THIS WEEK AT UWM FILM

2008-02-11T15:45:00.003-06:00

Please follow this link for the current UWM Film Department's Event Blog

http://uwmfilmdepartment.blogspot.com/

Corpora Luminum: The Body in New French Experimental Cinema

2008-01-31T14:37:00.000-06:00

Tuesday, February 12 7pm, FREE
Experimental Tuesdays at the Union Theatre, UWM Union Theatre
2nd level, UWM Union

Corpora Luminum: The Body in New French Experimental Cinema
Presented by Guest Curator Grant Wiedenfeld
With filmmaker Philippe Cote in person
co-presented with UWM Festival of Films in French; co-sponsored by French Cultural Service, of the French Embassy

When phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty located the roots of consciousness in the body being in the world, the human body became a key site for critical inquiry and artistic expression, nowhere more so than in his native France. Drawing upon this unique critical atmosphere and upon 60’s American and 70’s French avant-garde cinema, these contemporary filmmakers – all members of the Parisian experimental cinema workshop l’ETNA – engage the body in a diverse range of roles, from moving sculpture to respiring gaze, while revealing the brilliant body of cinema itself – a length of celluloid frames. Artists to be featured: Delphine Lest, Philippe Cote, Xavier Baert, and Carole Arcega.

Inova Opening: Friday, January 25, 6-9 pm

2008-01-23T15:09:00.000-06:00

PLEASE JOIN US! (e-vite and press release attached)
(Deb Sokolow, Claire Pentecost & Amy Ruffo in attendance)

Opening reception: Friday, January 25, 6-9 pm
Institute of Visual Arts
Inova/Kenilworth, 2155 N. Prospect Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53202

DEB SOKOLOW The Trouble with People You Don’t Know

The Flight of Fake Tears: Large-Scale Narrative Drawing
DOMINIC McGILL ROBYN O'NEIL CLAIRE PENTECOST AMY RUFFO

January 25-March 14, 2008

In huge, wall-filling drawings with maps, directional arrows and blocks
of text, Deb Sokolow (Chicago) mixes politics, popular culture,
conspiracy theory, and social anxiety into sweeping, intricate tales
worthy of any Great American Paranoid.

The Flight of Fake Tears features a sculptural tent-drawing by Dominic
McGill (New York), an enigmatic single-panel narrative drawing by Robyn
O’Neil (Houston), photographed studio wall-drawings by Claire Pentecost
(Chicago), and analogical landscapes by Amy Ruffo (Sheboygan).

Gallery hours: Wednesday & Friday-Sunday, 12 noon-5 pm; Thursday, 12
noon-8 pm.

RELATED EVENTS
Artists Now!

January 30, 2008 at 7 pm
Deb Sokolow: The Trouble with People You Don’t Know
Arts Center Lecture Hall, 2400 E. Kenwood Blvd.
Sokolow inaugurates the Department of Visual Art’s guest lecture series
with a talk about the evolution of her studio practice, the development
of the paranoid narrative, and the search for the nefarious.

February 6, 2008 at 7 pm
Claire Pentecost: In Media Res
Arts Center Lecture Hall, 2400 E. Kenwood Blvd.
Chicago-based artist and writer Claire Pentecost considers the great
tradition of drawing and its current place as a mediator between self
and the social.

SiteLines Drawing Immersion Workshop with Leslie Vansen & Deb Sokolow
January 26 & 27, 2008 from 9 am-6 pm
Kenilworth Square East, 1925 E. Kenilworth Pl.
Fee: $100 To register: (414) 229-4308

Information: 414.229.5070
inova@uwm.edu
http://arts.uwm.edu/inova

2008-01-23T15:05:00.001-06:00

Opening this Thursday, Jan 24, 6pm
Sensory Overload: Light, Motion, Sound, and the Optical in Art Since 1945
http://www.mam.org/exhibitions/exhibition_details.aspx?ID=93

Opening features talk by Curator Joe Ketner and artist Erwin Redl, whose 25 x 50
foot LED installation MATRIX (2007) is part of the show. Show also features a
piece by former colloquia guest Liz Phillips.

January 24, 2008 - Ongoing
CONTEMPORARY GALLERIES

The contemporary galleries reopen this month with a new installation that tracks
the development of Kinetic and Op art, whose optical stimulation and
interactivity introduced new dimensions to art. Stanley Landsman's Infinity
Chamber (1968), which has not been on view for nearly twenty years, together
with Erwin Redl's dramatic Matrix (2007), a 25 x 50 foot LED installation,
punctuate this extraordinary immersive experience.

Chronological in its presentation, the installation begins with works by Laszlo
Moholy-Nagy and Josef Albers, two Bauhaus instructors whose ideas stimulated
the developments of these styles, followed by vibrant early Op art pieces from
the 1950s and 1960s by European and American artists such as Victor Vasarely
and Richard Anuskiewicz. The development of Albers' ideas into geometric
abstraction during the 1970s is visible in the works of artists such as Al Held
and Frank Stella, and the works of Peter Haley and Philip Taaffe and those of
the so-called post-hypnotic artists such as Bruce Pearson and James Siena show
the continuation of the optical tradition in the 1980s and 1990s. Select
images, films, and videos will be projected in two black box theaters.

The Museum has collected and exhibited new media art ever since 1967 when it
co-organized Light, Motion, Space, one of the first exhibitions on this form of
art in the United States. Sensory Overload features some of the most popular
works in the Museum's Collection as well as key works on loan from other
institutions and private collections.

2008-01-23T15:01:00.000-06:00

January 23 - February 3
Rotterdam, The Netherlands, various venues
37th Rotterdam International Film Festival
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/
This premiere international film festival will include screenings of work
by David Dinnell ("Midden"), Luke Sieczek ("Phantom"), and Ari Hamidi ("A
Covenant Adam"), current and former graduate students in the Film department.

2008-01-23T14:58:00.000-06:00

Tuesday, January 29, 7pm FREE
Experimental Tuesdays at the Union Theatre, UWM Union Theatre
2nd level, UWM Union

Shoot Shoot Shoot:
British Avant-Garde Films of the 1960’s and 1970’s Program 1
The first of a two-part program of short British avant-garde films from the 1960s and 70s, decades in which independent filmmakers challenged cinematic convention. In England, much of the innovation took place at the London Film-Makers' Co-operative, an artist-led organization that enabled filmmakers to control every aspect of the creative process. LFMC members conducted an investigation of celluloid that echoed contemporary developments in painting and sculpture. The physical production of a film (its printing and processing) became integral to its form and content as Malcolm Le Grice, Lis Rhodes, Peter Gidal and others explored the material and mechanics of cinema, making radical new works that contributed to a new visual language. Tonight’s program includes work by Annabel Nicolson, Guy Sherwin, Mike Leggett, David Crosswaite, Lis Rhodes, Chris Garratt, Mike Dunford, & Marilyn Halford, Curated by Mark Webber.

Related links:
http://www.lux.org.uk/touring/shootshootshoot.htm

2008-01-23T14:53:00.000-06:00

Friday, January 25, 7pm $2
Woodland Pattern Book Center, 720 E Locust

Dear Friends and Monsters: An evening with Ari Hamidi
Film Screening, with a poetry reading & performance art as accompaniment.

Filmmaker, poet and former Milwaukeean Ariana Hamidi, will premiere her new film and read from her recently published chapbook of poetry, both entitled Dear Cyclops. In this her newest film, Hamidi asks, how do we make our public selves genuine? through the use of three singular tableaus in which groups of people must relate with each other in unusual surroundings and circumstances.

The film is part documented human experiment and part classic dramatics. Hamidi provocatively advises: “When the monster enters your life, recognize him but don’t judge. After all, he might eat you but it’s worth it if you find you taste good.“

Dear Cyclops is being released in conjunction with a chapbook of poetry under the same title, published by Bronze Skull Press in 2007.

Related links:
http://www.woodlandpattern.org

COMING UP

2007-12-11T16:25:00.000-06:00

December 19th
Electro_____
UWM DIVAS Program Junior/Senior Project
from 6-9 pm at Kenilworth Square East
free and open to the public
1925 E. Kenilworth Pl.,
4th floor (entrance on building's west side).

Electro_____ is a multimedia exhibition that showcases upperclassmen students’ semester-long projects including interactive installations, animations, and performance pieces.

Featuring work from
Brennan Alcott
Chris Campbell
Caitlin Christman
Miles Fabishak
Matteo Garcia
Aaron Hart
Sarandos Klikizos
Todd Ruehmer
Kyle Redlin

The UWM inter-arts program DIVAS [Digital Imaging, Visualization, Animation & Sound] was created in 2002. The program aims to explore new media, technology-oriented production and theory at the blurred boundaries of video, electronic music, visual art, web based art, robotics, and programming.

Tuesday, December 11

2007-12-11T04:36:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm
Ugetsu
(Ugetsu Monogatari, by Kenji Mizoguchi, 97 min., 1953)

In a sixteenth-century village, a potter is seduced by an exquisitely beautiful woman who turns out to be a phantom. Mizoguchi's rigorous compositions and camerawork, his use of the mist-enshrouded landscape around Lake Biwa, the intense performances of two of Japan's greatest actresses (Kyo and Tanaka), and the theme of the illusory nature of human ambition and desire: all contribute to a work of infinite beauty and significance. “Simultaneously realistic, allegorical and supernatural, Ugetsu is the most stylistically perfect of all Mizoguchi's work…” - David L. Cook.

Wednesday, December 12

2007-12-11T04:33:00.001-06:00

No postings.

Thursday, December 13

2007-12-11T04:32:00.003-06:00

America's Black Holocaust Museum
7pm
Homecomings
(dir. Charlene Gilbert, 1999, 56 min)

Presented by theCommunity Media Project, in association with America's Black Holocaust Museum and UWM's Cultures and Communities.

The documentary details the struggle that African-American farmers faced when trying to purchase their own land once freed from slavery, both with the Southern white farmers who refused to cooperate, and the federal agencies who were supposed to be helping them. A talkback with the filmmaker will follow.

More information about the film: http://www.pbs.org/itvs/homecoming/film1.html

America's Black Holocaust Museum is located at 2233 N. 4th St.
Suggested donation: $5 for adults / $3 for students

The "Disparities and Misconceptions" film series at America's Black Holocaust Museum will highlight films that magnify struggles that African-Americans face in attempts to overcome disparities in access to resources, often met with forceful resistance. Topics that these films will explore include removal from one's land, urban revolt in response to racial injustice, and petitioning the government to retain one's resources.

For more information, call (414) 264-2500, or e-mail mcfaddendonte@gmail.com

Friday, December 14

2007-12-11T04:32:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm
Student Film Festival
A juried showcase of the best short films and videos from the students of the pioneering UWM Film Department. Followed by an exhibit of photography work.

Saturday, December 15

2007-12-11T04:31:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
Senior Screening
A special evening showcasing the films and videos completed by the UWM Department of Film's graduating seniors.

Sunday, December 16

2007-12-11T04:30:00.000-06:00

No postings.

Tuesday, December 4

2007-12-03T21:32:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
Byron Hurt Screening of Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes
Presented by the “It's Bigger than Hip Hop” Series

Social Justice: Hip Hop Under a Microscope
An inspiring and enlightening evening with Byron Hurt, filmmaker and anti-sexist activist. The evening begins with a screening of his film, Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a "loving critique" of certain disturbing developments in mainstream rap music culture. Hurt will provide his commentary on representations of gender roles in hip-hop and rap music. Please stick around to add your thoughts on the subject during the Q and A.

Sponsored by the UWM Union Sociocultural Programming, UWM Union Programming, the Helen Bader School of Social Work, the Women's Resource Center, Norris Health Center, Cultures and Communities, and the Community Media Project.

For more information, contact Rebecca Grassl, 414-229-3728.

Wednesday, December 5

2007-12-03T21:23:00.000-06:00

DocUquarium Series – last screening of the year!!
Don’t forget to viisit the DocUquarium blog at http://docuquarium.groups.vox.com/.

UWM Union Theater
7h30pm *FREE*
An Unreasonable Man
(Henriette Mantel and Steve Skrovan, USA, 122 min, 2006)
Guest David Bollier, former Nader Raider and interviewee, in person!

In 1966, General Motors, the most powerful corporation in the world, sent private investigators to dig up dirt on an obscure thirty-two year old public interest lawyer named Ralph Nader, who had written a book critical of one of their cars, the Corvair. The scandal that ensued after the revelation of this smear campaign launched Ralph Nader into national prominence and established him as one of the most admired Americans and the leader of the modern Consumer Movement. Over the next thirty years and without ever holding public office, Nader built a legislative record that is the rival of any contemporary president. Many things consumers take for granted such as seat belts, airbags and product labeling are largely due to the efforts of Ralph Nader and his citizen groups. Cast as a "spoiler candidate" in the 2000 presidential election, he has become a pariah even among former friends and allies. How did this happen? An Unreasonable Man traces the life and career of Ralph Nader, one of the most unique, important, and controversial political figures of the past half century.

Guest David Bollier is a former Nader Raider featured in the film, and he's an author, journalist and a Senior Fellow at University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. A co-founder of Public Knowledge, he advocates for the public domain, especially in the digital realm. He's written several books, including Silent Theft, about the privatization of things that belong to the public, from the sky to seeds to our genes — The Commons.

The film will be screened again at Discovery World on Dec. 6 (see details bellow).

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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: A question that seems to perplex America is “What would happen if a black man entered a white man’s world.” And who better than Hollywood to address such a quandary.

8pm *FREE*
The Things with Two Heads
(Lee Frost, 1972, 93 minutes)

A rich, white bigot is about to die, but he’s got plan. He hopes to graft his head onto another’s body. The problem is the only available candidate is a black man from death row. Ray Milland stars as the bigot and former pro football player Rosey Greer stars as the body. Together they form a bickering odd couple thrown into a series of wild events that play up their racial differences and the comical image of Ray Milland’s head sitting atop Rosey’s shoulders.

10pm *FREE*
Change of Mind
(Robert Stevens, 1969, 98 minutes)

A film so rare in the US we had to get our copy from overseas! Come see a white man’s brain transplanted into a black man’s body. Once David Rowe’s brain is moved into the skull of a black man doctor’s, law officials, even his own wife start to question who David is. Is David a white man with a black man’s body or a black man with a white man’s brain? Even David is unsure of who he is especially when old friends change their attitude towards the new David, even allowing him to become the victim of racism. Made during a moment of high racial tensions in the US, Change of Mind calls into question what makes a man. Duke Ellington’s music provides the score to this film that was a bit ‘a head’ of its time.

Thursday, December 6

2007-12-03T21:20:00.000-06:00

Noon at Alterra
Coffee with DocUquarium guest David Bollier (featured in An Unreasonable Man)
Alterra Coffee Roasters – 2211 N. Prospect Ave.
Join us for an intimate chat with this former Nader Raider and interviewee in this week’s DocUquarium film “An Unreasonable Man”.

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Discovery World
7pm
An Unreasonable Man
(Henriette Mantel and Steve Skrovan, USA, 122 min, 2006)
Guest David Bollier, former Nader Raider and interviewee, in person!
Discovery World is located at 500 N. Harbor Drive.

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UWM Union Theater
Seven Masterpieces by Kenji Mizoguchi
Thursday – Tuesday, December 6-11

Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi began his career in the silent-film era and quickly became known for his vehement independence and uncompromising artistry. This series will present seven beautifully restored 35mm film prints, which are unequaled in their pictorial and narrative richness and emotional force. All films are FREE and open to the public. Films are in Japanese with English subtitles. Series organized by James Quandt, Cinematheque Ontario.

7pm
Story of the Last Chrysanthemums
(Zangiku monogatari, by Kenji Mizoguchi, 142 min., 1939)

A majestic and moving Mizoguchi, in which the director refined the style for which he became famous, Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, is set in the nineteenth-century world of Kabuki actors. A young actor is expelled from his family because of his lazy, unprofessional attitude towards the art of Kabuki. He is saved from dissolution by the family's maid, who urges him to perfect his technique. She sacrifices everything for him, and, in the famous final sequence, splendidly shot in the canals of Osaka ; her sacrifice becomes total just as he triumphs as a great actor.

Friday, December 7

2007-12-03T21:18:00.001-06:00

Conference / Symposium
From Magna Carta to Sky Trust: The Historical Arc of the Commons
10am - 4pm
Hosted by the Center for 21st Century Studies
American Geographical Library
3rd floor, east wing of UWM Golda Meir Library

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UWM Union Theater
7pm
Sansho the Bailiff
(Sansho Dayu, by Kenji Mizoguchi, 123 min., 1954)

In eleventh-century Japan , a family is dispersed: the father is exiled by a cruel governor, the mother is sold as a courtesan, and the children are sent to a remote province as slaves. Rarely did Mizoguchi achieve the balance between barbaric violence and formal beauty that he did here. Miyagawa's cinematography, with its awe-inspiring long takes and complex use of background and offscreen space, lends even the most harrowing sequences an extraordinary eloquence. “The last scene of SANSHO DAYU is one of the most affecting in the history of cinema… SANSHO DAYU is one of those films for whose sake the cinema exists” - Gilbert Adair.

9h30pm
Sisters of Gion
(Gion no shimai, by Kenji Mizoguchi, 69 min, 1936)

Often considered the best Japanese film prior to the war, Sisters of Gion presents a portrait of two sisters working as geisha – one conservative and traditional, the other cynical and rebellious. Their opposing views put them in conflict with each other and their work in a Kyoto teahouse causes various sexual humiliations. The film inevitably leaves its audiences in stunned silence. Sisters of Gion was the only Mizoguchi film that ever won the Japanese award for best film of the year. "The style is sublime; the camera glides through poetic sets as emotions delicately unwind" - Michael Wilmington, CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Saturday, December 8

2007-12-03T21:15:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
5pm
Street of Shame
(Akasen Chitai, by Kenji Mizoguchi, 85 min., 1956)

“The best of all films examining the problems of women in postwar Japan ” - Donald Richie, this overwhelming work was Mizoguchi's last. The “street of shame” runs through Tokyo 's red-light district where the women at the Dreamland salon eke out a living for their families. Mizoguchi's portrait of this group of prostitutes, from a hard-boiled glamour girl to a widow in her forties worried about her fading beauty–was so powerful in its indictment of women's oppression that, a year after its release, it led to a government bill outlawing prostitution. An ensemble of Japan 's finest actresses brings dense emotional life to this unforgettable group portrait.

7pm
Ugetsu
(Ugetsu Monogatari, by Kenji Mizoguchi, 97 min., 1953)

In a sixteenth-century village, a potter is seduced by an exquisitely beautiful woman who turns out to be a phantom. Mizoguchi's rigorous compositions and camerawork, his use of the mist-enshrouded landscape around Lake Biwa, the intense performances of two of Japan's greatest actresses (Kyo and Tanaka), and the theme of the illusory nature of human ambition and desire: all contribute to a work of infinite beauty and significance. “Simultaneously realistic, allegorical and supernatural, Ugetsu is the most stylistically perfect of all Mizoguchi's work…” - David L. Cook.

9pm
Life of Oharu
(Saikaku Ichidai Onna, by Kenji Mizoguchi, 144 min, 1952)

Mizoguchi considered Life of Oharu to be his masterpiece. No film rivals Oharu's exquisite sense of composition, and the implacability of its chronicle of the downfall of a woman. Kinuyo Tanaka, whose career was synonymous with Mizoguchi's for many years, plays Oharu, an imperious court lady of the Edo period who lives in Kyoto . When she is sold to a feudal lord, she is subjected to a series of humiliations and ends up as a broken old streetwalker. “[A]n extremely elegant movie whichever way you look at it: tiny details of movement by the actors, beautiful compositions and photography throughout, single fluid takes often serving to state a whole scene.” - TIME OUT

Sunday, December 9

2007-12-03T21:13:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
5pm
Utamaro and his Five Women
(Utamaro O Meguru Gonin no Onna, by Kenji Mizoguchi, 87 min., 1946)

A fictionalized account of revolutionary Japanese print artist Kitagawa Utamaro and those who surrounded him, his artwork was considered shocking in 18th century feudal Japan , and in Mizoguchi's film he attracts both admiration from his peers and condemnation from the Shogunate. Utamaro and his Five Women opens with a sweeping, long take of a procession of the very people Utamaro loved to paint, a scene as vividly realized and affective as the artist's own work. Utamaro and his followers find themselves in a string of duplicitous romantic encounters. During a time when both art and emotion are heavily censored the characters lash out, resorting to selfish acts of self-expression that lead to irreversible, devastating consequences.

7pm
Life of Oharu
(Saikaku Ichidai Onna, by Kenji Mizoguchi, 144 min, 1952)

Tuesday, November 27

2007-11-26T09:48:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
Experimental Tuesdays
7pm *FREE*
Nazuna
(Hitoshi Toyoda, Japan/US, 90 min, 35mm slides, 2003-4)
Hitoshi Toyoda in person!

Hitoshi Toyoda is a self-taught photographer who has worked exclusively in the medium of slideshows for the past ten years. His silent slide shows have been compared to haiku literature because of the way they are able to encompass both the minutiae of daily life and the larger, unknowable forces that govern that life. Toyoda only exhibits his work in live contexts, clicking through the slides himself.

Wednesday, November 28

2007-11-26T00:06:00.000-06:00

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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: Magic vs. Muscles - two early 80’s quickies designed to cash in on the barbarian craze that was sweeping America for a minute or two.

8pm *FREE*
The Sword and the Sorcerer
 (Albert Pyun, 1982, 100 minutes)

A bloody, low budget movie in the spirit of Conan or Excalibur, except this one makes very little sense. The hero and his three-bladed, jet-propelled sword must help the heroine save her brother from a demonic figure known as Cromwell. Lots of action, torture, magic, mayhem and some killer special effects.

10pm *FREE*
Deathstalker
(James Sbardellati, 1983, 80 minutes)

Self-centered blonde hunk Richard Hill is Deathstalker and former girlfriend to Hugh Hefner, Barbi Benton is a kidnapped princess. A giant tournament is staged to see who the greatest fighter in all the land is and you can probably figure who it will be. Then again, Deathstalker ain’t exactly a thinking man’s film unless that man likes to think about lots of nudity, blood, mud-wrestling, decapitations, dwarfs, and an ugly, boar headed beast man; not to mention piled on stupidity and a topless sword fighting scene.

Thursday, November 29

2007-11-26T00:04:00.001-06:00

Noon at Alterra
Coffee with DocUquarium guests Marylou Tibaldo-Bongiorno and Jerome Bongiorno (Revolution ‘67)
Alterra Coffee Roasters – 2211 N. Prospect Ave.
Join us for an intimate chat with the filmmakers.

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America’s Black Holocaust Museum
7pm *FREE*
Revolution ‘67
(Marylou Tibaldo-Bongiorno, USA, 90 min, 2007)

Followed by a panel discussion including filmmakers Marylou Tibaldo-Bongiorno and Jerome Bongiorno.
The America’s Black Holocaust Museum is located at 2233 N 4th St.

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UWM Union Theater
7pm
Interkosmos
(Jim Finn, US, 74 min., video, 2006)

"A cosmonaut romance set aboard a 1970s East German space mission to colonize the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, Interkosmos weaves together lovingly faked archival footage, charmingly undermotivated musical numbers, propagandistic maxims ("Capitalism is like a kindergarten of boneless children"), stop motion animation (of a suitably crude GDR-era level), a Teutonic (and vaguely Herzogian) voiceover, and a superb garage-y Kraut rock score (by Jim Becker and Colleen Burke). Finn's deadpan is immaculately bone-dry, and his antiquarian fastidiousness is worthy of Guy Maddin" - Dennis Lim, VILLAGE VOICE

Friday, November 30

2007-11-25T23:57:00.000-06:00

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

Tom Recchion & Jonathon Rosen
Radio Nurse: live audio-visual
Contamination and Disintegration

TOM RECCHION has been an artist/composer/art director in Southern California since the 1970’s. He is the co-creator & co-founder of the legendary art & music collective the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS). His early practice in low-tech sonic exploration presaged many of the genre’s exciting developments of the last quarter century: record manipulation, tape loops, free improvisation, found and invented instruments, installation, and more. He has worked with many musicians—Keiji Haino, David Toop, Max Eastley, Jad Fair & Half Japanese, Oren Ambarchi, Jim Thirwell, John Duncan, Christian Marclay and Sonic Youth to name a few. He is currently in 3 groups: Extended Organ with artists Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Joe Potts and Fredrik Nilsen, Smegma in which he is “Victor Sparks,” and a trio called The Rodney Forest with Ju Suk Reet Meate and Oblivia (from Smegma). He also occasionally writes for WIRE magazine and has many recordings released on Cortical, Idea, Birdman (US), Touch (UK), Schoolmap (Italy), PSF (Japan), Meuww Muzak (Belgium) and other labels. Most recently he released 78 The Incandescent Phonograph and The Song of Mister Phonograph on a 10” 78 RPM with a grant from the City of Pasadena’s Cultural Affairs and received a commission from the Kronos Quartet. Currently he holds the position of Sr. Creative Director for EMI/Capitol Records.
His latest solo CD, Sweetly Doing Nothing, is listed in Artforum’s December 2007 Year in Review issue as one of the 10 best music events of the year. He is very tired.

JONATHON ROSEN is a painter/illustrator/film maker based in Brooklyn, NY. He makes books, drawings, paintings & animation. His work employs an obsession with medical, mechanical & carnivalesque. Collaborators & venues include: Tim Burton (Sleepy Hollow), PS.1 Museum LIC, Queens, Museum of Contemporary Art, LA., McSweeney’s, The New York Times, Paraphrase, MTV, Sony Music, Time Magazine.

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The Digital Dancing Image
Dance and Digital Media Class Showing
with Cecelia Condit and Luc Vanier

7pm *FREE*
Kennilworth Square East, Studio 660

Presented by Dance and Film Departments
with special thanks to the Theater Department

For more information call 229 2571 or email danceinfo@uwm.edu

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UWM Union Theater
7pm
I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone
(Hei Yan Quan, Tsai Ming-Liang, Taiwan/France/Austria, in Malay, Mandarin and Bengali w/ English St. , 115 min., 35mm, 2007)

Homeless on the streets of Kuala Lumpur , Hsiao Kang is robbed, beaten and left for dead. Rawang, an immigrant worker living in the shell of an abandoned building finds and nurses him. Rawang`s feelings for his patient may or may not be sexual, but there's definitely something like lust in the eyes of Chyi, a waitress in a run-down old coffee shop, for Hsiao Kang. And so a triangle forms as a blanket of noxious fog settles on the city and everyone has trouble breathing. Simultaneously erotic and comical, the film underpins director Tsai's deadpan allegory with hints of social realism.

9pm
Lights in the Dusk
(Laitakaupungin Valot - Aki Kaurismäki, Finland, in Finnish and Russian w English St., 78 min., 35mm, 2007)
Milwaukee Premiere!

Lights in the Dusk concludes Kaurismäki's ‘loser trilogy'. The first film focused on unemployment and the second on homelessness, this final installment is about loneliness. Koistinen, a night watchman searches the hard world for a small crack to crawl in through, but both his fellow beings and the faceless apparatus of the society conspire to crush his modest hopes. His longing for love leaves Koistinen open to exploitation and framed for a robbery. This dark jewel of a film glows with genuine warmth and a small but enriching glimmer of hope.

Saturday, December 1

2007-11-25T23:56:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
5pm & 9pm
I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone
(Hei Yan Quan, Tsai Ming-Liang, Taiwan/France/Austria, in Malay, Mandarin and Bengali w/ English St., 115 min., 35mm, 2007)

7pm
Lights in the Dusk
(Laitakaupungin Valot - Aki Kaurismäki, Finland, in Finnish and Russian w English St., 78 min., 35mm, 2007)

Sunday, December 2

2007-11-25T23:55:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
5pm
Lights in the Dusk
(Laitakaupungin Valot - Aki Kaurismäki, Finland, in Finnish and Russian w English St., 78 min., 35mm, 2007)

7pm
I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone
(Hei Yan Quan, Tsai Ming-Liang, Taiwan/France/Austria, in Malay, Mandarin and Bengali w/ English St., 115 min., 35mm, 2007)

Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-11-22T07:04:00.001-06:00

Please check back next week.

Tuesday, November 13

2007-11-13T14:23:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
God Grew Tired of Us
(Christopher Dillon Quinn and Tommy Walker, USA, 89 min., 35mm, 2006)

Exploring the indomitable spirit of three “Lost Boys” from the Sudan, a tumultuous civil war orphaned John, Daniel and Panther, and they fled across sub-Saharan desert. Forming surrogate families they sought refuge from famine, disease, wild animals and rebel soldier attacks. After five years, they crossed into the UN's refugee camp in Kenya. Finally resettled in the United States , they build new lives but remain deeply committed to helping the friends and family they left behind.

John Bul Dau, subject of God Grew Tired of Us, will be the guest speaker for the Wednesday November 14th Distinguished Lecture Series.

Wednesday, November 14

2007-11-13T14:19:00.002-06:00

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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: Boys Behind Bars. Back in September we had a women in prison night. So, it’s only fair of us to have a men in prison night. While not as sexploitative, boys behind bars are just as mean and nasty as these two films prove.

8pm *FREE*
Bad Boys
(Rick Rosenthal, 1983, 120 minutes)

Please do not confuse this with the horrible comedy/action film starring Martin Lawerence and the Fresh Prince. No, this film is actually good. This Bad Boys, has Sean Penn as a juvenile delinquent sent to prison for the murder of a gang member’s kid brother. After raping Penn’s girlfriend that same gang member is sent to prison, thus setting up a revenge fueled show down between these two bad boys!

10pm *FREE*
Scum
(Alan Clarke, 1979, 98 minutes)

Ray Winstone stars as Carlin, a rough punk who rules over the other boys at a London Borstal. These detention centers for juvenile delinquents did little to reform the boys who wandered in and out of their walls. More often than not they were cruel hellholes where massive power struggles between inmates turned to violent outbursts. British director Alan Clarke pulls no punches in his candid depiction of a broken system that grinds down men or turns them into animals.

Thursday, November 15

2007-11-13T14:19:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
Locally Grown: the Brothers Riepenhoff

Brothers Joe and John Riepenhoff will select and present tonight's program of new film and video work from Milwaukee-based artists. Joe Riepenhoff is a recent graduate of UWM and John Riepenhoff is the curator of the Green Gallery and co-founder of the Milwaukee International art fair. They host a monthly film series at the Green Gallery called Movies and Masala.

Friday, November 16

2007-11-13T14:11:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm
Rules of the Game
(La Regle du Jeu, Jean Renoir, France, in French w/ Eng. St., 110 min., 35mm, 1939)
New 35mm print!

Jean Renoir's masterpiece The Rules of the Game is a scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners. At a weekend hunting party, amorous escapades abound among the aristocratic guests and are mirrored by the activities of the servants downstairs. The refusal of one of the guests to play by society's rules sets off a chain of events that ends in tragedy. “One walks away from it drained and exhilarated, after experiencing a whole world and seemingly every possible emotion in a few swift golden hours.” – Michael Wilmington, CHICAGO TRIBUNE

9h30pm
The Grand Illusion
(La Grande Illusion, Jean Renoir, France, in French w/ Eng. St., 114 min., 35mm, 1938)

Jean Renoir's antiwar masterpiece follows a pair of French soldiers held in a World War I German prison camp. Moved from camp to camp they continually befriend their fellow prisoners and work to escape. Eventually they arrive in a so-called inescapable prison along with some familiar faces amongst both prisoners and guards. Declared “cinema enemy number one” by Joseph Goebbels shortly after its premiere, Grand Illusion is a moving tale of friendship, class, and humanism.

Saturday, November 17

2007-11-13T14:08:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
4pm
Rules of the Game
(La Regle du Jeu, Jean Renoir, France, in French w/ Eng. St., 110 min., 35mm, 1939)

7pm
The Grand Illusion
(La Grand Illusion, Jean Renoir, France, in French w/ Eng. St., 114 min., 35mm, 1938)

9h30pm
Rules of the Game
(La Regle du Jeu, Jean Renoir, France, in French w/ Eng. St., 110 min., 35mm, 1939)

Sunday, November 18

2007-11-13T14:07:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
4 & 7pm
Rules of the Game
(La Regle du Jeu, Jean Renoir, France, in French w/ Eng. St., 110 min., 35mm, 1939)

Tuesday, November 6

2007-11-05T23:50:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater / Experimental Tuesdays
7pm *FREE*
We will live to see these things:
An Evening with The Speculative Archive
Artists David Thorne & Julia Meltzer in person!

The Speculative Archive generates acts of research and observation that re-collect existing data and narratives into serial, provocative, and revealing new combinations. Tonight's program will include the five-part documentary video We will live to see these things (2007), with each of the video's sections offering a different perspective on what might come to pass in a place – specifically Syria – where people live between the competing forces of a repressive regime, a growing conservative Islamic movement, and intense pressure from the United States.

Wednesday, November 7

2007-11-05T23:43:00.001-06:00

Noon at Alterra
Coffee with DocUquarium guest filmmaker Maria Finitzo (Terra Incognita)
Alterra Coffee Roasters – 2211 N. Prospect Ave.
Join us for an intimate chat with the filmmaker.

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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: Stunt men, that crazy breed of individuals willing to risk life and limb, to make someone else look cool. Tonight, Basement Cinema celebrates this anonymous celebrities by putting them in the spotlight.

8pm FREE
The Devil at Your Heels
(Robert Forteir, 1981, 105 minutes)

Ken Carter is the Canadian equivalent of Evel Knievel, in fact he’s even better than Evel. At least Ken thinks so. To prove his greatness Ken plans to drive a rocket-powered car off a ramp and jump the St. Lawerence River. It’s a distance of one mile and the jump will not only send Ken hurtling from Canada into American, but it would put him history books. That is, if he makes it. The Devil at Your Heels is a documentary that feels like a mockumentary, so buckle yourself in and get ready to laugh as one crazed Canadian finds excuse after excuse on why he shouldn’t attempt this jump, all the while proclaiming himself to be the greatest daredevil ever.

10pm FREE
Stunt Rock
(Brian Trenchard-smith, 1978, 86 minutes)

Quickly proving that plots are a tired convention this wild 70’s film slams together mystic rock performances and death defying stunts because, really what else do you need for a kickass film. Between daredevil stunts and performances by the theatrical rock outfit Sorcery, real life Australian stunt man Grant Paige tries to explain to a blonde reporter just what it is that makes stunt men like himself do the crazy things they do. It’s a hybrid film. One part cheesy narrative, one part stunt show, and one part rock concert. Or, as the tagline puts it - Stunt Rock is a death wish at 120 decibels!

Thursday, November 8

2007-11-05T23:38:00.000-06:00

African Avant-gardes and the Legacy of John Coltrane in Accra
Colloquium/Presentation by Dr. Steven Feld
4-5h30pm FREE
Fine Arts Recital Hall

The presentation will be built around a screening of Hallelujah!, Steven Feld’s documentary that presents the story of a postcolonial and postmodern African version of G. F. Handel’s Hallelujah chorus, as staged and performed by Ghanaba, the legendary Ghanaian drummer who introduced the talking drum to American jazz musicians in the 1950s, together with the Winneba Youth Choir, a leading choir in Africa. Their unique staging of the Hallelujah chorus mixes elements of African, Christian, Buddhist, and Islamic ritual together with formal European concert performance, Afro-Jazz, and Ghanaian song and dance ceremony. The film is in two parts, the first a document of the performance, the second a conversation with Ghanaba about the political, spiritual, and musical aspects of his approach to Handel.

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UNRULY MUSIC: Electro-Acoustic Music Center 25th Anniversary concert
7h30-9h30 FREE
Fine Arts Lecture Hall

Guest artist Steven Feld presents a collaborative work made with artist Virginia Ryan which documents the Atlantic Ocean where it meets the coast of Ghana. The work features video and 5.1 channel sound, and Feld describes it as "environmental sound art meets visual art," incorporating the sound of the ocean as well as music composed and performed by Feld together with two Ghanaian musicians.
"African avant-gardes and the legacy of John Coltrane in Accra, told through two musicians, one who has invented instruments (afrifones, African winds with sax mouthpieces) to play music inspired by Coltrane, the other who has merged jazz cymbals with African hand and stick drums in order to explore an African conversation with Elvin Jones's drumming. This turns all the sterotypes ---about Africans being trapped in either 'traditional music' or pop' to mush!"

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UWM Union Theater
Thursday – Sunday, November 8-11
Turkish Film Series

The best of recent Turkish cinema, from the poetic to the comedic, these films investigate the diverse lives of Turkish people at home and abroad, negotiating both tradition and modernity. All screenings are FREE and open to the public. Unless otherwise noted films are in Turkish with English subtitles. Sponsored by the Turkish American Association of Milwaukee, The UWM Film Department and the UWM Union Theatre.

The Turkish Film Series has been made possible by a generous grant from the Turkish Cultural Foundation.

7pm
Distant
(Nuri Bilge Ceylan , Turkey , 110 min., 35mm, 2002)
Winner – Grand Prix – 2003 Cannes Film Festival

Mahmut, a successful commercial photographer struggles to come to terms with the growing gap between his artistic ideals and his professional obligations. His tedious workload, and the lingering loss of his ex-wife, leaves him clinging to the melancholic and obsessive routines of his solitary life. Unexpectedly, his distant relative Yusuf arrives in Istanbul and imposes upon Mahmut. The two struggle to connect in this austere story permeated by heartwarming, often comic moments.

Friday, November 9

2007-11-05T23:34:00.000-06:00

Exposures: A White Woman in West Africa
3pm *FREE*
Kenilworth Square East
1925 E. Kenilworth Pl. 4th floor
Virginia Ryan and Steven Feld present!

The UWM Film Department, the Center for 21st Century Studies, Cultures & Communities and Voxlox Media present an installation based on Exposures: A White Woman in West Africa, a book of photographs of and by visual artist Virginia Ryan with an essay by anthropologist Steven Feld. After moving to Ghana in 2001, Ryan discovered that she could not take her whiteness for granted, and embarked on a project that transformed her skin into a canvas. For three years, she asked friends and passersby to photograph her as she went about her daily life. When Feld first viewed these documents, he saw in them an “intuitive and reverse anthropology,” a unique contribution to recent debates on whiteness and race in contemporary art and society. Their collaboration is a conversation about photography and race in post-colonial Africa. Ryan and Feld are committed to showing the work in non-art contexts where dialogue about race, gender, class and photographic representation is possible. Join them and local panelists Erica Bornstein (UWM Anthropology), Portia Cobb (UWM Film), Jane Gallop (UWM English), Tom Bamberger (photographer and critic), Mensah Aborampah (UWM Africology) and others as they share their provocative and complex work and explore the questions it raises. Dick Blau moderates.

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UWM Union Theater
Thursday – Sunday, November 8-11
Turkish Film Series

7pm
Head On
(Gegen die Wand, Fatih Akin, Germany/Turkey, in German & Turkish w/ Eng. St., 121 min., 35mm, 2004)
Winner – Golden Bear – 2004 Berlin Film Festival

Cahit, an alcoholic German of Turkish decent, is hospitalized after driving his car into a wall and meets Sibil who recently attempted suicide. She convinces Cahit to marry her so she can escape her strict Turkish family. Together they navigate between their hedonistic lives in the German underground the staid traditions of their Turkish families in this superbly acted punk-rock melodrama.

9h30pm
Internationale
(Beynelmilel, Sirri Sureyya Onder & Muharrem Gulmez , Turkey, 106 min., 35mm, 2006)

Using irony and comedy Beynelmilel depicts the lives of ordinary people affected by the 1980 military coup. A curfew leaves a group of local musicians in southeastern Anatolia unemployed until the martial law commander decides to turn them into a modern orchestra. As the orchestra prepares the welcome ceremony for some visiting politicos, Haydar, a university student, and the conductor's daughter plan a protest.

Saturday, November 10

2007-11-05T23:29:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
Thursday – Sunday, November 8-11
Turkish Film Series

5pm
Climates
(Beynelmilel, Sirri Sureyya Onder & Muharrem Gulmez , Turkey, 106 min., 35mm, 2006)
Winner – Fipresci Award – 2006 Cannes Film Festival

Beautifully and meticulously observed, Climates poetically uses landscape to reflect loneliness, loss and the often-elusive nature of happiness. During a sweltering summer vacation, the relationship between middle-aged professor Isa and his younger girlfriend Bahar brutally implodes. Back in Istanbul that fall, Isa rekindles a torrid affair with a previous lover. But when he learns that Bahar has left the city for a job in the snowy East, he follows her there to win her back.

7pm
The Borrowed Bride
(Egreti Gelin, Atif Yilmaz, Turkey/Greece , 119 min., 35mm, 2005)

A moving historical drama set in the 1920's, Emine becomes the “borrowed bride” of the mayor's son Ali and under strict rules prepares him for marriage. The pair fall in love and though she tries to keep the borrowed brides' code, he defiantly refuses his families' marriage plans. Atif Yilmaz's 119th and last film before he died caused controversy in Turkey starting fierce debate on whether the tradition of borrowed brides even existed.

9h30pm
Crossing the Bridge: The Sounds of Istanbul
(Fatih Akin, Germany/Turkey, 90 min., 35mm, 2005)

Alexander Hacke, of the German avant-garde band Einstürzende Neubauten travels Istanbul with a complete mobile recording studio to capture the exotic sounds and musical diversity, ranging from modern electronic sounds, rock and hip-hop, right down to classical “Arabesque” music. Fatih Akin, director of Head-On accompanies him with his camera for a lively portrait of Istanbul's music scene.

Sunday, November 11

2007-11-05T23:24:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
Thursday – Sunday, November 8-11
Turkish Film Series

2h30pm
Two Girls
(Iki Genç Kiz, Kutlug Ataman , Turkey , 107 min., 35mm, 2005)

Based on a popular Turkish novel, Two Girls tells the story of two girls from very different backgrounds. Behiye, a rebellious student despises her conservative family. Handan lives with her single mother, a beautiful woman with more liberal world views. Shortly after meeting, they embark on a secret plan to escape their dysfunctional families. Their intense relationship encompasses all that is wonderful and tragic about youth.

5pm
The Play
(Oyun, Pelin Esmer, Turkey, 70 min., 35mm, 2005)

The Play documents nine peasant women living in a remote mountain village in southern Turkey . Their days are taken up by working in the fields, on a construction, and at home. To lighten the burden, these women come together at night to write and eventually perform a play based on their lives.

7pm
Ice Cream, I Scream
(Dondurman Gaymak, Yuksel Aksu, Turkey, in Turkish w/ Eng. St ., 100 min., 35mm, 2006)

Ice Cream, I Scream follows the misadventures of an independent ice cream vendor struggling to stay afloat against the larger ice cream shops. In the tourist town of Mugla a gang of boys steal an ice cream cart, but the owner of the cart believes the corporations are trying to ruin him. An over the top comedy that deals with the changing marketplace of small Turkish towns.

Tuesday, October 30

2007-10-29T09:37:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater / Experimental Tuesdays
7pm *FREE*
Danièle Huillet: a memorial tribute

A belated tribute to Danièle Huillet, who died at the age of 70 a year ago this month.
Tuesday's program will feature collaborations with her filmmaking partner Jean-Marie Straub, with whom she produced over two dozen films and videos, some of the most rigorous and uncompromising in all of cinema and some of the least screened.

Wednesday, October 31

2007-10-29T09:34:00.001-06:00

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: This Halloween Basement Cinema is no trick and all treat. We’ve got a triple feature of zombie films from three different countries ready to devour your brain.

6pm FREE
Sugar Hill 
(Paul Masalansky, 1974, 91 minutes)

Blaxploitation meets voodoo zombie action! The craziness starts when New Orleans mobsters kill Sugar’s boyfriend. Determined to get her revenge, Sugar enlists the help of Baron Zamedi, the Lord of the Dead. Sugar trades her soul for an army of zombies hit men to do her bidding. This is one black cat the mafia will wish never crossed their path.

8pm FREE
Hell of the Living Dead 
(Bruno Mattei, 1980, 101 minutes)
A four man SWAT team meet up with two reporters in New Guinea. They are all their to investigate a chemical spill. What they never expected to find where flesh hungry zombies waiting to devour them. Now, they must fight their way of off the island and warn the rest of the world. One of countless Dawn of the Dead inspired zombie films made with Italian money, Hell of the Living Dead (aka Night of the Zombies) deserves recognition for being one of the wildest, craziest, and most laughably enjoyable gore films in this genre.

10pm FREE
Wild Zero
 (Tetsuro Takeuchi, 2000, 98 minutes)

Aliens are invading Earth and their arrival has turned most of the world into zombies. The only hope for humanity is a rock ‘n’ roll! Wanna be rocker Ace calls upon his idols Guitar Wolf to use their music instruments to help him save the world from an onslaught of zombies. Starring the actual punk rock trio Guitar Wolf, this Japanese mash-up of rock ‘n’ roll, zombie, and sci-fi movie is one of the most insane films Basement Cinema has ever presented and will surely have folks yelling, “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” in a bad Japanese accent for many days to come.

Thursday, November 1

2007-10-29T09:32:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
Phantom Carriage
(Körkalen, Viktor Sjöström, Sweden, 93 min., 35mm, 1922)
Special Day of the Dead Screening!
*New 35mm print

Original score performed live by Chicago's Dropp Ensemble  (led by Longbox recording artists Salvatore Dellaria and Adam Sonderberg).
On New Year's Eve three men drinking in a graveyard tell the story of the Phantom Carriage. The last sinner to die at the end of the year must drive the carriage of souls at the bidding of Death himself. One of the men laughs off the story but soon finds out that it is all to true. The Phantom Carriage employs dazzling superimpositions to capture the supernatural world of Death in this fantastic tale of redemption.

Friday, November 2

2007-10-29T09:31:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm & 9pm
Brand Upon the Brain
(Guy Maddin, Canada/US, 95 min., 35mm, 2006)

Equal parts childhood reminiscence, expressionist horror movie, teen detective serial and Grand Guignol reverie, Brand Upon the Brain! follows the boy Guy Maddin and his teenage sister who live on an island with their overbearing mother, secretive scientist father, and a horde of orphans. When mysterious head wounds are discovered on recently adopted children, teen detectives Wendy and Chance Hale visit the island to investigate. Guy falls hard into his first crush for Wendy while Sis must keep her love for Chance hidden from Mother at all costs.

Saturday, November 3

2007-10-29T09:30:00.002-06:00

UWM Union Theater
5pm, 7pm & 9pm
Brand Upon the Brain
(Guy Maddin, Canada/US, 95 min., 35mm, 2006)

Sunday, November 4

2007-10-29T09:30:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
5pm & 7pm
Brand Upon the Brain
(Guy Maddin, Canada/US, 95 min., 35mm, 2006)

Tuesday, October 23

2007-10-21T19:47:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater / Experimental Tuesdays
7pm *FREE*
"I believe that somewhere, there is something worth dying for, and I think it's amazing”
Video artist/performer Ryan Trecartin in person
Co-presented by the Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival

Welcome to the digital psychedelic world of Ryan Trecartin, whose work – seen on YouTube and in the Whitney Biennial – echoes Jack Smith, the Kuchar Brothers, and PeeWee Herman while being raucously original and exuberantly beautiful. Working with a spirited and zestfully committed collaborative ensemble of like-minded “experimental people,” Trecartin crafts – and quickly and gleefully explodes – narratives both home-grown and marvelously flamboyant.

Ryan Trecartin will be screening I-Be Area, his new video, and will be accompanied by special guest Lizzie Fitch.

Wednesday, October 24

2007-10-21T19:43:00.001-06:00

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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

8pm FREE
Food of the Gods 
(Bert I. Gordon, 1976, 88 minutes)

Morgan, an all-star quarterback, takes his hunting buddies to a Canadian island where they get attacked by giant wasps and mutant rats. It seems that the whole island is inhabited with animals who have grown to monster sizes. Now, Morgan and a band of survivors must fend for their lives and try to discover what is causing all this colossal sized chaos.
Basement Cinema favorite - Marjoe Gortner plays Morgan. H.G. Wells wrote the novel that the film is based upon. Kenosah born director Bert I. Gordon, the mastermind behind titles like Earth vs. The Spider and The Amazing Colossal Man, supplies his trademark mix of over-acted seriousness and oversized monsters for a film sure to produce larger than life thrills and laughs.

10pm FREE
The Wild Beasts 
(Franco Prosperi, 1984, 92 minutes)

How’s this for a wild idea? PCP is inexplicably introduced to the water supply of a Germany zoo. The animals who drink the water go nutzoid, break free from their cages and run loose on the streets. Next thing you know you have cheetahs racing cars and elephants making pancakes out of people. Shot long before the days of CGI, this is the real deal baby. Also known as The Wild Beasts Will Get You! this unleashed Italian madness from one of the two cinematic geniuses behind Mondo Cane and a ton of other wild films that give little consideration for animal or human safety.

Thursday, October 25

2007-10-21T19:42:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
Locally Grown: the Nohl Fellows
The program will include recent work from Scott Reeder, Marc Tasman and Daniel Klopp who were among seven artists recognized in the 2006 cycle of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation's Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists program.

Friday, October 26

2007-10-21T19:37:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm
Syndromes and a Century
(Sang Sattawat, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France/Austria, in Thai w/ English st., 105 min, 35mm, 2007)
Milwaukee Premiere!

A film in two parts: the two central characters are inspired by the filmmaker's parents, in the years before they became lovers. The first part focuses on a woman doctor, in a space reminiscent of the world in which the filmmaker was born and raised. The second part focuses on a male doctor, in a more contemporary space much like the world in which the filmmaker presently lives. Pearls of wisdom, descriptions of syndromes and fragments of time crystallize in luminous atmospheres and dot the modern architecture of the film, creating a charming, quiet incantation.

9pm *FREE*
4 Elements
(Jiska Rickels , Netherlands , 89 min., 35mm, 2006)
Milwaukee Premiere!

Referring to the primordial elements of fire, water, earth and air, this documentary follows in four chapters, a team of forest firefighters in Siberia, fishermen on the Bering Sea, workers in a German coal mine and a group of Russian cosmonauts preparing for launch in Kazakhstan . Director Jiska Rickels reveals the paradox of our inextricable bind with nature and our simultaneous alienation from it.

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Woodland Pattern Experimental Film/Video Series
7pm
Selected works by video artist and performer Kimberly Miller
Woodland Pattern Book Center
720 E. Locust St.
Tickets: $2 at the door. Seating is limited.
www.woodlandpattern.org
Co-presented by the UWM Film Department

"Kimberly Miller is a video artist and performer. She wants to destabilize the discrete subject and object, viewer and performer, us and them, expand parameters of inclusion, engage the responsibility of the viewer and delight in a cross-section of time. The address of the you of the spectator is also the address of the me. Kimberly Miller is interested in pursuing a more democratic subject, in that you have as much say in who you are as I do, in the context of this artistic exchange (viewer/performer, spectator/artist, audience/show). What's at stake is one's very existence, one's self, myself and yourself. Our identities, our subjecthood, our positions in relation to one another. These shifting, surfacing and submerging connections are unstable and fleeting, deliciously and infinitely now. Or maybe Kim is always working towards the existence of a democratic subject, hopefully and enthusiastically, without ever reaching this place. Or, when I say you I have called you into being. I made you."

Followed by a reception at Sarah Buccheri's House:
2450 N. Bremen St.
Come meet Kimberly Miller, who will be teaching in the Film Department next semester.
Drinks and snacks provided for your enjoyment and for the facilitation of lively conversation.
After the show. Carpooling available.

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Phantasmagoria: “Bringing Back the Dead"
Charles Allis Art Museum
1801 N Prospect Ave
Six performances: Oct. 26-29
Admission: $20 General. $15 CAVT Member. $10 Student.
Information and Reservations: 414-278-8295, ext. 10
Sponsored by the Peck School of the Arts

A 19th Century Gothic Cabaret presented by Music From Almost Yesterday Nietzsche & Frankenstein’s Creator Back from Dead, Live on Stage! During a variety show of music, philosophy, theater and dance, the ghostly spirit of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, novelist Mary Shelly, her husband poet Percy Shelly, dancer Loie Fuller and others will mysteriously be reincarnated live. Several 19th century works will be dramatized: "The Birth of Tragedy," (1871) by Nietzsche, "Frankenstein, A Modern Prometheus "(1816) by Mary Shelley, and "Prometheus Unbound" (1820) by Percy Shelley. Because of intimacy of the event there will be only 85 seats available for each performance and six performances only, so book ahead.

Saturday, October 27

2007-10-21T19:35:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
5pm
Syndromes and a Century
(Sang Sattawat, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France/Austria, in Thai w/ English st., 105 min, 35mm, 2007)
Milwaukee Premiere!

7pm *FREE*
4 Elements
(Jiska Rickels , Netherlands , 89 min., 35mm, 2006)
Milwaukee Premiere!

9pm
Syndromes and a Century
(Sang Sattawat, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France/Austria, in Thai w/ English st., 105 min, 35mm, 2007)
Milwaukee Premiere!

Sunday, October 28

2007-10-21T19:33:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
5pm *FREE*
4 Elements
(Jiska Rickels , Netherlands , 89 min., 35mm, 2006)
Milwaukee Premiere!

7pm
Syndromes and a Century
(Sang Sattawat, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France/Austria, in Thai w/ English st., 105 min, 35mm, 2007)
Milwaukee Premiere!

Tuesday, October 16

2007-10-16T12:55:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
Berlin-Cinema
(Samir Gloor-Fadel , Switzerland /France, in English, Kurdish, French and German w/ English St., 106 min., 16mm on video, 1999)

A meditation in space, evoking an image of the city, of a location.
Berlin is seen as hollow and in black and white. Samira Gloor-Fadel's stunningly photographed film is an intimate journey with celebrated European auteur Wim Wenders around the city of Berlin . Jean-Luc Godard provides a commentary, and architect Jean Nouvel joins Wenders in tracing the construction sites of future buildings in a rapidly developing Berlin . With measured pacing, Gloor-Fadel's Film is witty and multi-layered, a film also about the process of filmmaking itself. A static "Road Movie" where fixed frames show moving dimensions, long pans lead to vanishing points and motion is the only certainty.

Wednesday, October 17

2007-10-16T12:40:00.001-06:00

Perspectives on Age Film Series
1h30pm – Eastcastle Place
2505 East Bradford Avenue

A series of documentary films about the challenges and triumphs met by our city’s older residents. Films made my UWM students.
Call (414) 289-5973 to register
Presented LCT: Let’s Take Care – Connecting Caring Communities

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Noon at Alterra
Coffee with DocUquarium guest filmmaker Marco Williams (Banished)
Alterra Coffee Roasters – 2211 N. Prospect Ave.
Join us for an intimate chat with the filmmaker.

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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: Roaming Hands
They say that idle hands are the devil’s play things. But, what do they say about severed hands with a proclivity for murder? One might only wish the deadly hands at play in this week’s double feature were idle! Don’t let the devil make a play thing of your hands, come out to Basement Cinema and put your hands together as we celebrate to wildly entertaining films about disembodies hands.

8pm FREE
The Hand
 (Oliver Stone, 1981, 104 minutes)

Jon Lansdale (Michael Caine) is a comic book artist who loses his drawing hand in an automobile accident. The hand is never found and with his drawing career down the toilet. Already a tempormental person, Lansdale takes a teaching job at a small liberal arts college, in the hopes of starting new. When those who anger Jon start turning up dead and mysterious drawings he could not possibly have drawn appear in sketchbooks, Lansdale starts to wonder if he or perhaps a missing part of himself is behind it all. Yes, this is directed by the Oliver Stone. The same guy who gave you JFK and Natural Born Killers. Stone also turns up in The Hand as a street bum and an early victim of Lansdale’s angry hand.

10pm FREE
Demonoid, Messenger of Death
 (Alfredo Zacarias, 1981, 78 minutes)

In the opening minutes of the film a secret society of hooded figures, looking like yellow clad KKK members chase a woman into a cavern, chain her to a wall and take an axe to her left hand. The hand drops to the ground and crawls away. Quickly, a knife is jabbed through the hand and it is locked into a special metal container. Cut to the present day where a British couple decides to reopen the cursed Mexican mine. When they find the severed hand they unsuspectingly release an ancient spirit that inhabits the left hand of its victims. The possessed left hand drives people to murder and the only way to rid yourself of the curse is to rid yourself of your left hand. Cheesy effects, horrible acting (and accents), gore and disembodied hands make this low-budget south-of-the-border horror film an unintentional comedy.

Thursday, October 18

2007-10-16T12:38:00.001-06:00

Perspectives on Age Film Series
A series of documentary films about the challenges and triumphs met by our city’s older residents. Films made my UWM students.
Call (414) 289-5973 to register
10am – St.John’s On the Lake
1840 North Prospect Avenue
presented LCT: Let’s Take Care – Connecting Caring Communities

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UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City
(Walter Ruttmann, Germany, 106 min., 16mm 1927)

“During the many years of my movement studies drawn from abstract means, I have never been able to escape the urge to create from living materials, from the millions of movement-related energies that actually exist in the organism of the big city, a film symphony”- Walter Ruttmann
Walter Ruttman's Berlin : Symphony of a Great City celebrates it 80 th anniversary this year. The progenitor of the “city symphony” form, Berlin documents the city from early morning to midnight, exploring a cross section of the metropolis and its citizens. Through innovative cinematography and rhythmic montage, Ruttman created a grand, enduring work of cinema, allowing viewers to experience the velocity of a city in the throes of modernity.
The film is silent with an accompanying score performed by MiLO, the Milwaukee Laptop Orchestra.

Friday, October 19

2007-10-16T12:31:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
Friday, October 19 – Sunday, October 21
Africa Beyond film series: Radical
Focusing on Radical Black Film, this selection of films mirror the black experience through key social, cultural and historical events in America and beyond between 1970 to the present.
Presented by the Community Media Project

7pm *FREE*
Bush Mama
(Haile Gerima, US, 78 min., 16mm, 1976)

Far removed from the drug deals and revenge killings of “Blaxploitation” films produced during this time, Bush Mama follows Dorothy and her husband T.C., a Vietnam veteran who thought he would return home to a ‘hero's welcome.' Instead he is falsely arrested and imprisoned. Theirs is a world of welfare, perennial unemployment, and despair. The film may appear bleak and nihilistic with its stark black-and-white photography, but its message is moving and distinct. Issues of institutionalized racism, police brutality, and poverty remain sadly pertinent.

9pm *FREE*
Wattstax
(Mel Stuart, US, 104 min., video, 1973)

Often touted as the Black Woodstock, Wattstax was originally conceived as a film of a concert commemorating the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots. "Early on, we knew we didn't want just a concert film; we wanted a deeper reflection of the black experience…Film crews went into the streets, churches, barber shops and diners to talk with people about the connection between music and their existence and what it was like to be black in a white America." – Wattstax director Mel Stuart

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Phantasmagoria: “Bringing Back the Dead"
Charles Allis Art Museum
1801 N Prospect Ave
Six performances: Oct. 20, 21, 26-29
Admission: $20 General. $15 CAVT Member. $10 Student.
Information and Reservations: 414-278-8295, ext. 10
Sponsored by the Peck School of the Arts

A 19th Century Gothic Cabaret presented by Music From Almost Yesterday Nietzsche & Frankenstein’s Creator Back from Dead, Live on Stage! During a variety show of music, philosophy, theater and dance, the ghostly spirit of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, novelist Mary Shelly, her husband poet Percy Shelly, dancer Loie Fuller and others will mysteriously be reincarnated live. Several 19th century works will be dramatized: "The Birth of Tragedy," (1871) by Nietzsche, "Frankenstein, A Modern Prometheus "(1816) by Mary Shelley, and "Prometheus Unbound" (1820) by Percy Shelley. Because of intimacy of the event there will be only 85 seats available for each performance and six performances only, so book ahead.

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GALLERY NIGHT
Shows and events around town
For more information visit http://www.historicthirdward.org/events/gallerynight.php

The New Witch
Group show at Paper Boat Boutique
Opening from 7-10pm
2375 S Howell Ave
Featuring work by Faythe Levine (WI), Micaela O'Herlihy (WI), Polina Malikin (WI), Kim Kisiolek (WI), Xandar Marro (RI), Pippi Zornoza (RI) & Katy Horan (NY). Site specific installation by Faythe Levine & Polina Malikin and sound installation by Micaela O'Herlihy.

Saturday, October 20

2007-10-16T12:28:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
6pm *FREE*
Black Panthers-Huey!
(Agnès Varda, USA/France, 31min., 16mm on video, 1968)

French filmmaker Agnès Varda transports you to the pivotal Free Huey rally. Newton , who, with Bobby Seale, created the Black Panther Party, was jailed for allegedly killing a police officer. His arrest galvanized Party support throughout the nation. Over 5,000 people attended the rally, which featured Party leaders and guest speakers such as Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, James Forman, Bob Avakian, and Stokely Carmichael. Through stark un-editorialized footage, this documentary chronicles the speakers outlining the Party's goals, their strategies for freeing Newton and more.

Shown with:
Black Panther Newsreel
(California Newsreel, 1968, 15 min)
The California Newsreel was an underground alternative to the commercial broadcast media of the 1960's. This unique clip provides a chilling look at the California racial environment of 1968 with Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seale offering perspectives on the Panthers and police brutality on the black community.

7pm *FREE*
Negroes with Guns! Rob Williams and Black Power
(Sandra Dickson and Churchill Roberts, US, 53 min., video, 2004)

The story of a forgotten civil rights figure who dared to advocate armed resistance to the violence of the Jim Crow South. Robert F. Williams was the forefather of the Black Power movement and broke dramatic new ground by internationalizing the African American struggle. An electrifying look at a historically erased leader that also provides a thought-provoking examination of Black radicalism and resistance.
Original score by Terrence Blanchard.

Sunday, October 21

2007-10-16T12:23:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
5pm *FREE*
Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela:A Son's Tribute to Unsung Heroes
(Thomas Allan Harris, US/South Africa, 73 min., video, 2004)

A bittersweet eulogy to the filmmaker's stepfather and to thousands of other exiled South Africans keeping the freedom struggle alive during the harshest years of apartheid. Through the stories of 12 young comrades, this film shows how the African National Congress built a successful worldwide movement, eventually toppling the white supremacist regime. Providing a unique, intimate look at the painful trade-offs between public and private lives experienced by almost all the political activists and their families.

7pm *FREE*
Long Night's Journey into Day
(Frances Reid and Deborah Hoffman, US, 94 min., video, 2000)
Winner – Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary - 2000 Sundance Film Festival

Long Night's Journey Into Day reveals a South Africa trying to forge a lasting peace after 40 years of government by the most notorious system of racial segregation since Nazi Germany. The documentary studies South Africa 's Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the post-apartheid, democratic government to consider amnesty for perpetrators of crimes committed under apartheid's reign.

Tuesday, October 9

2007-10-08T20:22:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater / Experimental Tuesdays
7pm *FREE*
A Darkness Swallowed
(Betzy Bromberg, US, 78 min., 16mm, 2005)

A personal investigation of cellular memory, a bio-metaphysical musical.
“Los Angeles-based experimental filmmaker Betzy Bromberg returns to the screen with her latest gem, a Darkness Swallowed , a 78-minute meditation on the evanescent traces of memory and loss. At once her most elliptical and also her most overt work in a career that spans nearly 30 years and more than a dozen dazzling films, a Darkness Swallowed opens on a pair of faded photographs showing an old dented car, one with a child standing beside it and the other without. Speaking in voice-over, Bromberg references a past event, one that will forever haunt her although it occurred before her birth. The film then sinks downward, dipping below the surface of the rational world to mine the seemingly infinite layers of the past stored within the fleshy entrails, chalky bones, sinewy spider webs and gnarled ligaments of both the body and the Earth… Dedicated to the filmmaker's mother, the film is also a gift to us, a reminder of cinema's organic basis in chemistry and light, and of its ability to take us deep inside.” - Holly Willis, LA WEEKLY

Wednesday, October 10

2007-10-08T20:14:00.001-06:00

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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: Something to Crow About
Scarecrows, the true children of the corn, frighten off more than blackbirds. This week we pay tribute to a bountiful harvest of horror sprouting up from the heartlands.

8pm FREE
Scarecrows
 (William Wesley, 1988, 83 minutes)

A big money heist goes wrong when one of the robbers double crosses his partners. Parachuting with the loot into a spooky cornfield, the pack of thieves soon find themselves fighting not just for the money, but for their lives. Mysterious and truly horrifying scarecrows who surround the land care little for the loot. What they want is blood and this spooky, gory film certainly delivers in those departments.

10pm FREE
Dark Night of the Scarecrow
 (Frank DeFelitta, 1981, 81 minutes)

A small town mob tracks down Bubba, a retarded man accused of hurting a little girl. When they find him in a cornfield, disguised as a scarecrow they murder him. Later, Bubba is found innocent. As members of the mob start to die mysterious deaths people begin to wonder if Bubba hascome back from the grave to get his revenge. Or, do the murders have something to do with the mysterious scarecrow still standing in the field? Larry Drake (Darkman) plays Bubba and Charles Durning puts in a psychotic performance as the mob leading mailman.

Thursday, October 11

2007-10-08T20:12:00.000-06:00

Noon at Alterra
Coffee with DocUquarium guest filmmaker Billy Luther (Miss Navajo)
Alterra Coffee Roasters – 2211 N. Prospect Ave.
Join us for an intimate chat with the filmmaker.

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Discovery World
7pm
Miss Navajo (Billy Luther, USA, 2007)
Director Billy Luther present!
Discovery World is located at 500 N Harbor Dr

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UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa
(Seiji Mizushima, Japan, in Japanese w/ Eng. St., 105 min., video, 2005)

2005 feature-length animated film based on the long running anime series. Two brothers divided between two different worlds, seek a way to reunite. One is sent to Munich 1923, where a war is beginning. After losing his alchemic powers, he attempts unsuccessfully to return home, until a troubled gypsy woman reveals a path back to his homeworld along with a conspiracy that threatens both worlds. Tonight's screening is presented and sponsored by the UWM Japanese Animation Association, along with FUNimation and Child's Play, a charity, which donates toys and games to children in hospitals.

Friday, October 12

2007-10-08T20:09:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
Picture of Light
(Peter Mettler, Canada, 83 min., 35mm, 1994)

Picture of Light is a hallucinatory documentary tale which chronicles a filmmaker's journey to Canada 's arctic in search of the Northern Lights. While combining glimpses of the characters that live in this remote environment and the crew's both comic and absurd attempts to deal with extremes, the film reflects upon the paradoxes involved in trying to capture the natural wonder of the Aurora Borealis on celluloid. "The film is an existential meditation on snow and space and cold, undercut by an absurdist wit... Mettler goes to a world where cameras freeze and tries to film nothingness, unbroken patterns of land and sky. He achieves amazing results. In the context of Canadian cinema, where characters often live in uneasy tension with their environment, for once there is no contest: the weather wins, hands down.” - Brian D. Johnson, MACLEAN'S MAGAZINE

9pm
Manufactured Landscapes
(Jennifer Baichwal, Canada , 90 min., 35mm, 2006)
Milwaukee premiere!
Winner – Best Canadian Feature – Toronto Film Festival – 2006

Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes” – quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams – Edward Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization's materials and debris. The film follows him through China , as he shoots the evidence and effects of that country's massive industrial revolution. With breathtaking sequences, the filmmakers also extend the narratives of Burtynsky's photographs, allowing us to meditate on our impact on the planet and witness both the epicenters of industrial endeavor and the dumping grounds of its waste. Manufactured Landscapes features the cinematography of acclaimed filmmaker Peter Mettler.

Saturday, October 13

2007-10-08T20:06:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
5pm *FREE*
Picture of Light
(Peter Mettler, Canada, 83 min., 35mm, 1994)

7pm
Manufactured Landscapes
(Jennifer Baichwal, Canada , 90 min., 35mm, 2006)

9pm *FREE*
Gambling, Gods, and LSD
(Peter Mettler, Switzerland/Canada, 180 min., 35mm, 2003)

A filmmaker's inquiry into transcendence becomes a three-hour trip across countries and cultures, interconnecting people, places and times. From Toronto, Peter Mettler sets out on a journey that includes evangelism at the airport strip, demolition in Las Vegas, tracings in the Nevada desert, chemistry and street life in Switzerland, and the coexistence of technology and divinity in contemporary India. Everywhere along the way, the same themes are to be found: thrill-seeking, luck, destiny, belief, expanding perception, the craving for security in an uncertain world. Fact joins with fantasy; the search for meaning and the search for ecstasy begin to merge. Blending documentary observation with lyrical camerawork, location sound with aural sculpture, the result is a mosaic of moments where the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts.

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Residency Event featuring artist and writer Antonio Rocha
7h30pm – reading by the artist at 8h30pm
At Brewing Grounds for Change (2008 N. Farwell Avenue)
Hosted by the Cultural Crisis Residency Program

The cafe, a cooperative space, co-owned by Matt Nelson, will continue its interactive promotions on Remembrance with an emphasis for that day on Antonio and Matt's "Long Relationship." Antonio and Matt encourage you to participate in the space by sharing objects or words that speak to Remembrance. There will also be goodies from Bombay Sweets.

PARTY following at 3433 N. Pierce Street (north of Townsend, just south of Keefe), starting at 10:30pm.

Sunday, October 14

2007-10-08T20:03:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
5pm
Manufactured Landscapes
(Jennifer Baichwal, Canada , 90 min., 35mm, 2006)

7pm *FREE*
Gambling, Gods, and LSD
(Peter Mettler, Switzerland/Canada, 180 min., 35mm, 2003)

Tuesday, October 2

2007-10-01T05:32:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
MACHINIMA: Beneath the Structural Skin
Experimental Tuesdays - Various directors, approx 90 min., video, 2001-2007

A diverse program of machinima where contemporary film and video makers perform modern acts of alchemy, transforming the computer gaming environments of Second Life, Grand Theft Auto, Vice City, World of Warcraft and others into incisive works of ethnography, social critique, explorations of landscape and deeply felt portraiture. Including work by Peggy Ahwesh, Valerie Brewer, Jacqueline Goss, Kent Lambert, Mark Lapore and Phil Solomon.

Wednesday, October 3

2007-10-01T05:25:00.000-06:00

—Sapana Sakya

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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: Women Under The Influence of Terror

8pm FREE
Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural
 (Richard Blackburn, 113 minutes, 1975)

10pm FREE
Let’s Scare Jessica To Death 
(John D. Hancock, 89 minutes, 1971)

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NEWLY ADDED!
Presentation by filmmaker and author Heather Rogers

4pm ACL 120

Heather Rogers is a Brooklyn-based writer, journalist, and filmmaker. Her documentary film "Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage" (2002) screened in festivals around the globe. Her book, under the same title, was named an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times Book Review and a nonfiction choice by The Guardian.

"Gone Tomorrow" takes us on an oddly fascinating tour through the underworld of garbage and brings meaning to all that gets discarded. "Gone Tomorrow" also explores controversial topics like the politics of recycling and the export of trash to developing countries. Part exposé, part social commentary, "Gone Tomorrow" traces the connection between modern industrial production, consumer culture, and our disposable lifestyle. Read it and you’ll never think of garbage the same way again.

Thursday, October 4

2007-10-01T05:24:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
Building a Broken Mousetrap
(Jem Cohen with Matt Boyd, US/Netherlands, 63 min., video, 2006)
Preceded by Jem Cohen's Blessed Are the Dreams of Men (11 min, 2006)

Following his feature-length documentaries on the musicians Fugazi (Instrument) and Benjamin (Benjamin Smoke), Cohen documents the Dutch anarchist punk band The Ex. Beautifully shot in black and white 16mm and over-saturated DV, Building a Broken Mousetrap captures the band, 25 years after their formation, giving an intense and exhilarating performance in NYC during (and in opposition to) the 2004 Republican convention. Interspersed with the concert footage are long, languid shots of a city suffused with contested sites and rough demonstrations of wealth and power.

Friday, October 5

2007-10-01T05:20:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater presents
A Weekend of Silver Screens
As part of Wisconsin's Book Fair the Union Theatre presents a weekend of classic films and a discussion with author Larry Widen and film critic David Luhrssen. Widen's book Silver Screens: A Pictorial History of Milwaukee's Movie Theaters inspired the weekend's selection of films. Ranging from popular silent classic It to screwball comedy to film noir and '50s melodrama, the weekend closes with the recent Thai film Tears of the Black Tiger, a fascinating amalgamation of earlier film styles that retains a stylistic and narrative uniqueness.

7pm - Discussion between Larry Widen and David Luhrssen
Silver Screens: A Pictorial History of Milwaukee's Movie Theaters author Larry Widen is a Milwaukee-based freelance writer and recently became the owner of the Times Cinema. David Luhrssen is arts & entertainment editor of the Shepherd Express and co-founder of the Milwaukee International Film Festival. Widen and Luhrssen discuss Widen's book and the state of Milwaukee film in the past and present.

9pm *FREE*
Libeled Lady (Jack Conway, US, 98 min., 35mm, 1936)

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Spencer Tracy lived on Prospect Avenue and attended Marquette High School . In Libeled Lady, he plays a newspaper editor and the fiancée of Jean Harlow, nicknamed “the Platinum Blonde.” When an heiress sues him for libel, he recruits Harlow and an ex-reporter to bail him out. The result is a fine example of a 1930s screwball comedy.

Saturday, October 6

2007-10-01T05:15:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater presents
A Weekend of Silver Screens

3pm *FREE*
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
(David Hand, US, 83 min., 35mm, 1937)

The first American feature length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves immediately enchanted audiences. Based on the Brothers Grimm tale, a beautiful princess flees from her wicked stepmother to find comfort with the seven dwarves and love with the Prince in this enduring and magical tale. “Snow White demonstrated how animation could release a movie from its trap of space and time; how gravity, dimension, physical limitations and the rules of movement itself could be transcended by the imaginations of the animators.” – Roger Ebert CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

5pm *FREE*
It (Clarence Badger, US, 72 min., 35mm, 1927)

It, a Jazz Age romantic comedy captures the quintessential flapper, Clara Bow at the height of her charm. In the spirit of the sexually-liberated youth of Prohibition-era America, a saucy lingerie salesgirl sets her sights on the handsome owner of the department store where she works. Leading him on a romantic chase from the Hotel Ritz to the whirling attractions of Coney Island, she then crashes a high-society yacht party in a last-ditch effort to get her man. Prone to playing the sexual aggressor, Bow daringly deviated from female passivity. In It, Bow's gregarious personality and striking beauty are brilliantly showcased.

7pm *FREE*
Gilda (Charles Vidor, US, 110 min., 35mm, 1946)

Classic, intricate noir in which sultry Rita Hayworth, as the titular femme fatale, is placed by her mobster husband in the care of a small-time hood and mobster's minion who also happens to be her ex-lover.

9h30pm *FREE*
Tears of the Black Tiger
(Wisit Sasanatieng, Thailand, in Thai w/ Eng. St., 110 min., 35mm, 2007)

This genre busting action film centers on Dum, a peasant separated from his beautiful and wealthy childhood sweetheart. Upon finding his father murdered, Dum becomes a gun slinging outlaw called Black Tiger who must avenge his family and get back his love before she is forced to marry another man. “ Director Wisit Sasanatieng uses every trick imaginable to create surreal postmodern nostalgia. Has he wound up with pure camp, or a cult classic? As he clearly understands, the best B-movies are both.” – Elizabeth Weitzman NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Sunday, October 7

2007-10-01T05:12:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater presents
A Weekend of Silver Screens

5pm *FREE*
Written on the Wind
(Douglas Sirk, US, 16mm, 99 min., 1956)

In a style of jukebox colors and outrageous symbolism, Douglas Sirk delineates the last days of an oil-baron's dynasty, declining into sterility and death. Dorothy Malone's plays a nymphomaniac and Robert Stack brilliantly characterizes the impotent and alcoholic playboy Kyle Hadley, an Absurdist's tragic hero in a yellow sports car.

7pm *FREE*
Tears of the Black Tiger
(Wisit Sasanatieng, Thailand, in Thai w/ Eng. St., 110 min., 35mm, 2007)

Ongoing

2007-09-24T20:29:00.000-06:00

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

2007-09-24T20:27:00.001-06:00

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

2007-09-24T20:21:00.003-06:00

-- 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

2007-09-24T20:21:00.001-06:00

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

2007-09-24T20:13:00.000-06:00

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

2007-09-24T20:05:00.000-06:00

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

2007-09-24T20:03:00.000-06:00

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?”

Tuesday, September 18

2007-09-18T10:51:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
Là-bas (Down There, Chantal Akerman, France/Belgium/Israel, video, 78 min., 2006)
Part of the Experimental Tuesdays series + Milwaukee premiere!

A visual diary, room-bound mostly, of Akerman's stay in Tel Aviv. Or, as she describes it: “It is a film about the relationship of somebody from the Diaspora to Israel — an imaginary Israel , maybe… A film both within the world and cut off the world — in which one can guess the faint outline of a Jewish family's past. It suggests what it means not to belong — and what the illusion of belonging would be…”

Wednesday, September 19

2007-09-18T10:46:00.001-06:00

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: meet “This American Life” producer Ken Druckerman!

UWM Union Theater
7h30pm *FREE*
This American Life, Growing Up Gotti, I Pity the Fool

Meet Ken Druckerman, producer of the Showtime television version of This American Life with Ira Glass. Ken is also the producer of reality shows like Growing Up Gotti and I Pity the Fool, featuring Mr. T. Raised in documentary, Ken now fuses the style and popularity of reality television with the storytelling power of the finest non-fiction films to create sensational television that makes you think and feel. Film and TV scholar and UWM Film Dept. professor (and expert in pop culture) Michele Schreiber will join Ken for the post-show discussion.

If you miss Ken Wednesday night, you can catch him on Thursday at noon at the Prospect Avenue Alterra, where he will talk with visitors in an intimate chat over coffee.

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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: two Dodges, one a Challenger, the other a Charger, both on the run from the law. Add in a bunch of speed,both types (if you know what we mean), a hot chick, a cool cat, and lots of police. It all adds up to one thrilling double feature!

8pm FREE
Vanishing Point  (Richard C. Sarafian, 1971, 98 minutes) 

Kowalski works for a car delivery service. When assigned to take a white 1970 Dodge Challenger with supercharged Magnum V-8 engine from Colorado to San Francisco he bets a friend that he can do it in less than 15 hours. High on Benzedrine and guided by a blind DJ known as Supersoul (Cleavon Little), Kowalski sets out on an interstate chase. Along the way, he becomes a cult hero, but Kowalski isn’t seeking fame. In fact, there’s just no telling what’s driving him or how this high-speed escapade will end.

10pm FREE
Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry  (John Hough, 1974, 93 minutes)

Two wanna-bes, one a racer (Peter Fonda), the other his mechanic, rob a supermarket in the hopes of financing there jump into the racing circuit. As they escape they confront Mary (Susan George) who demands that they take her with them. The trio make a get-away, but are ruthlessly pursued by Sheriff, Captain Franklin (Vic Morrow).
While not as cool as Vanishing Point, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry is just as thrilling and it’s use of hipster, car-talk dialog is stupefying.

Thursday, September 20

2007-09-18T10:45:00.001-06:00

Noon at Alterra
Coffee with DocUquarium guest Ken Druckerman
Alterra Coffee Roasters – 2211 N. Prospect Ave.
Join us for an intimate chat with the filmmaker.

UWM Union Theater
7pm - FREE
B.I.K.E.
(Jacob Septimus & Anthony Howard, US, 89 min., video, 2006)

Black Label Bike Club (BLBC) battles mainstream consumer culture and rival gangs for its vision of a better tomorrow. Pulling threads from Critical Mass and the wider bike counterculture, B.I.K.E. explores such themes as radical politics, personal artistic vision, global responsibility, relationships, group formation, and perhaps most prominently, pain and love. Following the Brooklyn chapter of BLBC for over two years to meetings, parties, jousts, and protests this fascinating and gritty film provides insight into a passionate subculture, and the darker aspects of living on the wild side.

Friday, September 21

2007-09-18T10:43:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm & 9pm
Day Night Day Night
(Julia Loktev, US/Germany/France, 94 min., 35mm, 2007)
Milwaukee Premiere!

A 19-year-old girl prepares to become a suicide bomber in Times Square . She speaks with no accent; it's impossible to pinpoint her ethnicity. We never learn why she made her decision -- she has made it already. We don't know whom she represents what she believes in - we only know she believes it absolutely. The film strips the story down to its existential core. It focuses on microscopic movements, the smallest gestures, an economy of banal details. Inspired in part by a story in a Russian newspaper and playing off a history of Joan of Arc films, the film transpires on the girl's face. The minimalism of the face is confronted with the visual and aural noise of the city. Faith comes face-to-face with the possibility of failure.

Saturday, September 22

2007-09-18T10:42:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
5pm, 7pm & 9pm
Day Night Day Night
(Julia Loktev, US/Germany/France, 94 min., 35mm, 2007)
Milwaukee Premiere!

Sunday, September 23

2007-09-18T10:39:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
5pm
Day Night Day Night
(Julia Loktev, US/Germany/France, 94 min., 35mm, 2007)
Milwaukee Premiere!

UWM Union Theater
7pm - FREE
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
(Ken Loach, UK/Ireland, 110 min., 35mm, 2006)
Winner – PALME D’OR – 2006 Cannes Film Festival

Ireland 1920: workers from field and country unite to form volunteer guerrilla armies to face the ruthless "Black and Tan" squads that are being shipped from Britain to block Ireland 's bid for independence. Driven by a deep sense of duty and a love for his country, Damien abandons his burgeoning career as a doctor and joins his brother, Teddy, in a dangerous and violent fight for freedom. As the freedom fighters' bold tactics bring the British to breaking point, both sides finally agree to a treaty to end the bloodshed. However, despite the apparent victory, civil war erupts and families who fought side by side find themselves pitted against one another as sworn enemies, putting their loyalties to the ultimate test.

The Wind that Shakes the Barley will have a second free screening at the UWM Union Theater on Monday September 24th at 7pm.

Monday, September 10

2007-09-10T13:36:00.000-06:00

Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival – September 6-16
The 20th edition of one of the community's longest running film festivals, sharing once again 11 nights of an international array of narrative features, documentaries, shorts, and experimental media. Unless otherwise noted all screenings will take place at the Union Theatre. Full schedule and ticket information available at http://arts.uwm.edu/lgbtfilm. Email lgbtfilm@uwm.edu for more information.

UWM Union Theater
7pm
Beyond Hatred
(Au Dela de la Haine, Olivier Meyrou, France, in French with English subtitles, 35mm, 82 min., 2006)
Campus Co-Sponsor: UWM Festival of Films in French
Community Co-Presenters: Center Advocates & Anti-Violence Project
Winner - Teddy Award & Best Gay Documentary - Berlin Film Festival 2006

In this award-winning French documentary, a family reflects on the murder of their 29-year-old gay son and tries to move beyond hatred and revenge.
September 13 th , 2002. Three skinheads roam a park in Reims, France, determined to “do an Arab.” Instead they encounter Francois Chenu, a gay man. Refusing to be intimidated, Francois defends himself and calls them cowards. They beat him unconscious and throw his body into a nearby pond where he drowns. The gang, known to the police, is quickly caught. The film focuses on the aftermath of the crime: the trial; the family's efforts to cope with the loss of their beloved son and brother; the background of prejudice and neglect that characterizes the accused; and the Chenu family's remarkable dignity as they try to comprehend the circumstances that led to their irreparable loss.

Tuesday, September 11

2007-09-10T13:35:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
News From Home
(Chantal Akerman, Belgium/USA, 16mm, 85 min., 1978)
Campus Co-Sponsors: Center for International Education, Experimental Tuesdays at the Union Theatre & UWM Festival of Films in French

An experimental home movie, or an experimental movie about home, News from Home is a diary, of sorts, of this European filmmaker's sojourn in New York City, the then dirtier metropolis captured (by Babette Mangolte's stationary camera and exquisite cinematography) in a series of striking tableaux. Available light and color haunt the imagery, imbuing the film with the melancholy and warm sadness of an Edward Hopper painting. Accompanying this captivating series of emotional postcards—it is a world largely bereft, presented for the viewer to inhabit—is Akerman's own voice, reading the letters sent by her Belgian mother that report on the anxieties and quotidian activity of some domestic elsewhere. Print courtesy of Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique.

Wednesday, September 12

2007-09-10T13:29:00.001-06:00

Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival Centerpiece
Oriental Theater – 7h30pm
2230 North Farwell Avenue / (414) 276-8711

The Witnesses
(Les Temoins, André Téchiné, France, in French with English subtitles, 35mm, 112 min., 2007)
Co-Sponsor: Cultural Services of the French Embassy, Chicago
Community Co-Sponsor: AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin
Campus Co-Sponsor: UWM Festival of Films in French
Community Co-Presenter: Milwaukee International Film Festival

A symphonic portrait of friends and sexual partners in a world in flux with the outbreak of AIDS. The time is 1984. Manu, an avid and attractive young man, arrives in Paris seeking sexual adventure. Thwarting the older man's desires, Manu nevertheless develops a platonic relationship with Adrien, a wealthy doctor, who introduces him to Sarah and Mehdi, a young married couple with a somewhat breezy and open relationship who have just had their first child. But an unplanned love affair at the onset of an unnamed epidemic upsets the tranquility of their lives, and the four friends confront the end of what they have known. The latest film from director André Téchiné ( Wild Reeds ), starring such French film luminaries as Emmanuelle Béart, Michel Blanc and Sami Bouajila, is a moving consideration of friendship and desire. And, by offering a rare contemporary filmic treatment of the eruption of AIDS, The Witnesses offers elegant testimony in its engagement with overlooked recent history.

JOIN US FOR A POST-SCREENING RECEPTION
Inova/Kenilworth
2155 N. Prospect Ave.
Exhibition on view: __fabrics interseason / Elisabeth Penker

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Basement Cinema
Mitchell Hall - Room B91

Basement Cinema is a student-run series of B and unusual commercial movies. The series is back and they are kicking off the fall 2007 season with two infamous schlockers from the godfather of gore - Herschell Gordon Lewis.
More information at http://basementcinema.wordpress.com

8pm – FREE
The Wizard of Gore (Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1970, 95 minutes)

Montag the Magnificent performs gruesome illusions on stage. Hours later, his willing volunteers end up dead. Sherry, a TV talk show host, is wowed by Montag and wants to have him perform on her show. Her sports reporter boyfriend, Jack, is none to supportive. He suspects Montag is behind the recent spat of murders. As for horror, it’s a real toss-up here between what’s more disturbing - the bloody act of Montag or the sexist attitudes of Jack.
The film’s tag line once read, “Scenes So Far Beyond Any You’ve Ever Seen That No Description Is Possible”. When really, you could sum it all up with one word - silly. More visual shock then lurking horror, The Wizard of Gore is soaked in blood and bad performances. Montag’s repeated monologues about reality take on a Zen like quality that will having you scratching your head.

10pm - FREE
Two Thousand Maniacs! (Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1964, 87 minutes)

It’s the centennial celebration of Pleasant Valley and a group of yankees are invited to be the town’s guests of honor. What these naive northerners don’t know is that 100 years ago Pleasant Valley was laid to waste by Union soldiers and now the town-folk want revenge. Through a series of specialized festivities each of the tourists meets a grizzly fate.
H.G. Lewis brings his usualy buckets of blood, but this time he adds some Dixie flare. A combination of Brigadoon and low-budget, horror film brilliance, this gory story of Southern un-hospitality is full of bizarre tortures. Lot’s of Rebel flags, toothless grins, and country music make the South one frighteningly farcical place.

Thursday, September 13

2007-09-10T13:24:00.001-06:00

Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival – September 6-16
UWM Union Theater

7pm
For the Bible Tells Me So
(Daniel Karslake, USA, video, 97 min., 2007)
Community Co-Sponsor: Parents, Family & Friends of Lesbians and Gays – Milwaukee (PFLAG)
Community Co-Presenters: Lesbian Alliance , Milwaukee Metropolitan Community Church , Plymouth Church , Welcoming Congregation Subcommittee of the Social Justice Committee Unitarian Church North (Mequon)
Winner - Audience Award, 2007 Seattle International Film Festival
Winner - HBO Audience Award & Best Documentary - Princetown International Film Fesatival
Winner - Audience Award & Best Documentary - 2007 Outfest

Is the chasm separating gays and lesbians and Christianity too wide to cross? Karslake's provocative, emotionally charged documentary brilliantly reconciles homosexuality and scripture, and in the process reveals that Church-sanctioned anti-gay bias is based almost solely upon a significant (and often malicious) misinterpretation of the Bible. Through the experiences of five conventional, emphatically Christian, American families—including those of former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson—we discover how insightful people of faith handle the realization that their child is gay or lesbian. Informed by such respected voices as Bishop Desmond Tutu, Harvard's Peter Gomes, Orthodox Rabbi Steve Greenberg and Reverend Jimmy Creech, For the Bible Tells Me So offers healing, clarity and understanding to anyone caught in the crosshairs of religion and sexual identity.

For the Bible Tells Me So will also screen at the 5th Annual Milwaukee International Film Festival which runs September 20 – 30. See http://www.milwaukeefilmfest.org for show times.

9pm
Colma: The Musical
(Richard Wong, USA, video , 100 min., 2006)
Community Co-Presenters: Boulevard Theatre, Men's Voices Milwaukee & Wisconsin Cream City Chorus

A very funny musical— yes, musical—about the longing to leave a small town and the ache of doing so.
Three best friends, Rodel, Billy, and Maribel, just out of high school and restless with unarticulated aspirations, wonder how much longer they can endure living in Colma, California, a burg just south of San Francisco dense, mostly, with cemeteries. Surely something bigger, better, can happen elsewhere? Billy is a self-identified thespian whose reflex for self-centeredness might just allow him to make it. Rodel is constantly scribbling notes on paper—possibly poetic fragments yet to become a coherent whole; similarly, he's not yet out to his father either. And Maribel, well, she's just fine with Colma, and only impatient to find the next party. Together they whine, plan and stumble towards the future—and they sing! With catchy and very witty pop songs by scriptwriter/star H.P. Mendoza (Rodel) and a spirited and talented cast, Colma is irresistibly and accessibly musical. Wong transcends the film's let's-put-on-a-show dime store aesthetic with editing brio and consistent inventiveness, evoking a landscape familiar to anyone who grew up somewhere outside of their dreams, where small town boundaries are ready scapegoats for hindered growth. Colma: The Musical winningly depicts these aspirations and aches. You'll be singing along.

shown with:
I Hate Musicals (Stewart Schill, USA , video, 20 min., 2006)
A man who hates musicals is cursed to sing them.

Friday, September 14

2007-09-10T13:10:00.001-06:00

Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival – September 6-16
UWM Union Theater

7pm
The Gymnast (Ned Farr, USA, 35mm on video, 99 min., 2006)
Community Co-Presenter: Lesbian Alliance

A classic story of one woman's personal and sexual awakening is given a visually spectacular platform in this tale of a gymnast's recovery and self-discovery.
Once an Olympic gymnast, Jane Hawkins now passes the days as a massage therapist while tending to her obliviously self-involved husband.
Rigidly holding to her deliberate routines, Jane is near catatonic with unhappiness. But a chance encounter with a gymnastics coach offers the possibility of change: soon, partnered with a dancer named Serena, Jane is part of an aerial dancing team, something with the mystery and carnival beauty of Cirque du Soleil. As they develop an act together—two commandingly athletic women performing feats of striking beauty and grace—Jane and Serena fall in love and, all of a sudden, Jane has to risk taking a different type of plunge. Winner of more Audience Awards for Best Film at LGBT film festivals than any other film in history!

9pm
At the End of Our Ropes: An Evening of Men's Shorts
Community Co-Sponsors: Art Bar-Riverwest & Milwaukee GAMMA

A moody, touching, cranky and crazy mixture of some of the best new films about gay men on the brink of discovery, of identity, of calling it quits.
Includes Cowboy Forever (Jean-Baptiste Erreca, France, video, 26 min., 2006), a Brokeback Mountain homage from the world of Brazilian gauchos, and the exquisitely designed dark comedy The Saddest Boy in the World (Jamie Travis, Canada , 35mm, 13 min., 2006). Also to screen: 41 Sekunden (Tobias Martin & Rodney Sewell, Germany, 35mm, 4 min., 2006); Benny's Gym (Lisa Marie Gamlen, Norway, video, 25 min., 2007); Something Like That (Esmir Filho, Brazil, 35mm, 15 min., 2006); Kali Ma (Soman Chainani, USA, video, 14 min., 2007); & more!

AND AN AFTER PARTY
Community co-sponsor Art Bar-Riverwest 722 E. Burleigh St., welcomes you for an after party.
Festive drink specials!

Saturday, September 15

2007-09-10T13:01:00.000-06:00

Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival – September 6-16
UWM Union Theater

3pm
Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe
(James Crump, USA, video, 71 min., 2007)
Community Co-Presenters: Milwaukee Gay Arts Center & Milwaukee Art Museum

A portrait of influential curator and collector Sam Wagstaff—patron, mentor, and lover to Robert Mapplethorpe.
Sam Wagstaff, a blue blood ad man turned curator of minimalism and earth art, was always in the process of refining the image and performance of himself. If his avid collecting of photographs transformed the then-neglected medium into an art commodity—his photo collection would sell to the Getty Museum for five million dollars—his most legendary performance began at the age of 51, when he “collaborated” with Patti Smith's roommate (she is a principal narrator here), the 26-year-old Robert Mapplethorpe. Black White + Gray offers both a history of photography and a fascinating, insider-y tour of the New York art world through a tumble of increasingly rowdy and radical decades, crashing into the era of AIDS, the disease which took both Wagstaff and Mapplethorpe.

5pm
Red Without Blue
(Brooke Sebold, Benita Sills & Todd Sills, USA, video, 74 min., 2006)
Community Co-Presenters: PFLAG-Milwaukee & Project Q
Winner - 2007 Jury Award, Best Documentary - San Francisco LGBT Film/Video Festival

Red Without Blue follows a pair of identical twins as one transitions from male to female and their family redefines itself.
Alex and Mark Farley's early lives were quintessentially American: picture-perfect holidays, cheerful home movies and caring parents. But by the time they were 14, their parents had divorced, Mark and Alex had come out as gay and a joint suicide attempt precipitated a forced separation of two and half years. Through candid and extensive interviews with the twins and their family over a period of three years, Red Without Blue recounts these troubled times, interweaving the twins' difficult past with their efforts to establish themselves in the present.

shown with:
Whatever Suits You (Ashley Altadonna, USA , video, 7 min., 2007)
Local filmmaker Altadonna crafts a new outfit as she recounts her transition.

7pm
Glue
(Glue – Historia Adolescente en Medio de la Nada, Alexis Dos Santos, Argentina/United Kingdom, in Spanish with English subtitles, video & Super8 on video, 110 min., 2006)
Co-Sponsor: Picture This! Entertainment
Campus Co-Sponsor: Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Winner - Jury Award, Best First Feature - Frameline SF International LGBT Film Festival 2007

A visually striking and empathetic picture of one adolescent boy, replete with the tensions—the impatience, the horniness, the questioning—that mark the age.
Set in the open, unadorned spaces of rural Argentina, Glue has the unforced feel of time spent just hanging out with the three young people on whom the film dwells. Shot with great agility and fluidity in digital video and in Super8, Glue exudes a casual, improvisational feel, laid back and candid, befitting Lucas, the amiable central character who doesn't think of much more than music and sex and, now and then, his parents' impending divorce. His—and the film's—breeziness extends to his sexual questioning: his gropings with his best friend Nacho, or with Nacho and his other friend Andrea, are no-big-deal efflorescences of their intoxications, just moments of hanging more intense than most. (This movie recalls Y Tu Mama Tambien, only here no one vomits after same sex kissing.) The best looking and most critically acclaimed film of this year's Festival, Glue remains true to its subjects while casually re-energizing the coming-of-age genre that normally contains them. Motored by anthems and angst from the Violent Femmes.

9pm
Itty Bitty Titty Committee (Jamie Babbit, USA, video, 90 min., 2007)
Community Co-Presenters: Miltown Kings, Broad Vocabulary & Lesbian Alliance
Winner - Best Narrative Feature Jury Award Winner - South by Southwest Film Festival 2007

A rowdy romantic comedy set among the would-be revolutionaries of a cell of radical guerilla grrrls.
Shy Anna has been dumped by her girlfriend, rejected from college and the sandwiches she gets delivered to her at work at the West Beverly Plastic Surgery Clinic always come with the wrong condiments . Leaving work one night she encounters the spray paint nozzle of Sadie, the charismatic, bombshell leader of Clits in Action, who recruits her for the radical Guerilla Girls-esque group – and perhaps for more. Anna is introduced to other CIA members Shulie, hardcore feminist/hipster; Meat, the artist responsible for engineering the CIA's protests; and the gentle FTM Aggie; as well as their punk-femme brand of protests against phallocentrism, the beauty-industrial complex and marriage – all marriage. But not only this: with the CIA agents, there is also plenty of record shopping, dancing, sex and, inevitably, fighting, with the CIA threatening to implode over Sadie's treatment of Anna. Eventually, Sadie's disloyalty brings the group close to fracture, until Anna comes up with a fierce public act that will unite the group – and maybe even her and Sadie. Babbit (But I'm a Cheerleader) and her crew of almost entirely female talent create a radical film, in both the political and slang-y senses, a film that that refuses to take itself – or its premise – too seriously, but doesn't dismiss aspirations of revolution either. Did we mention the film also stars The L Word 's Daniela Sea of The L Word and has Le Tigre all over the soundtrack?

Immediately after the screening
join the Miltown Kings at the Miramar Theatre
2844 N. Oakland Ave., for their season kick-off show:
Slumber Party! (Wear your pjs!)
For more info see: http://www.myspace.com/miltownkings

11pm – FREE!!
Funeral Parade of Roses
(Bara no Soretsu, Toshio Matsumoto, Japan, in Japanese with English subtitles, 16mm, 105 min., 1969)

A wild, mayhem-laden drag queen free-for-all and a retelling of the Oedipus legend,
reputed to be an influence on Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.
A pioneering, influential Molotov cocktail of the Japanese New Wave, Toshio Matsumoto's provocative assemblage uses a cross-dressed love-triangle melodrama (set in a gay bar named after Jean Genet) as a springboard for a daring, experimental look at economics, sexuality and gender politics in late-'60s Tokyo. Print courtesy of Japan Foundation, with permission from Image Forum.

Sunday, September 16

2007-09-10T12:56:00.001-06:00

Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival – September 6-16
UWM Union Theater

3pm – FREE!!
Listen Up! A Screening with the Center Advocates

A town hall meeting of sorts, showcasing true stories from elsewhere—and maybe from down the street—addressing issues that impact lives lead here in Wisconsin.
To screen: Freeheld (Cynthia Wade, USA, video, 38 min., 2007), a Sundance Festival award-winning documentary that chronicles the struggles of police lieutenant Laurel Hester who, as she loses her battle with cancer, fights to secure her pension benefits for Stacie, her life partner. Out Running: Stories from the Campaign Trail (Dave O'Brien, Samantha Reynolds, & Borga Dorter, USA, video, 22 min., 2007) profiles three openly LGBT candidates from Oklahoma, Iowa and Oregon as they run for office. One of the candidates profiled is Judge Virginia Linder, who is looking to become both the first lesbian and the first woman on the Oregon Supreme Court. Gender Skirmish: Milwaukee 's Struggle for Transgender Nondiscrimination (Dena Aronson & Patrick Flaherty, USA , video, 10 min., 2007) explores how local activists set out to add (successfully!) gender identity and expression to one Midwestern city's nondiscrimination ordinance.

5pm
Tick Tock Lullaby
(Lisa Gornick, UK, video, 73 min., 2006)
Co-Sponsor: Wolfe Releasing
Community Co-Presenter: Lesbian Alliance
Community Sex Toy Provider: Tool Shed

A way smart, sharply observed and very funny comedy about two women's pursuit of parenthood.
Sasha and Maya want a baby. Or so they think. Sasha, a Jules Feiffer-style cartoonist who drafts strips about human foibles, contextualizes all the baby/pillow talk by imagining some other characters: she conjures Gillian and Fiona, a pair of sisters, both straight. (Sasha thinks: straight women must have it easier, right? Like, wouldn't it save a lot of trouble if she just got Maya pregnant accidentally?) But the imagined sisters are no help: they are struggling to have babies of their own and are similarly and desperately trying to find cooperative male partners. Proving that there is nothing straightforward about conception, Tick Tock Lullaby is an angsty comedy about intimacy and its attendant strategizing. And writer/director/star Gornick—perhaps the British lesbian Woody Allen if Woody Allen is not the straight American male Lisa Gornick—sketches these travails of planned parenthood into a witty and wry comedy about adult entanglements.

7pm
Times Have Been Better
(La Ciel Sul la Tete, Régis Musset, France, in French with English subtitles, video, 90 min., 2006)
Co-Sponsor: Picture This! Entertainment
Campus Co-Sponsor: UWM Festival of Films in French
Community Co-Presenters: Milwaukee LGBT Community Center & PFLAG–Milwaukee
Winner - Best Foreign Narrative Feature - 2007 NewFest, New York Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
Winner - Audience Award - 2007 Festival du Film Gay et Lesbian (Brussels)

An irresistible French farce that redirects the coming out comedy into a winning and affectionate portrait of well-meaning parents trying to adjust to their gay son's news.
When Jeremy, a successful bank executive and apple of his parents' eye, bluntly announces that he's gay and moving in with his boyfriend Marc, his parents, the oh-so-devoted and proudly progressive Guy and Rosine, find themselves unmoored. How did they not know? How did this happen? And, more importantly, what does this say about each of them? Their doubts cause their own relationship to buckle. Their friends—a gay co-worker, well-meaning if cloddish tennis partners, a busybody gossip—are only so much help and their youngest son Robin doesn't see what the fuss is about. Jeremy and Marc discover that they can't remain at a remove from this familial fray: maybe coming out isn't just about them? The film is reminiscent of Cote D'Azur (LGBT Film Fest 2005) in its loving and comic portrait of a family in flux, in its pleasurably witty and self-involved talkiness and in the breezy opulence of the French bourgeoisie. Bring the folks! Bring the kids, gay and straight!

WE'RE BACK!

2007-09-04T07:33:00.000-06:00

Welcome back --
Hope everyone had a good summer!
If you have an event to post please send the information to siqueira@uwm.edu
Feel free to send corrections and/or suggestions as well.

Tuesday, September 4

2007-09-04T07:32:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm - FREE
The Tailenders (Adele Horne, US, 72 min., video, 2005)

Adele Horne's documentary “The Tailenders” is a captivating look at a missionary group's use of ultra-low-tech audio devices to evangelize indigenous communities facing crises caused by global economic forces. The video traces Global Recordings Network on their journeys within the Solomon Islands, Mexico, India and the United States, where they distribute their recordings of Bible stories in indigenous languages, along with hand-wind audio players, to "the Tailenders": the last people to be reached by worldwide evangelism. In The Tailenders, Horne takes a critical look at Global Recordings' remarkable fusion of evangelism, technology and marketing, and also explores how meaning changes as it crosses language, culture, borders, and economic divides.

Wednesday, September 5

2007-09-04T07:27:00.001-06:00

DocUquarium Series
Every Wednesday September 5-December 5
Beginning this Wednesday, September 5th, “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 Please Vote for Me, Banished, King Korn, Miss Navajo, and Revolution 67.

This Week’s DocUquarium:
UWM Union Theater
7h30pm *FREE*
Please Vote For Me
(dir. Weijun Chen, China, 2007, 55 Minutes, Mandarin with English subtitles)

What does democracy look like in the world’s largest Communist country? Start small, very small. This impossibly charming film features a third grade class in Wahun province and the intense politicking in the race to become Class Monitor.
“Please Vote For Me” captures many elements of life in China today missed by all the magazine cover stories and astounding growth statistics. This story unfolds far from the giant factories, crowded markets, or even picturesque villages. These classrooms are state-of-the-art and the children’s homes look remarkably like middle class urban homes in the West. The film provides a private view of a microcosm of contemporary Chinese culture.
For more information visit www.whydemocracy.net

Thursday, September 6

2007-09-04T07:21:00.001-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm *FREE*
The Tailenders (Adele Horne, US, 72 min., video, 2005)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival
September 6-16

The 20th edition of one of the community's longest running film festivals, sharing once again 11 nights of an international array of narrative features, documentaries, shorts, and experimental media. Unless otherwise noted all screenings will take place at the Union Theatre. Full schedule and ticket information available at http://arts.uwm.edu/lgbtfilm. Email lgbtfilm@uwm.edu for more information.

OPENING NIGHT
Oriental Theater - 7:30pm
2230 North Farwell Avenue / (414) 276-8711

Nina's Heavenly Delights (Pratibha Parmar, UK, 35mm, 92 min., 2006)
Community Co-Sponsor: Cream City Foundation
Community Co-Presenter: Lesbian Alliance

An intoxicating and wonderfully funny mix of lesbian romance, family melodrama, and a whole showcase of delicious food.
Upon hearing the news of her father's death, prodigal—and closeted—daughter Nina returns home to Glasgow, only to learn that the family's Indian restaurant is set to close. Overcoming her family's resistance—her grieving mother wants to sell; her brother resents his sister's insistence; and her younger sister could give a fig (she's busy secretly pursuing Scottish dance)—Nina decides to enter a televised curry cook–off competition to save her family's business. And, when her old college friend Lisa agrees to help, love becomes part of the recipe. Meanwhile, her gay friend Mohan auditions for a choreographer's job with an Indian film company. With a nod to Bollywood, director Parmar knows exactly how to serve up this tale of family secrets and simmering love: with a dash of ghost story, a musical number or two and a genuine embrace of sentiment. Unabashed and buoyant, warmly humorous and refreshingly pleasurable, Nina's Heavenly Delights is like the work of a great chef who can conjure up something surprising and unexpectedly satisfying from a familiar recipe. Don't arrive with an empty stomach!

JOIN US FOR A POST-SCREENING RECEPTION
Beans & Barley
1901 E. North Ave.
AND AN AFTER PARTY
Post-reception party with PUMP! and DJ John Murges
at Red Light above Trocadero, 1758 N. Water St.

Friday, September 7

2007-09-04T07:16:00.001-06:00

Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival
September 6-16
UWM Union Theater

5pm
Oh Happy Day (Ian Poitier, UK, video, 96 min., 2007)

A touching—and genuinely romantic—romantic comedy about the complications of sex and work and family and the possibility of ecstasy (pharmaceutical and otherwise).
The morning after lands a bit hard for Jonathan, an ambitious ad man who hooks up with David, an American he meets at a work-related awards show. The next day he discovers that David is one of his ad firm's new clients—David's company produces an Ecstasy-type pill for everyday use. Trouble is, his new amorous situation is a little harder to swallow: Jonathan works in a firm where sleeping with a client is decidedly verboten, and Jonathan must put David on hold to put work first. A new relationship that's all sparky gets a little snarky. A very funny workplace comedy, nicely textured with no-big-deal representations of race and alternative families, “Oh Happy Day” is also very sweet in its recommended prescriptions for life and love.

7pm
Four Minutes (Veir Minuten, Ian Poitier, Chris Kraus, Germany, in German with English subtitles, 35mm, 112 min., 2006)
Co-Sponsor: Wolfe Releasing
Community Co-Presenters: Lesbian Alliance & SAGE-Milwaukee
Winner - Audience Award & Best Feature - San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival
Winner - Best Actress & Best Young Actress - 2007 Bavarian Film Awards

A beautiful and powerful tale of two women who unleash the power of music against the barbarity of history, personal and political.
Frau Krüger teaches music in a women's prison, only caring, she insists, about music. But her rigid facade barely contains feelings of grief and remorse: she feels responsible for the death of her lover, a dissident, at the hands of the Nazis decades earlier. Jenny von Loeben, in prison for a ghastly crime, is an unlikely pupil for the orderly Frau Krüger. She was once a piano prodigy who now, on the brink of adulthood, is openly anarchic in her ferocious piano banging (à la musique concrète and/or Jerry Lee Lewis) and in her brutal reflex to violence (she nearly kills the guard supervising her piano lessons). But both women have had to endure enormous cruelty and atrocity in their lives and, however they disagree about matters of form, they both find in music the only possible, only available liberation from the past. The two forge a turbulent partnership as they prepare, in fits and starts, surmounting obstacles personal and institutionally imposed, for a prestigious piano competition, the finale of which will allow Jenny the chance to deliver, in the mere four minutes of the title, a declaration that expresses the rage, defiance, endurance and beauty of her life, and that of her mentor.

Four Minutes will also screen at the 5 th Annual Milwaukee International Film Festival which runs September 20 – 30. See http://www.milwaukeefilmfest.org for show times.

9pm
Shelter (Jonah Markowitz, USA, video, 88 min., 2007)
Community Co-Sponsor: Milwaukee GAMMA
Winner - Audience Award & First Dramatic Feature - Outfest 2007

A touching, surfside family drama about a most responsible young man's coming out, and coming into his own.
Forced to give up his dreams of art school, Zach spends his days working a dead end job and helping his dependent sister care for her son. In hisfree time he surfs, draws—frequently with spray paint on the walls of public buildings—and hangs out with his best friend Gabe, who lives on the wealthy side of town. When Gabe's older brother Shaun returns home, he is drawn to Zach's selflessness and talent. Zach, in turn, falls in love with Shaun while struggling to reconcile his own desires with the needs of his family. This award-winning first feature maintains an appealing, low-key SoCal vibe as it profiles a young man whose issues around coming out are entwined with his larger negotiations with the world and those he loves. Another attraction is star Brad Rowe (Shaun)—from both Wauwatosa and “Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss”.

Saturday, September 8

2007-09-04T07:06:00.001-06:00

Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival
September 6-16
UWM Union Theater

1pm
Blueprint (Kirk Shannon-Butts, USA, video, 75 min., 2007)
Community Co-Presenters: Charles “D” Productions & Project Q

A film about a tentative courtship between two African American college students that is resourceful and risky, lean and leisurely, daring to take and find its own time.
Keith is a beatnik, excessively confident—even about his unhappiness—and proud of his precision. Nathan is laid back, amusingly garrulous and probably high. On their first date, Keith and Nathan hit the road on a motorcycle with only a hint of an itinerary: they smoke pot and take a dip in a stream. The two are on the cusp of something—adulthood, a relationship, a plan?—and the movie enjoys their hesitancy, the charmed time before an agenda looms, when possibilities are part of the atmosphere. Blueprint has the conventionally comedic friction of opposites attracting, but first time filmmaker Shannon-Butts designs a winning debut out of the less schematic and far richer pleasures and promises of irresolution.

shown with:
Float (Kareem Mortimer, Bahamas, video, 35 min., 2006)
Set in the acutely homophobic Bahamas , two men risk falling in love.

3pm
FtF: Female To Femme (Kami Chisholm & Elizabeth Stark, USA, video, 48 min., 2006)
Campus Co-Sponsor: Women's Resource Center
Community Co-Presenters: Milwaukee Femme Mafia , FORGE & Lesbian Alliance

Sexy, smart and funny, FtF: Female to Femme explores femme dyke identities as radical gender practices.
A film that envisions more than it documents, FtF pushes for an understanding of femininity as multiple rather than singular, constructed rather than natural. FtF features a host of fabulous femmes, including actress Guinevere Turner, novelist Jewelle Gomez, rock stars Leslie Mah and Bitch, along with professors, activists, artists and dancers. FtF makes use of parody and costuming much the way femme does: to create a saucy, indelible impression of a people and a politics central to the gender revolution. To be screened with a series of shorts assembled with Milwaukee Femme Mafia.

5pm
Tuli (Auraeus Solito, Philippines, in Tagalog with English subtitles, video, 107 min., 2006)
Winner - Outstanding International Narrative Feature - Outfest 2007

A beguiling film of feminist defiance and lesbian courtship in rural Philippines.
In this new film from the director of last year's delight, The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, Solito's subject is another willful young queer challenging the law of the father. Headstrong Daisy, daughter of a preeminent patriarch, assists her father in performing the male circumcision ritual (tuli). Daisy resists the life—and the marriage—chosen for her and instead devotes herself to her childhood girlfriend Botchok in a relationship that stirs the wrath of the superstitious village. Ethnographically rich, Solito's film offers a complex portrait of a rural life caught between Christian and local shamanistic rituals. Daisy's defiance and the changes it prompts suggest the politics and feel of an Alice Walker novel, wherein outsiders find power in confederacy and feminist utopias can be realized through personal declarations however challenging, however disobedient.

7pm
The Bubble (Habuah, Eytan Fox, Israel, in Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles, 35mm, 117 min., 2006)
Community Co-Sponsor: Milwaukee GAMMA
Community Co-Presenter: Milwaukee Jewish Film Festival
Winner - Audience Award & Best Narrative Feature - Outfest 2007

A love story between an Israeli and a Palestinian in today's fractious Middle East.
Yali works as a waiter but aspires to something more romantic, say consummating his desire for his roommate Noam. An oblivious Noam works as a record store clerk when he is not enduring his military service at a border checkpoint. Lulu bristles at accepted opinion—and piggish men—and hazards a career in fashion when not organizing a rave for peace. And Ashraf, fleeing political strife and family pressures, sneaks across the border into this “bubble” of Tel Aviv twenty-somethings, perhaps to find the soldier he spied at the border. Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox (Yossi and Jagger , Walk on Water) crafts a valentine to the in-spite-of-it-all exuberance of the young people of Tel Aviv and a heart-rending mapping of the conflict in today's Israel through the antics and loves and stabs at responsibility of these not-quite adults. At the epicenter of the tragedy is the charged romance between Noam and Ashraf, whose devotion across fraught territories can only ultimately manifest itself in desperate measures. A powerful gay narrative, “The Bubble” broadens its concerns to acknowledge the impossible aches of a wider world.

The Bubble will also screen at the 5th Annual Milwaukee International Film Festival which runs September 20 – 30. See http://www.milwaukeefilmfest.org for show times.

9pm
iLESBIAN: An Evening of Women's Shorts
Campus Co-Sponsor: Women's Resource Center
Community Co-Presenters: Lesbian Alliance & Project Q

Scroll! Touch! Join us for the an evening of the finest and newest in short films and videos about courtship, first dates, innovative uses of cell phone technology and communities resourcefully invented in locker rooms. The standout may be “Pariah” (Dee Rees, video, 28 min., 2006), the powerhouse—and multiple award-winning—short that tells the tale of one young African American girl's struggle to bust out of the closet, of the confines of her family's ideas. Also to screen: “A Passing Rain” (Kim Myoung-Hwa, South Korea, video, 8 min., 2006); “Flowers at the Park (or First Kisses)” (Mariel Macia, Spain, video, 10 min., 2006); “Filled With Water” (Elka Kerkhofs, Australia, video, 5 min., 2006); “Eddie” (Quentin Kruger, USA, video, 10 min., 2007); “Vibracall” (Esmir Filho, Brazil, video, 5 min., 2006); “Spinning” (Heide Arnesen, Norway, video, 8 min., 2006); & more!

11pm – FREE!!
Born in Flames (Lizzie Borden, USA, 16mm, 80 min., 1983)
Community Co-Presenters: Broad Vocabulary & Queer Zine Archive Project

A rare big screen presentation of this radical, still - provocative feminist classic of the struggle of alternative politics and the control of the media – the inspiration for this year's Itty Bitty Titty Committee. In Borden's troubled imagined future, the government celebrates the tenth anniversary of the US's own Social Democratic War of Liberation. But the citizenry of New York City are increasingly agitated. In this alternate America, government oppression and violence against women is rampant, and the feminist response is increasingly powerful. Born in Flames chronicles the activities of the Women's Army, a formidable if loosely organized faction of female vigilantes and counterrevolutionaries, and two pirate radio programs trying to rally the sisterhood and shake up the system. When the outspoken leader of the Women's Army dies in police custody, a united front emerges to take direct action and potentially dangerous measures. “Born in Flames” uncorks a bracing mode of independent film no longer evident, however much its concerns with the plight of women and people of color, the government policing of its citizenry, and media control remain most relevant.

Sunday, September 9

2007-09-04T06:55:00.001-06:00

Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival
September 6-16
UWM Union Theater

3pm
The Believers (Todd Holland, USA, video, 80 min., 2006)
Community Co-Presenters: FORGE, First Unitarian Society-Interweave, Men's Voices Milwaukee, Milwaukee Metropolitan Community Church & Wisconsin Cream City Chorus
Winner - Audience Award & Best Documentary - 2006 San Francisco LGBT Film/Video Festival

A feature documentary that shatters assumptions about faith, gender and religion.
The Transcendence Gospel Choir faces a dilemma: how to reconcile their gender identity—as the world's first transgender gospel choir—with the widespread belief that changing one's gender goes against the word of God? The film takes us from the choir's shaky beginnings — a heartwarmingly chaotic, cacophonous group unable to agree on much of anything, arguing over appropriate wardrobe and learning to sing with transitioning voices—through their transformation into the polished, award-winning choir and close-knit family they are today, garnering major shows and winning an Outmusic Award in 2004 for the album Whosoever Believes. The intimate personal stories shed light on the difficulties of balancing social change, family history, religion and identity as the singers struggle for acceptance within two worlds historically at odds with one another.

5pm
Vivere (Angelina Maccarone, Germany, in German with English subtitles, 35mm, 97 min., 2006)
Community Co-Presenters: Lesbian Alliance & SAGE-Milwaukee
Winner - Outstanding Artistic Achievement - 2007 Outfest

A poignant road movie about three women of different generations fleeing—and perhaps finding—reasons to live.
When she is not busy driving a cab, duty-bound Francesca tends to her father and her restless younger sister Antoinetta in their motherless home. When Antoinetta flees on Christmas Eve—chasing a boy in a rock band—Francesca has to go look for her. En route she comes across an injured older woman by the side of the road: abandoned by her girlfriend, Gerlinde is bereft, untethered even. Director Maccarone (Unveiled) poetically portrays characters seeking desperate resolution and proffers the possibility of hope as these women, through their encounters with each other, find ways of addressing what they've lost and tentatively hazard new directions.

7pm
Prisoners of Love: Jean Genet on Film
Un Chant D'Amour (A Song of Love) & Querelle
Campus Co-Sponsor: UWM Festival of Films in French
Community Co-Sponsor: Outwords Books

A Song of Love (Un Chant D'Amour, Jean Genet, France, in French with English subtitles, 35mm, 26 min., 1950)
A fantasia of power and desire, with stolen glances, surveillance and prison walls only penetrable by gay reverie and maybe a whisper of smoke. “Un Chant d'Amour” is Genet's only film and a classic of erotic cinema, here presented in a new 35mm restoration.

Querelle (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Germany/France, 35mm, 103 min., 1982)

Fassbinder's final film, a passionately rendered exploration of Jean Genet's novel about a sailor and outcast named Querelle. Fassbinder shared Genet's sense of a love imbricated with betrayal, and Genet's port of Brest, populated with sailors, whores, and thieves, is a perfect setting for Fassbinder's consideration of the ensnarements of masculinity, power and desire. Presiding over the film is the sailor Querelle who beguiles all—his commanding officer; the barkeep who “wins” him with a roll of the dice; the madame of the bar where the sailors dally; and most especially his twin brother, whose unspoken love for Querelle underscores the entire milieu's muffled desire for the unattainable. Fassbinder platforms this material with a maddening range of Brechtian devices: overpowering tableaux and choreography; textual interruptions; dubbed voices; and the casting of a distractingly international fleet of actors that includes Jeanne Moreau, Franco Nero and the Adonis-like Brad Davis. Like its central object of desire, the film is seductive and challenging, strategically strange and always alluring.

Have a good summer! Back in the fall...

2007-05-18T00:32:00.000-06:00

Monday, May 7

2007-05-08T13:12:00.001-06:00

No postings.

Tuesday, May 8

2007-05-08T13:11:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm $5 general admission / $4 students, seniors
Wrestling with Angels
(Freida Lee Mock, USA, 98 min., 35mm, 2006)

"Wrestling With Angels" is a feature-length documentary portrait of the Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning playwright, author of "Angels in America," "Caroline or Change," & "Homebody/Kabul." Freida Lee Mock's documentary tells the story of a relentlessly creative spirit at work and shares how Kushner, raised in the Deep South, would become an outspoken activist, a compassionate spokesperson for outsiders, and one of America's most creative playwrights.
At its core the film explores the mystery of creativity, and is an inspiring tale of how a passionately committed person can make a difference for social justice.

Read more at http://www.tonykushnerthemovie.com/

The screening is a co-presentation of the Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival and the UWM Union Theatre

Wednesday, May 9

2007-05-08T13:10:00.000-06:00

UWM Union Theater
7pm
Wrestling with Angels
(Freida Lee Mock, USA, 98 min., 35mm, 2006)