Milwaukee’s New Cellulloid Heroes
Everybody’s a dreamer and everybody’s a star and everybody’s in show biz, it doesn’t matter who you are. —The Kinks
It’s the story of an event that’s long overdue. Of an idea whose time has finally come. It seems like a natural phase in the evolution Milwaukee’s urban identity, something the city and its leadership would have embraced years ago. But bringing to life the Milwaukee International Film Festival has been die kampf, in large part, of Dave Luhrssen and Louis Fortis.
Long recognized as one of the city’s culture tastemakers, Dave Luhrssen is a lover of film. As Arts and Entertainment Editor of Shepherd Express, Luhrssen has had the luxury, as the weekly newspaper has grown, to hand off the lion’s share of the writing to the legions of freelancers who contribute the majority of the section’s weekly coverage. But he prefers, for the most part, to review the films himself. So it’s not surprising that an International Film Festival would be his brainchild.
Not that he and Fortis, Shepherd Express Publisher and festival co-founder are the first to try. According to Luhrssen, “several people in the past decade have floated the idea. I know of two groups who got to the talking point, meeting with people, etc. but never got very far.”
So in the spring of 2002, Dave and Louis, after months of toying with the idea, batting it around over coffee and floating it to a few trusted colleagues, decided to get serious.
Destination: Mid by Midwest
But as the planning got underway, the question went beyond what (a film festival) to what, exactly. That Milwaukee filmmakers would be featured was never in question. But how to showcase them in such a way that the festival would attract the overall attention it deserved and be of interest a broad audience was a bit of a challenge. The duo, along with Programming Director Jonathon Jackson, came up with a brilliant solution. The festival would include a regional competition, now called Mid by Midwest, featuring the work of filmmakers specifically from the region. This would give the festival a one-of-a-kind programming track (this is the only festival in the nation to feature the work of Midwestern filmmakers) and create a logical place in which to spotlight Milwaukee filmmakers specifically.
“It was one of those really obvious things” says Dave. “Like, why didn’t anyone think of this before us? And it benefits Milwaukee filmmakers specifically, because even though the number of local filmmakers participating will be fewer proportionally, their work will show better when it makes it into a competition between filmmakers from all over the Midwest.”
Mid by Midwest will also feature a programming track of largely locally made video and film dealing with social issues specific to Milwaukee. This year’s feature is a double bill of Janet Fitch’s two gun violence documentaries Dear Rita and The Promise of America. The first is the story of a little girl on the south side who was killed by a stray bullet fired in her neighborhood. The second follows Fitch on her journey with the Million Mom March of 2000. Janet was actually on the Milwaukee bus for that event, which drew mothers from all over the country for a march on Washington D.C. to protest handgun violence. Luhrssen calls it “a very good example of grassroots participatory documentary journalism.”
Flavor: International
That the festival would be international in scope was never much in question. “This city enjoys one of the most culturally diverse landscapes of anyplace in America, in terms of cultural identities being preserved and shared,” Mayor John Norquist, one of many Honorary Advisors to the Festival, told Vital at a recent festival press conference. “So it’s only natural that a film festival in Milwaukee would celebrate that diversity by bringing films from around the world to our city for everyone to enjoy.”
“The ideal would be to try to find films that truly do connect with the different ethnic communities, from Germany to the Middle East” adds Luhrssen, “partly as a way to interest each audience, but also as a way to cross-pollinate, if you will, ideas and culture between groups. We hope that people can walk away from it having enjoyed themselves, but also maybe learning a little something about the bigger world in which they live.”
Dave also cites a second, but equally important, reason for taking the festival international. “It reflects the film-going interests of both Louis and me, and we’d like to have, to at least some small extent, something that is of interest to both of us, as the festival founders.”
Advantage: Access
Garnering the support of people like Norquist, WE Energies CEO Richard Abdoo, Sen. Russ Feingold, philanthropist Chris Abele and a score of other local business and government luminaries has been key to getting the festival off the ground. When asked about his council of “advisors,” people who generally know and care as much about film as most of us do about curling (not much), Dave smiles.
“Getting Norquist and (County Executive Scott) Walker to be on the honorary board, as well as Barrett, Feingold, Kohl, Kleczka and others to be honorary advisors is the kind of thing you need. There has to be an organization that has influence, that can impact things. It gives people reasons to return your phone calls — name recognition alone can sometimes be the difference between making it happen and not. It smoothed the pathway for us. I’m not saying other groups couldn’t have done it, but it gave us an advantage that maybe some others wouldn’t possess.”
As long time fixtures in journalism and politics, Luhrssen and Fortis are accustomed to access to Milwaukee’s power elite. But on a day to day basis, working with them hasn’t been so much a part of Dave’s job as it has been since they began planning the festival. Has he enjoyed it?
Another smile. “The satisfaction I get out of it is the ability to bring a wider range of film to the city” says Dave. “That is the fun part — the artistic aspect. Frankly, I haven’t had fun at all raising money and setting up the business. Fortunately, Louis has an extensive background in these things, but I would personally rather have spent all my time working with the programming director viewing and selecting films and working on that aspect of the event.”
The amount of work involved in launching any new enterprise is daunting. But creating an international film festival from scratch seems on the verge of harrowing. Fortunately, the efforts of everyone in the organization have enjoyed a great deal of support. In addition to a small permanent staff comprised of Operations Director Rubina Shafi, Program Director, Jonathan Jackson and Project Manager, Scott Schubert, the festival has a fairly sizable group of enthusiastic volunteers. Major sponsors like Mini Cooper, Ford and others have stepped forward with some of the cash needed to get things going. There has even been support from a few arts foundations, something usually impossible for a new venture.
“Normally you’d just get a generic ‘no’ response (from a foundation)” Luhrssen says. “But because of our name and familiarity here, we were able, in many cases, to get past this.”
On his list of challenges, Dave puts fundraising at the top of the list. “Finding 50 or 60 good quality films from around the Midwest and the world is not a problem. Booking venues, also not a problem. Really, the biggest challenge is translate the positive response of Milwaukee movers into dollars and cents. You know the old Jack Benny commercial — “Don’t just applaud, send money” — that’s how I really feel. I can identify with that completely.” To its credit, the festival’s first year budget is a respectable $400,000.
If the first couple of years are successful in terms of attendance and notoriety, even if the festival loses money (which it will), Luhrssen is confident that the Milwaukee International Film Festival will take hold as an annual Milwaukee event of note, and also be a financial success. “I think the trend for successful film festivals around the country is that they do become financially self-supporting. We need help in the first few years to get the thing off the ground, but I would anticipate that it would become self-sustaining in time.”
For a first year event, the staff has put together an impressive lineup of over 110 films of varying length from over a dozen countries, screening at four venues over the course of ten days, plus an impressive schedule of parties and workshops. Piling this on top of an incredibly hectic day job might be too much for some, but Dave is sanguine.
“It’s certainly been very exciting. I stand by that.”
