Founded in 1999, the Wisconsin Film Festival is the state’s premier film festival, in the heart of Madison, our capital city.

This four-day annual festival takes place each spring in about eight campus and downtown Madison theaters. The Festival presents the best new independent film (feature, documentary, experimental), world cinema and new media; cultivates discovery through talks, panels, performances, and coffeehouse discussions with filmmakers; and showcases the work of Wisconsin filmmakers through juried competitions.

The Festival aims to present high-quality, respectful screenings to our wonderful audience, and to:

• celebrate the cinematic arts with motion pictures that demonstrate artistic accomplishment and technical achievement;
• share the experiences and stories of other cultures around the world with substantial international programming;
• represent diverse voices, uncommon perspectives, and innovative ideas;
• highlight the work of local filmmakers and emerging talents;
• introduce audiences to films that wouldn’t otherwise be shown in the region, emphasizing that film is more than celebrity culture and box office numbers.

Who presents the Festival?

The Festival is a program of the UW Arts Institute, a nonprofit educational University unit. Governed by arts faculty and staff, the Arts Institute represents the collective voice and strength of the arts at the University, and works to make the campus arts more visible and effective. The Arts Institute funds and supports projects with university- and community-wide impact, including artist residencies, awards and fellowships, public programs, and arts marketing and outreach.

The Festival is made possible through the financial, technical, and artistic contributions of many Festival sponsors and partners. We hope you join us in thanking the businesses and organizations that support the Festival.

In particular, the dozens of volunteers who have given their time and skills over the years deserve a special round of applause!

The eighth annual Wisconsin Film Festival presented audiences with another challenging, eye-opening, and entertaining program of films: 177 features and short films from 27 countries. Combining theaters on the UW–Madison campus and downtown district with the venerable Hilldale Theatres, the Festival had a record ten screens in eight venues. Attendance was the highest ever at 26,000 tickets taken.

The Festival often chooses atypical films for Opening Night: in 2006 The Swenkas (Seventh Art Releasing), a South African documentary by Danish filmmaker Jeppe Rønde was selected to represent the Festival’s spirit. Thursday night also rocked the house with Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! (ThinkFilm) by the Beastie Boys and the Irish “mad cow” horror film Isolation (The Bureau) by Billy O’Brien, the Festival's first-ever late-night movie in the grand Orpheum Theatre.

American cinema was represented by Steve Buscemi's film Lonesome Jim (IFC), starring Casey Affleck, Liv Tyler, and Kevin Corrigan. James Marsh, who directed 1999’s Wisconsin Death Trip, shared his gripping film The King (ThinkFilm), with Gael Garcia Bernal and William Hurt. A huge audience saw The Wendell Baker Story (Mobius International), the directorial debut of brothers Luke Wilson and Andrew Wilson. Conventioneers (Cinema Libre) by Mora Mi-Ok Stephens; Tre (Cinema Libre) by Eric Beyler; and Mutual Appreciation, by Andrew Bujalski were all festival hits by emerging directors.

Documentary favorites were The Beauty Academy of Kabul (Shadow Distribution) by Liz Mermin; Our Brand Is Crisis (Koch Lorber) by Rachel Boynton; Metal: A Headbanger’ Journey (Warner Brothers) by Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen, and Jessica Joy Wise; Sir! No Sir! (Balcony Releasing) by David Zeiger; and Darwin's Nightmare (International Film Circuit) by Hubert Sauper.

World cinema films make up a large part of our program, and 2006 highlights included Cristi Puiu’s masterwork The Death of Mr. Lazaresceau (Tartan Films), Looks Both Ways (Kino) by Sarah Watt, and Innocence (Leisure Time Features) by Lucile Hadzihalilovic. New works by favorite directors were presented: My Dad Is 100 Years Old (Zeitgeist) by Guy Maddin, Park Chan-wook's film Lady Vengeance (Tartan Films); Dark Horse (Danish Film Institute) by Dagur Kári; and The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (Zeitgeist) by the Brothers Quay.

Steep & Brew Audience Awards

For the second year, the Festival audience awarded honors to their favorite full-length films, sponsored by local coffee roaster Steep & Brew. Two films shared the award for Best Dramatic Feature:

• Adam's Apples (Danish Film Institute) by Anders Thomas Jensen
• Sweet Land (print courtesy of the filmmaker), by Minnesota's Ali Selim

The Best Documentary Feature winner was:

• Isn't Isn't This a Time! A Tribute Concert for Harold Leventhal (Seventh Art Releasing) by Jim Brown

2006 Wisconsin Winners

The Festival presents two juried competitions, the Wisconsin’s Own for filmmakers with Wisconsin ties, and Wisconsin Student Shorts for films under 60 minutes made by Wisconsin college and university students [see the submission guidelines for more information about these categories]. Both competitions were sponsored by TravelWisconsin.com and Eastman Kodak.

• Best Wisconsin Film: Triviatown
  dir: Patrick Cady and Brit McAdams
• Best Wisconsin Documentary Short: Labor’s Troubadour
  dir: Hope Moskowitz
• Best Wisconsin Dramatic Short (Kodak Film Stock Grant): The Magnificent Donut
  dir: Karen Lindholm-Rynkiewicz
• Special Jury Prize (Kodak Opportunity Award): Scream At Me
  dir: Lennell Davis
• Best Student Dramatic Short: Ornithology
  dir: Caroline Kastelic
• Best Student Experimental Short: The Road That Takes You There Is The One That Brings You Back
  dir: Michele Isaac
• Kodak Opportunity Student Award: In Passing
  dir: Adam Wheeler

2006 Wisconsin’s Own Competition Jurors

Debra McClutchy has worked in film and television for over 10 years. She produces special-edition DVDs for The Criterion Collection in New York City. Some of her projects include The Wages of Fear, Harlan County USA, Bad Timing, My Own Private Idaho, The Life Aquatic, and F for Fake. She serves on the selection committee for the Newport International Film Festival. Debra has produced documentary series for The History Channel, Bravo and A&E. She is a Wauwatosa native and University of Wisconsin–Madison Communication Arts alumna. Her media career began in Madison where she produced award-winning video projects with local teen girls, was the art directer for Madison indie favorite Milkpunch (WFF, 2000), and shot her indie documentary So You Wanna be a Rock Star? funded by a grant from the Jerome Foundation. From 1998 to 2000, she was a documentary producer in San Francisco. There she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary for A Matter of Seconds: Quake of 89. Her credits have included PBS, Discovery and The Learning Channel.

Adam Sekuler is the new program director for Northwest Film Forum in Seattle. Sekuler, a filmmaker, playwright, and passionate cinephile, is the departing program director of Minnesota Film Arts’ Bell Auditorium, the nation’s first and only cinema dedicated exclusively to the art of nonfiction filmmaking. Sekuler also contributed to the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Film Festival, where he focused on Latin American and African Cinema, and Sound Unseen, a festival of film and music. Additionally, he co-founded the organization’s “Search and Rescue” series, a weekly public investigation designed to showcased a discarded archive of over 7000 films from the University of Minnesota.

Bill Siegel lives in Chicago and works as an educator and documentary filmmaker. He is director and cofounder of the Free History Project, a nonprofit film production, distribution and educational outreach organization. Siegel codirected the Academy Award-nominated documentary The Weather Underground, was a researcher on the documentary Hoop Dreams, and a writer on One Love, a documentary on the cultural history of basketball. He is currently developing a new multimedia U.S. History curriculum for high schools and directing a documentary about Muhammad Ali's life outside the boxing ring. Siegel received a BA in History from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University in New York.

2006 Wisconsin Student Shorts Competition Jurors

Kerman Eckes has worked for many years in film and television production . She earned a BA and MA in Radio, TV, and Film from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Thanks in part to Astro Boy, Kerman was hired by Wisconsin Public Television in 1982, and began her career doing field and post-production audio for everything from documentaries to animation (thanks again, Astro!). Kerman has also done a bit of producing, a bit of on-air work, a bit of teaching, and quite a bit of feature and short film work.

Eric J. Nelson is a freelance director of photography and lighting designer based in Madison. He is 1994 University of Wisconsin–Madison alumnus and, as an undergraduate, served on the production crews for WHA-TV and CitiCable12. A year-long stint in the windowless film vault at Wisconsin Center for Film and Theatre Research convinced him to concentrate on the production end of the film world; and that is what he does, shooting and gaffing spots, shorts, docs, and features (some of which have made their way into the Wisconsin Film Festival). Eric also composes music for film and heads an experimental music group called Vibrationland.

Alyska Bailey Peterson is a documentary filmmaker and photographer in Madison, Wisconsin. A 2001 graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, she was involved with the Wisconsin Union Directorate Film (WUD) Committee and Independent Film and Video Collaborative from 1998 to 2002, and served as WUD Programmer for the 2000 Wisconsin Film Festival. Alyska has processed and projected film for two universities as well as assisted in camera work for VH1’s Garbage: Behind the Music (2002). Other works include documentaries These Hands (2001) and grandfather (2002) as well as still photography and camera work for Uterine Walls (2002) and Welcome to the Neighborhood: A Portrait of Homelessness (2005, Trilobyte Pictures.) She has also created a variety of multimedia pieces for the Wisconsin Alumni Association, a nonprofit alumni organization. Upcoming projects include Voices From a Prairie Town, an oral history documentary about the sesquicentennial of a fading rural Iowa farming community.

Festival History

The first Festival in 1999 was organized by University of Wisconsin-Madison students James Kreul and Wendi Weger. Funded by the Arts Institute with support from the Wisconsin Film Office, the Festival featured free screenings of some 30 films in two small campus venues. Estimated attendance was 3,000.

In 2000, the second annual Festival added a professional director (Mary Carbine), expanded into downtown venues such as the Orpheum Theatre and Madison Art Center, and offered a mix of free and paid admission programming featuring 70 films and 40 visiting filmmakers. The Festival more than tripled its attendance and earned substantial funding from corporate sponsors and granting agencies.

The 2001 Festival marked the third year of considerable expansion and, for the first time, a significant international lineup. It added another downtown venue (the Majestic Theatre) and featured 110 films from 21 countries and some 60 local and visiting filmmakers and speakers. The 2001 Festival again increased attendance to more than 14,000 and doubled the number of corporate and community sponsors.

Programs included “Light in the East: New Asian Cinema,” featuring the Midwest premiere of The Foul King (South Korea) with director Kim Ji-Woon in person; the three films of acclaimed Korean director Hong Sang-Soo, including the US premiere of Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, with Hong in person; the US premieres of Attack the Gas Station (South Korea) and Bangkok Dangerous (Thailand); and film introductions and talks on Asian cinema by program advisor and film critic Tony Rayns.

The Festival also presented the Wisconsin premieres of George Washington (filmmaker David Gordon Green in person), Series 7, Calle 54, American Chai (filmmaker Anurag Mehta in person), The Gleaners and I, Samia, Scout’s Honor (filmmaker Tom Shepard in person) and Yi Yi; the Midwest premiere of the D.FILM Digital Film Festival 2001 World Tour (with digital projection); the retrospective “A Well Spent Life: The Cinema of Les Blank” featuring Academy Film Archive restored prints and Blank in person; and programs by Los Angeles-based video artists Animal Charm. In addition, the Festival showcased work by more than 20 Wisconsin filmmakers, including the Wisconsin premiere of Sarah Price’s Caesar’s Park.

The Wisconsin Film Festival continued to grow in 2002, adding yet another venue (the Bartell Theatre) and increasing programming by 30 films to 140 total, and attendance by 30% to 18,500. The Festival was one of only fourteen nationwide to receive a grant from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. The international lineup included films from 20 countries, numerous Wisconsin and Midwest premieres, and a showcase of films by regional makers.

Highlights included the Midwest premiere of Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (Sony Pictures Classics), with filmmakers Jill and Karen Sprecher in person; the Wisconsin Premiere of Big Bad Love (IFC Films) with Debra Winger and Arliss Howard in person; a tribute to Israeli director Amos Gitai; a showcase of new cinema from Quebec; world cinema including Promises (Cowboy Pictures), an Oscar-nominated documentary about the Mideast conflict; and the Midwest premieres of the acclaimed Inuit film The Fast Runner (Lot 47 Films) and Milwaukee filmmaker Chris Smith’s latest documentary, Home Movie (Cowboy Pictures). Panels included “Independent Distribution,” featuring speakers such as Jeff Lipsky of Lot 47, John Vanco of Cowboy Pictures, Rodney Hill of Wellspring, and moderator Reid Rosefelt of Magic Lantern, Inc.

In 2003, the Festival screened more than 150 films from 25 countries, including 50 films by filmmakers with Wisconsin ties, with record-breaking attendance of 21,000.

Festival highlights included special appearances by Roger Ebert, who presented A Hard Day’s Night and a Q & A session with filmmaker Justin Lin after the Wisconsin premiere of Better Luck Tomorrow (MTV Films/Paramount). Ebert praised the Festival as “an important way to give attention to good films.” Lin told USA Today that the Wisconsin festival screening was “the best screening we’ve had.” Sean Welch, producer of the Oscar-nominated documentary Spellbound (THINKFilm), told reporters “my hope is that I do a film in the future that’s worthy of this film festival, because it’s been just a fantastic experience.”

Other highlights included the opening night presentation of Bend It Like Beckham (Fox Searchlight) and the Wisconsin premieres of Stevie (Lions Gate), Divine Intervention (Avatar Films), Morvern Callar (Cowboy Pictures), Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten (Zeitgeist Films), Sam Green & Bill Siegel’s The Weather Underground, XX/XY (IFC Films), Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s The Son (New Yorker Films), the Pang Brothers’ The Eye (Palm Pictures), Open Hearts (Newmarket Films), Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time (Roxie Releasing), Shaolin Soccer (Miramax Films), Greg Pak’s Robot Stories, and Abderrahmane Sissako’s Waiting for Happiness, part of a Festival series on Contemporary African Cinema.

Festival Director Mary Carbine received a 2003 “Best of Madison: Editors’ Choice Award” from Madison Magazine and was named as one of the Midwest film community’s 2002 “People of the Year” by the Chicago-based Screen Magazine. Festival cover stories appeared in issues of On Wisconsin and Wisconsin Woman. At the 2003 American Advertising Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, the Madison-based Festival marketing partner Planet Propaganda won a prestigious national Gold ADDY® Award for Advertising in the Arts for their 2002 Festival marketing campaign.

In 2004, the Festival screened more than 140 films from 26 countries, including 45 films by filmmakers with Wisconsin ties, with record-breaking ticket sales of 24,000.

Highlights included the opening night Midwest premiere of The Yes Men (United Artists) with Milwaukee filmmakers Chris Smith, Sarah Price and Dan Ollman in person, special appearances by Danish filmmakers Lone Scherfig with Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself (ThinkFilm) and Anders Thomas Jensen with the premiere of The Green Butchers (Newmarket), and the Wisconsin premiere of the award-winning documentary The Corporation (Zeitgeist) with co-director/producer/writer Mark Achbar and co-writer Harold Crooks in person.

The Festival hosted a special live “IFC Ultimate Film Fanatic” film fan competition (premieres on the Independent Film Channel (IFC) TV this summer) with celebrity host Chris Gore (Film Threat) as well as a taped-for-broadcast “From the Wisconsin Film Festival” edition of the nationally-syndicated National Public Radio interview program “To the Best of Our Knowledge.” The Festival also partnered with the New York-based Global Film Initiative and UW College of Letters & Science to present the “Global Lens” series of international film and a “World Cinema Day” educational outreach program for more than 400 high school students.

The 2005 Wisconsin Film Festival (March 31–April 3) presented 151 films from 27 countries—from Argentina to Armenia, Bhutan, France, Mali, Mexico, Norway, Israel, South Korea, Turkey and Senegal—plus talks, panels, coffeehouse discussions, multimedia performances and installations. The lineup included more than 60 projects by filmmakers with Wisconsin ties. More than 80 filmmakers, speakers and industry professionals and 50 student and youth filmmakers participated. Ticket sales topped 24,000.

The Festival marked a number of “firsts” in 2005. The Festival expanded into new venues such as the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center and the Overture Center for the Arts. Isthmus, Madison’s weekly newspaper, threw the Festival a highly successful Preview Party. With the support of Steep & Brew, audience members voted for the first-ever Audience Awards for Narrative and Documentary Features. Favorite Wisconsin films from past festivals were offered on Madison’s Charter OnDemand and Milwaukee’s Time Warner OnDemand. Madison’s Central Business District provided free downtown trolley service to festival-goers.

The 2005 Festival kicked off and closed with films from legendary filmmakers—Samuel Fuller’s magnum opus The Big Red One (Warner Brothers), fully reconstructed and presented by Time film critic and UW-Madison alumnus Richard Schickel, and Moolaadé (New Yorker Films) from African cinema’s “founding father,” Ousmane Sembene and winner, Un Certain Regard at Cannes. Chris Gore (Film Threat, The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide) presented the Midwest premiere of his indie spoof My Big Fat Independent Movie.

The “Wisconsin’s Own” showcase included Taggart Siegel’s Slamdance Audience Award-winning The Real Dirt on Farmer John, Ben Wolfinsohn’s Sundance-featured High School Record, and Sean Anders’ NBT: Never Been Thawed. Other highlights included “The Roof of the World”—films from the Himalayan region—including the Midwest premiere of François Prévost and Hugo Latulippe’s What Remains of Us (7th Art Releasing), Werner Herzog’s Wheel of Time and Khyentse Norbu’s Travellers & Magicians (Zeitgeist Films). Documentaries included Ruth Leitman’s Lipstick and Dynamite (Koch Lorber Films), Mark Wexler’s Tell Them Who You Are (THINKFilm), Amanda Micheli’s Double Dare, the U.S. premiere of Pola Rapaport’s Writer of O (Zeitgeist Films), and Peter Raymont’s Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire (California Newsreel), winner of the World Documentary Audience Award at Sundance.

World cinema standouts included Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier’s Brothers (IFC Films), winner of the Sundance World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award; Crónicas (Mexico/Ecuador), Sebastián Cordero’s powerful follow-up to Ratas, Ratones, Rateros, starring John Leguizamo; the searing Turkish-German love story Head-On (Strand Releasing), winner, Golden Bear and FIPRESCI Prize, Berlin International Film Festival; and the stylish Hungarian thriller, Kontroll (THINKFilm), winner, Prix de la Jeunesse, Cannes Film Festival. New films from Argentina included the docudrama Whiskey Romeo Zulu, about an airline pilot turned whistleblower and the Woody Allen-esque coming-of-age comedy, Lost Embrace (New Yorker Films, winner, Silver Bear, Berlin Film Festival). As one of fourteen Global Film Initiative partners nationwide, the Festival hosted the Global Lens series of international films including the Algerian feature Daughter of Keltoum, and partnered on youth outreach programs reaching more than 600 high school and college students.

Experimental and avant-garde film included a program of shorts and the feature Certain Women by fiercely independent filmmaker Peggy Ahwesh. Festival juror and School of the Art Institute of Chicago faculty member Chris Sullivan presented, for the first time, all four chapters of his new animated feature Consuming Spirits, featured in the Whitney Biennial. Special performances included a 1928 silent Indian film, Shiraz, accompanied by original live music performed on North Indian instruments.

In the fall of 2005, long-time director Mary Carbine resigned to pursue other opportunities in Madison. The UW Arts Institute appointed Meg Hamel, former Festival volunteer, to be the Interim Director for 2006. In September 2006, Hamel was named permanent Festival Director.

Hamel was honored for service to the arts with a Madison Magazine Editor’s Choice Award, part of the annual “Best of Madison” picks. •