Monday, September 10

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

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

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

This Week’s DocUquarium:

UWM Union Theater
7h30pm *FREE*
Why We Fight (dir. Eugene Jarecki, 2005, EUA)
Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival



An unflinching look at the anatomy of the American war machine, weaving unforgettable personal stories with commentary by a “who’s who” of military and beltway insiders. Featuring John McCain, William Kristol, Chalmers Johnson, Gore Vidal, Richard Perle and others, “Why We Fight” launches a bipartisan inquiry into the workings of the military industrial complex and the rise of the American Empire.

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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

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

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

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

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!