Movies
Milwaukee Short Film Festival reels up its 9th season
It’s with some irony that the decaying relationship between Time Warner Cable and the local public access outlet (MATA Community Media) helped foster the physical existence of the Milwaukee Short Film Festival, and even more ironic that the internet – well known for stealing eyes away from theaters and television – has helped the local showcase become more popular. Festival founder and director Ross Bigley first showcased local filmmakers’ short submissions – each narrative run between 2 to 18 minutes – for several years on public access in the mid-1990s. After a short break, the festival moved to area coffeehouses before finally landing at its present venue in the Times Cinema (5906 W. Vliet St., Wauwatosa) in 2004. The 2007 series now starts with an unusual feature attraction at the Astor Theater (1696 N. Astor St., Milwaukee) Saturday June 9 at 4 p.m. and continues Sunday June 10 at the Times with a 4 p.m. retrospective and main contest showings at 7 p.m. The rapid ascent of the internet as marketer and community tool actually helped spread the word about the festival. Now entries come all the way from Los Angeles, New York, Toronto and London. MSFF has received notices from magazines and websites and features a judging panel of several accomplished members of the entertainment industry. A $1000 juried grand prize was created by previous festival sponsors and has remained by popular demand along with a separate “audience award,” both to be determined at the event. The monetary prize comes directly from entry fees and sales – so the showcase is not technically a money-making venture. Bigley and friends do it for the love of film and storytelling. MSFF’s growth can be most easily attributed to the loyalty of supporters and now two other events: one is a Sunday afternoon exposition at the Times Cinema featuring “Best Of” entries from a 10-year span by such known artists as Dan Wilson (Leavings), Malona P. Voigt (Chicxulub) and Michael John Moynihan (Take a Chance and Happiness is a Long Shot). The other, and more experimental, event takes place the day prior, way over on the east side of town. The Astor Theater plays host to a special free premiere showing of Realization by Chicago’s Splitpillow. The five-year-old non-profit film company’s concept was to create a feature-length film broken down into seven chapters, with each segment written and directed by different crews all utilizing a continuing thread. Also, different actors play the same characters in each segment, creating a very heady concept film. According to Splitpillow, the plot revolves around “a lovesick physicist trying to complete his father’s unfinished work to impress the girl of his dreams.” Official entries in Sunday’s main event are as widely varied in length as they are tone or subject matter, yet most of them promise to not be the typical summer multiplex film. Some highlights should include: The Furry Revolt, by Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design graduate Jessica Bayliss, is a brief stop-motion animation piece […]
Jun 1st, 2007 by Brian Jacobson
Not just another teen movie
By Evan Solochek + Photo By Kat Jacobs FADE IN: INT. PIUS XI HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM SPRING 2006 A thin, dark-haired man in his early 30s stands before a classroom of disinterested high school kids. His name is Dominic Inouye and he is an English teacher. Normally he teaches AP English Literature but on this particular day he has taken over a colleague’s freshman English class with the task of helping them finish their short stories. Despite his best efforts, Dominic receives only tepid responses. DOMINIC (V.O.) “Most of them were not terribly invested in what they were writing. They were, once again, writing for their teacher and the tiny group of classmates, who cared even less about reading something their peers wrote.” Frustrated, Dominic ponders alternatives. Then comes a breakthrough: the video camera. Dominic jumps from his desk and haphazardly passes out the students’ stories. After every student has read through everyone’s stories, he has the students vote for the two they think would make the best movie: a love story about an arachnophobic butcher and one about a haunted house. MONTAGE OF STUDENTS WORKING DOMINIC (V.O.) “I set them to translating the stories into storyboards, forcing them to create visual and auditory detail that just wasn’t present yet in the original stories. That done, we spent three days filming.” FADE OUT While this may read as trite Hollywood melodrama at its worst, some alternate beginning to Dangerous Minds or Freedom Writers perhaps, it’s not. This is the story of the Milwaukee Spotlight Student Film Festival. A cooperative effort between Dominic Inouye and James Carlson, Executive Director of Bucketworks and founder of the School Factory, the MSSFF, now in its third year, remains the only event in Milwaukee dedicated solely to supporting high school filmmakers. “We want to see young filmmakers grow up in our state, or come from other states to learn here, and share skills with others,” Inouye says. “We want to see educators embrace video as an authentic, powerful assessment tool and allow children of all ages the chance to see, record and transform their worlds in new ways.” For many students, the MSSFF is their first opportunity to exhibit a film publicly, a chance many filmmakers don’t get until much later in life, if ever. And that is precisely what makes the MSSFF such a fertile proving ground for its participants. “The festival gave me an experience of what it may be like working in the real world of film,” says Kaleigh Atkinson, who won Best Live Performance or Event in 2006 for her film Battle of the Bands ‘05: The Twitch Kids and who is currently studying film at UWM. “It encouraged us to find the true artist within, to branch out and put our visions to work.” For Inouye, however, the MSSFF is about much more than just making movies; it’s about breaking down what he sees as entrenched educational barriers and, ultimately, enriching kids. “Teaching tends to be very ghettoized,” says Inouye. […]
Apr 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
