daniel Kattman, Jerry Riedel, Janine Sijan Rozina and John Tanner.

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MIFF Event
6:45pm to 7:15pm - Awards Ceremony
Location: Oriental Theatre, 2230 N. Farwell Avenue
Ticket Cost: FREE with ticket to Saturday night spotlight presentation Twice Upon a Time



Preceding the Spotlight Presentation of Twice Upon a Time at the Oriental Theatre, this celebratory climax to the festival includes an awards presentation for the Midwest Filmmaker Competition, MIFF’s 24-Hour Film Contest and Student Screenwriting Competition, and the Film Movement Distribution Award.
Note: Patrons must arrive by 6:45 p.m. to attend the Awards Ceremony.

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Woodland Pattern Experimental Film/Video Series
Circling the Space: Body in Film
7pm $2
Woodland Pattern Book Center - 720 E Locust
http://www.woodlandpattern.org



The Fall Woodland Pattern Experimental Film/Video series, presented by the UWM Department of Film, commences with a program that considers the shared concerns of sculpture and film. This program is curated by local artist Jill Sebastian, Professor of Sculpture at Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design.
The video/film works of Ana Mendieta, Mona Hatoum and Joan Jonas have common grounding in the psychological and spatial conundrums that circle sculptural concerns such as body, self, object, material, context, place, dislocation and interactivity.

To be screened:

Selected Filmworks
(Ana Mendieta, 33 min., 1972-1981)
Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta's ritualistic performances and haunting
"earth-body" sculptures of the 1970s resonate with visceral metaphors of death, rebirth, and spiritual transformation. Much of her work expresses the pain and rupture of cultural displacement. Mendieta made more than seventy films and videotapes.

Changing Parts
(Mona Hatoum, 24 min., 1985)
British artist Mona Hatoum's work draws on her cultural identity as a Lebanese immigrant. One part refers to an organized, clearly defined, privileged and ordered reality and the other to a reality of disorder, chaos, war and destruction. But this opposition turns out to be full of contradictions as inside and outside become interchangeable and in the disorder can also be seen as an expression of birth and the sensuousness of life.

He Saw Her Burning
(Joan Jonas, 19.5 min, 1983)
Based on a 1983 performance, He Saw Her Burning is a surreal juxtaposition of a man and a woman occupying separate narrative spaces as they tell their stories, which are intercut with a pastiche of word games, narrative reenactments, filmed sequences, isolated gestures and objects. Produced while Jonas was living in Berlin on an artist's fellowship, the disjunctive narratives are pervaded with a sense of cultural dislocation and alienation.

Sunday, September 30

MIFF Event
Noon - Will Digital Cinema Mean the Re-birth of Regional Cinema?
Location: Discovery World, 500 N. Harbor Drive
Ticket Cost: Admission to the screening of The Whole Shootin’ Match required.

The Whole Shootin’ Match (1978, Eagle Pennell) is one of the seminal regional films of the American independent film movement. Made in Texas on weekends for $25,000, it was praised on release and inspired Robert Redford to start the Sundance Institute. However, since the advent of Sundance, the appropriate term “regional” has been replaced by the more generic “independent.” This panel will explore the restoration and digital cinema distribution of The Whole Shootin’ Match, while asking the question, “What happened to the regional film movement in America?”