Campus Kickoff:
Double Features

________________________________

Wednesday, August 29 – 7pm – Free Screening

The Host (Gwoemul)

The latest film from critically acclaimed visionary director Joon-ho Bong. A family attempts to rescue their daughter from the clutches of a terrifying monster that has emerged from Seoul 's Han River . "A terrific hybrid-genre fantasy and a seriously scary freakout" . – Manohla Dargis , NEW YORK TIMES

(Joon-ho Bong, South Korea, in Korean w/ Eng. St., 119 min., 35mm, 2007)

___________________________

Wednesday, August 29 – 9:30pm – Free Screening

Jaws

The tradition of summer blockbusters started in 1975 with Jaws. Playing on the fears of what dangers lurk in the water, Jaws follows the new sheriff in a beach town as he tries to catch the vicious shark responsible for a series of attacks over 4 th of July weekend. Joined by a scientist and an old fisherman, a character in the vein of Moby Dick 's Ahab, the ragtag trio set out to capture the monstrous shark.

(Steven Spielberg, US, 124 min., 16mm, 1975)

___________________________

Thursday, August 30 – 7pm – Free Screening

Pan's Labyrinth

This chilling fairytale is set against the backdrop of the fascist regime in 1944 Spain . Ofelia is a lonely and dreamy child who finds a magical world inside a stone labyrinth, where she encounters the legendary faun Pan. He offers to take Ofelia to an underground kingdom and escape the horrors of real life but only if she can accomplish a series of unusual tasks first. “Dark, dreamlike and dangerous, Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth is a fairytale every bit as scary and moving as they were always meant to be.” – Jonathan Trout BBC

(Guillermo del Toro , Spain , in Spanish w/ Eng. St. , 112 min., 35mm, 2007)

___________________________

Thursday, August 30 – 9:30pm – Free Screening

Volver

The latest film from the great Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar is part noir-comedy, part ghost story and moves effortlessly between poignancy and danger, life and death, the real and the surreal. Starring Penelope Cruz in an Oscar-nominated performance, this is the story of three women who survive by means of goodness, lies and boundless vitality. “Pedro Almodóvar has made yet another picture that moves beyond camp into a realm of wise, luxuriant humanism.” – A.O. Scott NEW YORK TIMES

(Pedro Almodóvar, Spain , in Spanish w/ Eng. St. , 121 min., 35mm, 2006)

___________________________

Friday, August 31 – 7pm – Free Screening
Saturday, September 1 – 11:30pm – Free Screening

Grindhouse

Featuring Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof this outrageous double feature is a tribute to the gory, sexed up, action fueled b-movies that used to show regularly in the 70s and which inspired both filmmakers. In Death Proof a crazy killer hunts with his car rather than a gun. Planet Terror explores an eerie alien world where the featured character sports a machine gun where her leg used to be.

(Robert Rodriguez & Quentin Tarantino, US, 191 min., 35mm, 2007)

___________________________

Saturday, September 1 – 7pm – Free Screening

Hot Fuzz

Nicholas Angel is the finest cop London has to offer, so good everyone else looks bad.
As a result his superiors send him to the seemingly crime-free village of Sanford where
his talents won't be so embarrassing. When he and his new partner begin investigating
a series of grisly accidents, they uncover some dangerous secrets in Sanford .

(Edgar Wright, UK , 121 min., 35mm, 2007)

___________________________

Saturday, September 1 – 9:30pm – Free Screening

Shaun of the Dead

Shaun is a 29-year-old slacker who can't get motivated about anything. When he finds that his whole town has turned into a creeping crawling nation of zombies he finds his purpose in life as his friends go on a baddie bashing spree.  He is determined to save his town, his girl and his family or die trying in this horror comedy. “A British zombie flick that works not because of the crowds of undead, but because the guy trying to exterminate them was himself running out of reasons to live.” – Wesley Morris BOSTON GLOBE

(Edgar Wright, UK , 99 min., 35mm, 2004)

___________________________

Documentary Frontiers

Tuesday, September 4 – 7pm – Free Screening
Thursday, September 6 – 7pm – Free Screening

The Tailenders

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.

(Adele Horne, US, 72 min., video, 2005)

__________________________

Wednesdays, September 5 – December 5 – 7:30pm – Free Screenings

DocUquarium

Beginning Wednesday, September 5 th , “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 .

____________________________

Friday – Sunday, September 7 – 16

Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival

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 Theatre

____________________________

Thursday, September 6 - 7:30pm

Nina's Heavenly Delights

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!

(Pratibha Parmar, UK, 35mm, 92 min., 2006)

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 - 5pm

Oh Happy Day

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.

(Ian Poitier, UK, video, 96 min., 2007)

___________________________

Friday, September 7 - 7pm

Four Minutes
(Veir Minuten)

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.

(Chris Kraus, Germany, in German with English subtitles, 35mm, 112 min., 2006)

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.

___________________________

Friday, September 7 - 9pm

Shelter

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 .

(Jonah Markowitz, USA, video, 88 min., 2007)

___________________________

Saturday, September 8 - 1pm

Blueprint

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 neatnik, 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.

(Kirk Shannon-Butts, USA, video, 75 min., 2007)

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

___________________________

Saturday, September 8 - 3pm

FtF: Female To Femme

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.

(Kami Chisholm & Elizabeth Stark, USA, video, 48 min., 2006)

___________________________

Saturday, September 8 - 5pm

Tuli

 Campus Co-Sponsor: Center for International Education
Community Co-Presenter: Lesbian Alliance

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.

(Auraeus Solito, Philippines, in Tagalog with English subtitles, video, 107 min., 2006)

___________________________

Saturday, September 8 - 7pm

The Bubble
(Habuah)

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.

(Eytan Fox, Israel, in Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles, 35mm, 117 min., 2006)

The Bubble 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.

___________________________

Saturday, September 8 - 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!

___________________________

Saturday, September 8 - 11pm - Free Screening

Born In Flames

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.

(Lizzie Borden, USA, 16mm, 80 min., 1983)

___________________________

Sunday, September 9 - 3pm

The Believers

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.

(Todd Holland, USA, video, 80 min., 2006)

___________________________

Sunday, September 9 - 5pm

Vivere

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.

(Angelina Maccarone, Germany, in German with English subtitles, 35mm, 97 min., 2006)

___________________________

Sunday, September 9 - 7pm

 Prisoners of Love: Jean Genet on Film

 Campus Co-Sponsor: UWM Festival of Films in French
Community Co-Sponsor: Outwords Books

Un Chant D'Amour
(A Song of Love)

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.

(Jean Genet, France, in French with English subtitles, 35mm, 26 min., 1950)

&

Querelle

 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.

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

___________________________

Monday, September 10 - 7pm

Beyond Hatred
(Au Dela de la Haine)

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.

(Olivier Meyrou, France, in French with English subtitles, 35mm, 82 min., 2006)

___________________________

Tuesday, September 11 - 7pm - Free Screening

News From Home

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.

(Chantal Akerman, Belgium/USA, 16mm, 85 min., 1978)

___________________________

Festival Centerpiece – Oriental Theatre

Wednesday, September 12 - 7:30pm

The Witnesses
(Les Temoins)

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.

(André Téchiné, France, in French with English subtitles, 35mm, 112 min., 2007)

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

___________________________

Thursday, September 13 - 7pm

For the Bible Tells Me So

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.

(Daniel Karslake, USA, video, 97 min., 2007)

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.

___________________________

Thursday, September 13 - 9pm

COLMA: THE MUSICAL

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.

(Richard Wong, USA, video , 100 min., 2006)

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

___________________________

Friday, September 14 - 7pm

The Gymnast

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!

  (Ned Farr, USA, 35mm on video, 99 min., 2006)

___________________________ 

Friday, September 14 - 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 - 3pm

Black White + Gray:
A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe

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.

(James Crump, USA, video, 71 min., 2007)

___________________________

Saturday, September 15 - 5pm

Red Without Blue

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.

(Brooke Sebold, Benita Sills & Todd Sills, USA, video, 74 min., 2006)

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

___________________________

Saturday, September 15 - 7pm

Glue
(Glue – Historia Adolescente en Medio de la Nada)

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.

(Alexis Dos Santos, Argentina/United Kingdom, in Spanish with English subtitles, video & Super8 on video, 110 min., 2006)

___________________________

Saturday, September 15 - 9pm

Itty Bitty Titty Committee

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?

(Jamie Babbit, USA, video, 90 min., 2007)

___________________________

Saturday, September 15 - 11pm - Free Screening

Funeral Parade of Roses
(Bara no Soretsu)

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.

(Toshio Matsumoto, Japan, in Japanese with English subtitles, 16mm, 105 min., 1969)

___________________________

Sunday, September 16 - 3pm - Free Screening

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.

___________________________

Sunday, September 16 - 5pm

Tick Tock Lullaby

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.

(Lisa Gornick, UK, video, 73 min., 2006)

___________________________

Sunday, September 16 - 7pm

Times Have Been Better
(La Ciel Sul la Tete)

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!

(Régis Musset, France, in French with English subtitles, video, 90 min., 2006)

Experimental Tuesdays

Tuesday, September 18 th -7 pm- Free Screening

Là-bas (Down There)

* 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…”

(Chantal Akerman, France/Belgium/Israel, video, 78 min., 2006)

Documentary Frontiers

Thursday, September 20 – 7 pm – Free Screening

B.I.K.E.

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.

(Jacob Septimus & Anthony Howard, US, 89 min., video, 2006)

World Cinema

Friday, September 21- 7pm & 9pm
Saturday, September 22 – 5, 7, & 9pm
Sunday, September 23 – 5pm

Day Night Day Night

* 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.

(Julia Loktev, US/Germany/France, 94 min., 35mm, 2007)

Sunday, September 23 & Monday, September 24 – 7pm – Free Screenings

The Wind That Shakes the Barley

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.

(Ken Loach, UK/Ireland, 110 min., 35mm, 2006)

Monday, September 24 – 9:30pm – Free Screening
Tuesday, September 25 – 7pm – Free Screening

The Battle of Algiers
(La Battaglia di Algeri)

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.

(Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy/Algeria, in French, Arabic and English w/ Eng. St. 121 min., 35mm, 1966)

Documentary Frontiers & DocUquarium

Tuesday, September 25 – 9:30pm – Free Screening
Wednesday, September 26 – 7:30pm – Free Screening
Thursday, September 27 – 7pm – Free Screening

Iraq in Fragments

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.

(James Longley, US, 110 min., 35mm, 2006)

Friday – Sunday, September 28 - 30

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 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.

Experimental Tuesdays

Tuesday, October 2 – 7pm – Free Screening

MACHINIMA:
Beneath the Structural Skin

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.

(Various directors, approx 90 min., video, 2001-2007)

Thursday, October 4 – 7pm – Free Screening

Building a Broken Mousetrap

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.

(Jem Cohen with Matt Boyd, US/Netherlands, 63 min., video, 2006)

World Cinema

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.

______________________

Friday, October 5 – 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 Silver Screens: A Pictorial History of Milwaukee's Movie Theaters and the state of Milwaukee film in the past and present.

______________________

Friday, October 5 – 9pm – Free Screening

Libeled Lady

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.

(Jack Conway, US, 98 min., 35mm, 1936)

______________________

Saturday, October 6 – 3pm – Free Screening

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

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

(David Hand, US, 83 min., 35mm, 1937)

______________________

Saturday, October 6 – 5pm – Free Screening

It

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.

(Clarence Badger, US, 72 min., 35mm, 1927)

______________________

Saturday, October 6 – 7pm – Free Screening

Gilda

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.

(Charles Vidor, US, 110 min., 35mm, 1946)

_________________________

Saturday, October 6 – 9:30pm – Free Screening
Sunday, October 7 – 7pm – Free Screening

Tears of the Black Tiger

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

( Wisit Sasanatieng , Thailand , in Thai w/ Eng. St. , 110 min., 35mm, 2007)

________________________

Sunday, October 7 – 5pm – Free Screening

Written on the Wind

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.

(Douglas Sirk, US, 16mm, 99 min., 1956)

________________________

Experimental Tuesdays

Tuesday, October 9 – 7pm – Free Screening

a Darkness Swallowed

Betzy Bromberg in person!

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

( Betzy Bromberg , US , 78 min., 16mm, 2005)

________________________

Thursday, October 11 – 7pm – Free Screening

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.

________________________

World Cinema

Friday, October 12 – 7pm – Free Screening
Saturday, October 13 – 5pm – Free Screening

Picture of Light

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

(Peter Mettler, Canada, 83 min., 35mm, 1994)

________________________

World Cinema

Friday, October 12 – 9pm
Saturday, October 13 – 7pm
Sunday, October 14 – 5pm

Manufactured Landscapes

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 ( Gambling, Gods, and LSD and Picture of Light ).

(Jennifer Baichwal, Canada , 90 min., 35mm, 2006)

________________________

World Cinema

Saturday, October 13 – 9pm – Free Screening
Sunday, October 14 – 7pm – Free Screening

Gambling, Gods, and LSD

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.

(Peter Mettler, Switzerland/Canada, 180 min., 35mm, 2003)

________________________

Documentary Frontiers

Monday, October 15 – 7pm – Free Screening!
Tuesday, October 16 – 7pm – Free Screening!

Berlin-Cinema

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.

(Samir Gloor-Fadel , Switzerland /France, in English, Kurdish, French and German w/ English St., 106 min., 16mm on video, 1999)

________________________

Thursday, October 18 – 7pm – Free Screening!

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

Tonight's film is silent with an accompanying score performed by MiLO, the Milwaukee Laptop Orchestra.

“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.

(Walter Ruttmann, Germany, 106 min., 16mm 1927)

The Community Media Project presents

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.

__________________________

Friday, October 19 – 7pm – Free Screening

Location, location, location!

Bush Mama

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.

(Haile Gerima, US, 78 min., 16mm, 1976)

__________________________

Friday, October 19 – 9pm – Free Screening

Wattstax

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

(Mel Stuart, US, 104 min., video, 1973)

_________________________

Saturday, October 20 – 6pm – Free Screening

When the Revolution came!

Black Panthers-Huey!

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.

(Agnès Varda, USA/France, 31min., 16mm on video, 1968)

Shown with :

Black Panther Newsreel

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.

(California Newsreel, 1968, 15 min)

____________________________

Saturday, October 20 – 7pm – Free Screening

Negroes with Guns!
Rob Williams and Black Power

Original score by Terrence Blanchard .

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.

(Sandra Dickson and Churchill Roberts, US, 53 min., video, 2004)

______________________________

Sunday, October 21 – 5pm – Free Screening

Truth and Reconciliation!

Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela:
A Son's Tribute to Unsung Heroes

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.

(Thomas Allan Harris, US/South Africa, 73 min., video, 2004)

_____________________________

Sunday, October 21 – 7pm – Free Screening

Long Night's Journey into Day

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.

(Frances Reid and Deborah Hoffman, US, 94 min., video, 2000)

World Cinema

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.

_________________________

Thursday, November 8 – 7pm

Distant

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.

(Nuri Bilge Ceylan , Turkey , 110 min., 35mm, 2002)

_________________________

Friday, November 9 – 7pm

Head On (Gegen die Wand)

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.

(Fatih Akin, Germany/Turkey, in German & Turkish w/ Eng. St., 121 min., 35mm, 2004)

_________________________

Friday, November 9 – 9:30pm

Internationale (Beynelmilel)

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.

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

_________________________

Saturday, November 10 – 5pm

Climates (Iklimler)

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.

(Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey/France, 101 min., 35mm, 2006)

_________________________

Saturday, November 10 – 7pm

The Borrowed Bride (Egreti Gelin)

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.

(Atif Yilmaz, Turkey/Greece , 119 min., 35mm, 2005)

_________________________

Saturday, November 10 – 9:30pm

Crossing the Bridge:
The Sounds of Istanbul

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.

(Fatih Akin, Germany/Turkey, 90 min., 35mm, 2005)

_________________________

Sunday, November 11 – 2:30pm

Two Girls (Iki Genç Kiz)

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.

(Kutlug Ataman , Turkey , 107 min., 35