Trailer Parade #1: 2015 Wisconsin Film Festival Coming Attractions

The clock is ticking. . .

No dates present

We’re getting ready for our extensive coverage of the 2015 Wisconsin Film Festival. This is our first post this year in the #wifilmfest RSS feed which aggregates Festival coverage from Madison Film Forum, Tone Madison, and LakeFrontRow. You can follow the RSS feed by clicking on the #wifilmfest tab in our navigation bar, or by subscribing to it.

The Film Guide will be published online and in The Capital Times on March 11. As soon as possible afterwards we will post our “Big Indies,” “Big Auteurs,” and “Big Docs” schedule breakdowns. I also will follow up on last year’s popular “Jimbo’s Mock Draft,” which will provide an overview of films and a logistical guide to navigating the schedule when purchasing tickets.

Over the past two weeks, the Festival has provided local media outlets (The Capital Times, Isthmus, LakeFrontRow, and Madison Film Forum) with some Festival titles and links to trailers. Rather than post the links allocated to Madison Film Forum here on our main site, we chose to share them via Twitter and Facebook and wait until we could have some perspective before we would write about them at any length. Four more titles should be coming this week, one to each outlet, so be sure to check our social media feeds and the other media outlets for the final round of pre-Film Guide titles. (On Twitter, look for hashtags #wifilmfest, #TrailerTuesday, and #TGIFilm.)

So Far: Docs and Restoration “Deep Cuts”

It is too early to make any profound analysis based on such a small sample of titles, but I will share the following observations and conjectures anyway. This year should have a lively line up of documentaries, as expected. Contributions from Chicago’s Kartemquin films (Almost There) and Joshua Oppenheimer (The Look of Silence) are always welcome. Documentaries often explore unfamiliar topics or offer fresh takes on familiar topics; it looks like Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll will do both (and at a reported 142 minutes, it is one minute longer than The Killing Fields).

But in addition to expected restorations or archival DCPs of established classics (there certainly will be some Welles, for example), the Festival seems to be turning to what music fans would call “deep cuts.” Everyone expects the hits and one or two deep cuts at a concert. A question for this year’s Festival might be how deep the audience will go with the Festival’s deep cut selections.

astrologer-still-2__large — THE ASTROLOGER (1975)

Based on recent Festival and UW Cinematheque program descriptions, I’m anticipating the repeated use of the terms “underrated” and “under appreciated” (and their synonyms) in the Film Guide. The Astrologer, Avenging Force (linked to the ongoing Cinematheque Cannon retrospective) and Gunman’s Walk strike neither general audiences nor cultivated cineastes as obvious titles for a Festival showcase. But making the case for their inclusion might point to a long developing trend not only at the Wisconsin Film Festival, but in film festival culture in general. When discovery has become just another studio marketing tool, perhaps re-discovery is the only remaining original contribution to film culture that festivals can make outside of the maw of theatrical exhibition and online distribution.

As 35mm prints become less available, festivals will need to distinguish the “festival experience” beyond the opportunity to see film prints. And it has been years since the festival circuit by itself (without pre-existing studio interest) has produced a cross-over indie or international hit completely out of nowhere (instead, the circuit often has served as a self-contained test market). What festival programmers can do, however, is choose films for re-examination, especially now that DCP has opened up what archivists are willing to share once a digital transfer has been made. But you can only re-examine the classics so often, especially if everyone already agrees what the classics are.

These deep cut re-discoveries are not driven by studio interests, but they do not happen purely based on audience response, either. They are the product of a network of festival and alternative venue programmers who genuinely love to share their discoveries. The potential downside of this is when the target audience is that network itself, rather than general audiences, and you get what I’ve called the “festival echo chamber” effect: films play festivals because they’ve played festivals.

Looking at the trailer for The Astrologer, I came away with some preliminary conclusions: I would never pay full price to see it in a theater, I probably wouldn’t rent or stream it, and I possibly wouldn’t even watch it for free on MeTV or This TV. You only get one chance to make a first impression, which is why simply sharing trailers might not be the best strategy for the Festival when promoting their deep cuts. But the far more important link to follow is to the Indiegogo video for the American Genre Film Archive project to make a DCP of The Astrologer available from its one extant print. Watching this almost makes me want to see this film that hipsters in Austin are working so hard to allow me to see. That is, I might want to see it with some people who were equally curious and/or excited about it. That’s the kind of experience that the Festival (and all festivals) can still provide, regardless of 35mm or DCP projection.

The Wisconsin Film Festival has always been at its best when the audience knows that at least one programmer (and perhaps only one programmer) really wants you to see the film. But that’s not necessarily what appeals to middlebrow Wisconsin Film Festival patrons, who are rarely as adventurous in their filmgoing the rest of the year. I’m intrigued by The Astrologer, but the Festival will have to do some persuading to those who are expecting, well, the “good stuff.” The only mistake they might make is to just assume that everyone will follow them into the theater, just because it’s playing at the Festival. This is an opportunity for the Festival to demonstrate the educational component of its mission and shape local film culture. Work needs to be done, and I look forward to seeing how the Festival addresses that work in the coming month at the First Look at Sundance and the Festival previews at Madison Public Libraries (they would do well to look to the Indigogo clip for rhetorical tips).

Who knows? The Astrologer might end up being the best film in this year’s Festival. Discovering that you’re expectations are completely wrong is part of what makes the Festival experience great. Meanwhile, here are the available trailers organized by the media outlets that announced them.