If the Madison art community’s ego needed any more stroking after the 2002 Wisconsin Film Festival was called “stunning” and a “vital forum” after screening more than 130 films and increasing annual revenue by 30 percent, having two of the festival’s showcase films on the Academy Awards nominee list did the job. Straight-from-Sundance-style “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and “Y Tu Mama Tambien” indulged last year’s festival audience and pleased the Academy. As further evidence of the now five-year-old fest’s blossoming reputation, director Mary Carbine was named one of the Midwest’s 2002 “People of the Year” by Screen Magazine.
Fest-lovers may need to cool down their hauteur for this weekend; the 2003 festival has the potential to disappoint. This year’s lineup is not altogether lacking, but several facets, including the visiting filmmaker series, organization and ticket sales, seem to be shifting the festival in the wrong direction.
While screenings, venues and ticket sales grew each of its first four years (30 films at two venues were attended by just 3,000 in 1999, compared to 140 films attended by 185,000 people in 2002), this year’s growth is minimal. Only eight more films are being shown than last year, and adding one new venue seems to have done little to ease the demand for tickets, almost all of which sold out two weeks before the first screening.
Some venues, like the Fredric March Play Circle in Vilas Hall, are becoming inadequate. It is disappointing that UW’s own student short films will only be screened once and will be screened in the tiny play circle, which will probably be filled by the student filmmakers and the lucky recipients of their four complimentary guest passes alone.
Not surprisingly, the tickets selling at the slowest rate are those for presentations by visiting artists like Michael Snow. Madison film audiences should feel free to branch out (the lineup of new documentaries and foreign films is tremendous), but the festival should strive to maintain its reputation as a showcase of and dialogue about independent narrative film rather than shift toward experimental filmmaking, in which UW-Milwaukee’s film school clearly edges out UW-Madison’s. After being dazzled by last year’s narrative-style films like “13 Conversations About One Thing,” 45 minutes of a still camera zooming into a photograph of a wave pinned to a wall in Snow’s “Wavelength” is likely to be unwelcome to or misunderstood by a typical festival audience; money and effort could be spent better elsewhere.
It’s nice to have big names like Roger Ebert and upcoming filmmakers like Justin Lin in attendance. Some of the lineup is encouraging, but if festival organizers want to keep their festival successful, they need to stick to their original goal of providing inexpensive access to independent cinema that would not otherwise be viewed or appreciated. As it grows, the festival is losing its original accessibility. While this may be unavoidable, heightened quality should compensate. Instead, the festival, by shifting to more experimental rather than indie films, is risking being overshadowed in subsequent years by the new Milwaukee International Film Festival, the first of which is planned for next year.
Perhaps last year’s festival was exceptional, but it needn’t be the exception. Carbine, the festival’s organizer, recognizes the demand for a weeklong or two-weekend-long festival, but says financial constraints prevent further expansion. Donate if you can, and attend screenings if you are lucky enough to grab tickets. Meanwhile, we’ll hope that organizers can sustain their original vision for the festival and hope that the festival will continue to be heralded as accessible and innovative.
