Eric Beltmann

Eric Beltmann has been writing about cinema for various print and web outlets since 1991, including an eight-year stint at the now defunct Flipside Movie Emporium. Currently he teaches film and literature at a high school in southeastern Wisconsin. He shares a birth date with Pauline Kael and considers Buster Keaton part of the family. Contact Eric at beltmann@criticspeak.com.

Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller “The Birds” (1963) is one of this year’s retrospective screenings at the Milwaukee Film Festival.

MFF 2019: Cinema Hooligante Picks for Halloween

Two seconds and three quick cuts is all Alfred Hitchcock needed to traumatize me. Watching “The Birds” on television as an impressionable 12-year-old seemed like a good idea until Jessica Tandy discovered the farmer with his eyes pecked out. Rather than a traditional zoom, Hitchcock used three staccato shots to close in on the wounded …

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Documentarian Maryam Sepehri, right, interviews Hamid Naficy, the subject of “Mouth Harp in Minor Key” at his home in Chicago. Naficy, a cultural studies scholar at Northwestern University, left his home country of Iran in 1979. Photo courtesy of Sepehri.

MFF 2019 Interview: Maryam Sepehri Says Her New Documentary is ‘Very Personal’

While it won’t win any trophies for elegance, “Mouth Harp in Minor Key: Hamid Naficy in/on Exile” still has one of the best titles of any movie at this year’s Milwaukee Film Festival. The documentary is indeed a minor, restrained affair about Hamid Naficy, a distinguished film scholar at Northwestern University. But when he demonstrates …

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Introducing the 2019 Milwaukee Film Festival

Introducing the 2019 Milwaukee Film Festival

Like Charlie Chaplin’s famous prospector, the Milwaukee Film Festival knows there’s gold to be found due north. By adding the historic Rivoli Theatre in downtown Cedarburg to its roster of sites, the annual festival, which opens its 11th edition Thursday, is making an unprecedented push northward. Although MFF once had an outpost in Mequon, it …

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Critics Eric Beltmann and Shelly Sampon discuss the 2018 Milwaukee Film Festival, which recently concluded.

Conversation: Critics Eric Beltmann and Shelly Sampon React to the 2018 Milwaukee Film Festival

The 10th annual Milwaukee Film Festival, which closed Nov. 1, brought more than 300 films to audiences in southeastern Wisconsin. Critic Speak contributor Eric Beltmann and The Cinemaphile blogger Shelly Sampon discuss how the election and festival seasons overlapped and why “Support the Girls” was the perfect emblem for a festival dominated by gender themes. …

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Before directing “Wild Nights with Emily,” director Madeleine Olnek was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship to research Emily Dickinson. The comedy stars Molly Shannon as the American poet.

MFF 2018 Review: “Wild Nights with Emily”

Madeleine Olnek’s latest comedy is about a poet, but it’s not really about poetry. Instead, “Wild Nights with Emily,” which screened last night as the Milwaukee Film Festival’s centerpiece film, revisits the myths surrounding Emily Dickinson to assess how women have been perceived and misrepresented throughout American history. If Walt Whitman is the great extrovert …

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Set in 1946 Frankfurt, “Bye Bye Germany” follows a group of Jewish door-to-door salesmen trying to regain a sense of belonging after surviving the Holocaust.

The 2018 Milwaukee Film Festival: Das Kino

Throughout my first year of teaching in West Bend, my paychecks always misspelled my name. Forgiving others for overlooking my surname’s very German second “n” has always been easy—after all, I have more than four decades of practice—but for me that doubled consonant is an unforgettable part of my identity, a family keepsake that, in …

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The 2018 Milwaukee Film Festival

Celebrating 10 Years: The 2018 Milwaukee Film Festival

The great French film director François Truffaut had a simple rule: If you want to know what a story’s really about, reflect on what’s changed by the end. By that metric, the story of the Milwaukee Film Festival’s first decade—its 10th edition opens Thursday—has a classic Hollywood theme. It’s the story of ragtag movie enthusiasts who …

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Milwaukee Film, the purveyors of the Milwaukee Film Festival, took over daily operation of the three-screen Oriental Theatre in July.

15 Great Movies from the Milwaukee Film Festival’s History

It’s a new era for Milwaukee Film, the parent organization for the Milwaukee Film Festival. By taking over the daily operation of the three-screen Oriental Theatre in July, the nonprofit has fortified its position as a major cultural institution and secured a path to long-term sustainability. Right now, it’s the future that’s most exciting about …

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