It’s that time of year again. Time to pour over the 2014 Wisconsin Film Festival schedule and start planning your festival strategy. Which films will be the hot tickets? Which films will be the overlooked gems? At the end of this introduction to our Festival coverage, I’ll share some thoughts about strategy (or a philosophy) for attending film festivals, but first there’s a lot of work to be done simply figuring out what is playing. And if this is your first visit to the Madison Film Forum website, we’d like you to know how our Festival coverage will be different than what you might expect from other sources, and how it fits into our goal of integrating public screenings, online streaming, and social interaction to build a stronger Madison film culture.
At the Madison Film Forum we started researching from just a list of titles in the Festival show rundown, and did our best to sift through them (169 shows, some repeats obviously) to offer some preliminary reactions and to provide a basic template for approaching the Festival. (We thank Ben Riser at the Festival for providing the show rundown and answering some preliminary questions about titles). For our initial articles today and Friday, we will focus on films falling into three broad categories: The Big Indies, The Big Auteurs (including revivals) and Big Docs. We start with these films because information about them was easily accessible through various sources, independent of Festival publicity materials. Other important categories, such as Wisconsin’s Own, newer indie and international voices, and shorts will have to wait until we get our hands on available press screeners and publicity materials.
Big Indies, Big Auteurs, and Big Docs
This afternoon I will take a look at The Big Indies, and ask what now seems an annual question: How many films from the Joe Swanberg filmmaking tree are there this year? (I now know how the early New York Film Festival critics felt when they questioned how multiple Godards would appear in the schedule every year.) As part of the Big Indie discussion I will include some thoughts about the experimental film programming this year, because in the long run Nathaniel Dorsky is just as important to independent filmmaking, if not more important, than Joe Swanberg. (I like several Swanberg films, by the way, I’m just saying…)
This evening Jake Smith will preview the Big Auteurs—the established directors or recent award winners on the international film festival circuit. Rather than nitpick who is or isn’t an auteur ahead of time, perhaps we can use the Festival to figure out whether Paul Verhoven is or is not one these days. Jake will also discuss the revivals in the Festival, many of which are related to current UW Cinematheque programming (Hitchcock, Demy).
Jake and I gave the heavy lifting to Taylor Hanley, who will preview on Friday the Big Docs—documentaries by established filmmakers or films with particularly intriguing topics and critical buzz. Even after a preliminary look at the schedule, there are at least 15 docs that I already know that I’m interested in seeing at some point.
And Now For Something Completely Different…
To state it bluntly, we’re going to change the way the Wisconsin Film Festival is covered and discussed in Madison. First, working with our partners Arts Extract and LakeFrontRow, we will provide far greater breadth to Festival coverage than is usually possible from individual sources. (And we’d like to thank Scott Gordon at Arts Extract and David Klein at LakeFrontRow for including us in this project.) Why would all three of us write about the same opening night film, when one review is often sufficient and the other two can tell you about the other films playing during that time slot? (Well, we will have some overlap to “Embrace Debate” as ESPN would say.) This collaboration should also permit us to treat several films and Festival related topics in more depth than is possible in local print media—a capsule review is not always sufficient. We will aggregate coverage from all three sources at our #wifilmfest page and in a widget on our home page. I think you’ll find that we have some opinions that we’d like to share in the coming days, particularly when we get together to record an Arts Extract podcast.
Second, the Madison Film Forum coverage will help you familiarize yourself with Festival filmmakers by providing links to their previous work, and help you keep track of DVD, Blu-Ray and streaming releases of this year’s films by providing links to GoWatchIt and other resources. The excitement that the Festival generates each year is great, but as a community we need to figure out ways to maintain that film watching and filmgoing spirit the rest of the year. So start watching great films now, and keep watching great films after the Festival is over. You can start by using the GoWatchIt button as you browse the Wisconsin Film Festival schedule, and easily queue that film that conflicts with the other film that you are going to see during the Festival.
Is encouraging people to stream films at home the same as discouraging them from going out to see films at the Festival? I don’t think so. If you’ve read this post this far, you’re probably a discerning filmgoer who knows the value of supporting our local venues and the Festival. The best way to convince you to go see David Gordon Green’s Joe at the Festival is to suggest that you stream his Prince Avalanche on Netflix or re-visit his first feature, George Washington. Not sure if you’re ready for Hong Sang-soo’s Nobody’s Daughter Haewon? Try his In Another Country on Netflix or go back to his Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors. I didn’t even realize that those were on Netflix—guess what I’m watching tonight?
Finally, pending screener availability, we will do our best to provide new Festival reviews and content across this month, while you’re still deciding to buy tickets. Our first full review will be for Anthony Chen’s Camera d’Or winning Ilo Ilo. When we discuss the films we won’t be restricted to capsule reviews due to time and space restrictions. If we review a film, we will go beyond mere plot description to begin a real discussion of the film with you. When that is not possible, we’ll provide links to intelligent discussions of the film already available on the internet. We’ll do this because we want you to come back to the Madison Film Forum as a resource not only for the month leading up to the Festival, but throughout the year. And we want you to be informed viewers not only when you are buying Festival tickets, but also when you actively seek out similar films year round.
Festival-going Philosophy
I’ll start with what I don’t want you to do. Don’t play it safe, don’t just go to the films that you think you’ll like. Try some green eggs and ham.
Sure, we can help you go the safe route. There are several films this year with “100% Fresh” ratings on Rotten Tomatoes: Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (13 reviews); Village at the End of the World (10 reviews); Gabrielle (8 reviews); The Overnighters (6 reviews); Ida (6 reviews); and Le Week-end (okay, 98% RT with 53 reviews, but close enough). If you want to play it safe, maybe this is all you need to know. You could order these tickets first thing on Saturday, and you’d have a perfectly acceptable Festival experience. But you’d also miss out on an important part of the Festival experience, which is the sense of adventure and discovery.
There are some Festival titles with “Rotten” ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. The Jude Law feature Dom Hemingway has a green splat at 59% RT. Does that mean you should avoid that green splat like eggs and ham? Or might it be worth finding out if you are part of the nearly 60% who like the film? Might it be worth finding out why critical responses seem to be split? (I haven’t seen it, so I honestly ask these questions.) Some of the best Festival experiences come from when you can feel the split in the audience. One of my most memorable Festival screenings was Compliance, where the audience was audibly angry, yelling at the screen as the film played. If you go the safe route, you probably won’t have these memories.
Just go see stuff, and engage in that sense of adventure that the Festival provides once a year. Watch films by people you have never heard of from countries about which you know very little. Allow the images and sounds do what they are trying to do rather than force them to meet your expectations. Please don’t treat the information at Madison Film Forum as a “consumer report” so that you can figure out the best value for your entertainment dollar. Consider the reviews, even the negative reviews, as the start of a conversation that we hope you will participate in by watching the films.
We look forward to that conversation, not only in this month leading up to and including the Festival, but throughout the year.