While most teenagers premiere their videos in front of family squeezed onto the living room couch, Zach Church will debut his latest movie on the big screen in front of hundreds of filmgoers.
Church’s “Making ‘The Chair’” is one of 16 short films invited by the Milwaukee Film Festival to participate in this year’s Milwaukee Youth Show. The program, which showcases shorts made by area students, will screen at 11 a.m. April 20 inside the historic Oriental Theatre on North Farwell Avenue.
The 16th annual edition of the festival kicks off today and over the next two weeks MFF will present its usual assemblage of international features, documentaries, midnight movies, short film packages and revivals. For local artists, though, the main draw might be the unique Cream City Cinema strand, which presents the best new work made by area filmmakers like Church and is key to the fest’s hometown pride.
Milwaukee Film, the nonprofit organization that runs the fest, invests in the city’s cultural identity year-round by shoring up the local filmmaking infrastructure with workshops, alliances and grants and sponsoring educational opportunities for students. That includes the hands-on Take 1 teen filmmaking laboratory, where Church, a senior at West Bend West High School, spent 16 weeks learning about each stage of the moviemaking process from working professionals and collaborating with other aspiring filmmakers.
His short film “Making ‘The Chair’” emerged from the Take 1 classes—and a bad case of writer’s block.
“I had about a month, so I was kind of on a time constraint, I didn’t know what to do,” Church said. “So I took one of my original ideas that I had and made a weirdly meta movie about somebody struggling to make that idea, and then it forms into something else along the way.”
In the film, Church and his friend Morgan Rasmussen play teens searching West Bend for the perfect recliner to use as a movie prop. Eventually, though, the five-minute short moves into a nonfiction dimension, and that inspired, heart-stirring surprise makes the film worth seeing. The twist is perhaps signaled when a poster for “The Fabelmans,” Steven Spielberg’s movie about transforming memories into art, can be spotted in the background.
To get footage inside a furniture store, Church first asked to use Steinhafels in Menomonee Falls and then Colder’s in Grafton, but discovered the corporate process to gain approval was too convoluted. When he approached West Bend Furniture and Design, however, the retailer was “super easy” to work with. In other scenes, West Benders might recognize Michaleno’s Pizzeria, the West Bend Cinema and the Goodwill Store & Donation Center.
“I wanted to do something where I could show off a lot of West Bend,” Church said.
That regional flavor is a major appeal of the festival’s Cream City Cinema programming. Besides five anthologies of shorts and music videos, the section houses 10 feature-length works with local ties.
Milwaukee landmarks, for example, feature throughout “Corridor,” a wintry comedy about a bumbling security guard who becomes convinced he’s uncovered a mysterious murder plot. The ensuing hijinks are directed by Johnathon Olsen, a Milwaukee-based filmmaker, commercial editor and curator.
Olsen also edited “Out of the Picture,” Mary Louise Schumacher’s documentary about art critics. Schumacher, once the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s art and architecture writer, asks big questions: What is the role of the critic? What makes art worthy of attention? How has the meaning of art changed in the modern world?
I’m curious to know what Schumacher would make of “I’m Your Host,” which investigates how the Kenosha area became a hotspot for “horror hosts.” Using low-budget props and costumes, these kooky characters (think Elvira or Svengoolie) produce their own DIY television shows that introduce cult films such as Ed Wood’s “Bride of the Monster” (1955). Directed by local filmmaker Alicia Maria Krupsky, the documentary was inspired by a Milwaukee Magazine article published in 2021.
Six years ago Carol Brandt and Meredith Johnston made “Pet Names,” the first Wisconsin-shot narrative feature to play the SXSW Film & TV Festival, and the likable hang-out movie seemed, to these eyes, much more promising than Brandt’s previous film. That’s why I’m eager to see “Wherever You Are, There You Go,” Brandt’s latest collaboration with Johnston (and Dana Shihadah). Made with a small crew over 13 days, the comedy-drama follows a 29-year-old recovering addict who sets out to make amends for her mistakes.
Directed by Jesse McLean, chair of the film department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts, the nonfiction “Light Needs” explores the symbiotic relationship between houseplants and people. “String Theory: The Richard Davis Method” also has roots in academia. The documentary focuses on how the illustrious bass player ended up teaching at the University of Wisconsin in the 1970s.
Four more documentaries have Midwestern origins: “Angels of Dirt” concerns a West Allis motorcycle racer; “Tracing the Divide” follows two Milwaukee men as they seek to conquer the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route; “No One Asked You” traverses the country, including a stop in Milwaukee, to advocate for abortion access; and “Decoupling” acquaints viewers with Yinan and Yujing Wang, married Chinese international students in Wisconsin. Yinan, who directed, has also lectured at the Peck School of the Arts.
To clarify recent efforts to create a state film office and potential incentives for productions willing to shoot in Wisconsin, Milwaukee Film will host a panel discussion called “What’s the Deal with Action! Wisconsin?!?” The conversation is at noon Saturday at the Milwaukee Public Library East Branch, 2320 North Cramer Street.
The Milwaukee Film Festival runs through April 25. The full lineup plus ticket and venue information are online at mkefilm.org/mff.