Wrapping Up the Milwaukee Film Festival with Robyn Ehrlich

And that's a good morning to Robin Erlich, who is the communications and public relations

coordinator for the Milwaukee Film Festival, but just wrapped up a 15-day run at the Oriental

and Downer theaters in downtown Milwaukee, Exhausted Robin.

Yes, but less exhausted now. We've had like a week and a half to recover, so we're definitely

getting back to business as usual a little bit.

Yeah, a little bit. Now, when do you start preparing for next years?

Um, I mean, we typically, well, it depends on who you ask, I guess. The programmers are

kind of always watching films that they are keeping in mind for next year's festival

or for our dialogues, documentary festival, which we have in the fall.

Um, my work more starts, again, I would say like October, November is one way we start

kind of, you know, selecting the artist for the campaign art next year and putting together

some ideas for the program book, stuff like that.

I love movies. I love movies. I can remember every single movie I've ever

seen and the theater I've seen it in and I'm talking back to, yeah, back to the 50s.

My first movie was Tammy in the Bachelor when I was a little kid at a driving theater with

my mom and dad. I remember that I can tell you, you name the movie that I've seen and

I'll tell you which theater I've seen. I mean, I just, it's a superpower. I don't know

how I got this superpower, but I have it. I don't know what to do with it.

Incredible power. I can't monetize it though. There's no way to make money with that

superpower. Nobody cares. I think it's cool though. All right. I got a quick before we

start with all the stats from the Milwaukee Film Festival. You've seen the Beatles movie

a hard days night, right? Yes. Okay. Did you know the name the Beatles is never mentioned

in the entire film? Really? Yeah. I would not have thought that. Nope. You see it once

on Ringo's drum at where it says the Beatles, but you'll never hear anybody mention it

in the film. I don't know if it was done consciously or why they didn't do it, but they never

mentioned the Beatles. They refer to them, but they never use that name in the entire film.

That's so interesting. I guess they didn't have to mention it. We all knew why you were

there. Yeah, you were soon. Yeah. All right. Here's another word that's never mentioned

in the Godfather. The word is mafia. And the reason they didn't mention it is the producers

made a deal with the real mafia to get their support for the production, not to mention

the word mafia. That's really cool, actually. See what you learn. That's really interesting.

See what you learn here at WRJN? Huh? You learn. That was great. I didn't know I was going

to learn so much today. Oh, I got more if you want to learn stuff. I got tons of stuff

here. All right. So the Milwaukee Film Festival wrapped up 15 days playing at the downer

and Oriental theaters. Give us a rundown. How many films are run all together? Yeah. So

we showed I think 208 films across 265 screenings. Whoa. Because we showed quite a few multiple

times. So yeah. And that includes short films and feature films. You made a lot of money

too. 150,000 dollars. Yeah. That was super exciting. That was part of our real impact

campaign because we're an arts non-profit. So we had an original fundraising goal of

$85,000. And I think by day six of the festival, we met that. So we had to raise the goal

to $100,000. And then the next day we met that. And then we had to raise it again. And

we were like, okay, we're going to raise it one final time. We can't keep doing this

until $125,000. And they exceeded it again. And people were just really generous and excited

about the festival and the organization. So that was really cool. This surprised me. Total

attendance over $32,000. That was $32,000 for. But $32,000 people. Whoa. In two theaters. Yeah.

I know that was so exciting too. So we matched basically our 2024 attendance, which doesn't

sound that impressive at first. But then when you think about the fact that we had two less

screens that were showing films at this year's festival, we didn't have the two additional

venues, which if you do the math, which I did not do, I, but someone else did the math

and told me this, that it reflects the growth of average attendance at each screening of

47% of last year's averages. Let's talk about some of the awards, the catalyst awards

at the Abel or Abel. How do you pronounce it? Yeah, Abel, Abel, the catalyst award. Yeah.

What won that? Yeah. So that was announced our opening night of the film festival. And

that was presented posthumously to Carmen and Bill Haberman, who were to really influential

members of our board and helped really put the whole film festival together. So that

was exciting. We had a video that we shared opening night to kind of commemorate that.

Okay. Then a whole bunch of jury awards. Who's the jury by the way? Who made the decisions

here? So there's different juries and they're made up of different kind of film industry

professionals or critics, filmmakers themselves. So each jury is made up of a bunch of different

people. And they kind of have to do specifically with what they are deliberating about. So

there's like the luminaries award, which is for second or third film making experiences.

So people who are making their second or third film, emerging fiction award. Well, here

I can say what those went to to. The luminaries jury award went to Middletown, which is a really

fantastic documentary. And the emerging fiction jury award went to Outerlands, which I got

to see in the theater. And there was a Q&A with the filmmaker. And that was really, really

moving. And the emerging documentary, Jerry Award went to a really powerful documentary

called Remaining Native, which also had a great Q&A. Yeah. And then there's tons of cream

city cinema awards, which is because we're in the cream city. So those go to local filmmakers

too. Now kids choice jury award. Did kids vote or just adults voted for kids films? Kids

voted? No. Yeah. We have a jury made up of local 9 to 12 year olds. Oh, really? Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. There were six of them this year. So it's a small jury of kids and they get

to watch all of the short films at the festival. And I believe there were like 52 short children's

short films. And then they come up with like their special mentions because they gave out

an award for most inspirational film to a short film called Skate in the City. Best representation

to a film called Unibrow. But the film that took the ultimate kids choice jury award was

a film called The Carp and the Child. You know, I did 9 to 12 year olds. They're into voting

for films. That's that's pretty good. Yeah. We just think it's important to get, you know,

kids into a theater and get to experience, you know, the theatrical film experience. And it helps

give them the chance to kind of show their leadership skills and persuasive skills and

deliberation. And it's like they get to pick, you know, their version of the Academy Award.

It's exciting. Yeah. I, you know, my super power, if I was 9 to 12 year, I could have really done

a good job there because I've seen I, that's all they did was watch move. I used to have now,

this is going to really freak people out who don't, who don't really know about eight millimeter

film. When I was a kid, we had a projector. And I used to buy movies on eight millimeter film,

but it was three minutes. So they take a major motion picture and they'd squeeze it down to three

minutes. It's hard to believe. And I still have my eight millimeter movies castle films, which

was owned by Universal Pictures. That's why all the films are universal had this deal that they

put these movies on eight millimeter. You can buy the big one, which ran nine minutes or the

little one that ran three minutes. And I used to have in my garage, I had a screen with a projector,

charge kids 10 cents and he's to run a whole bunch of these. And this is, you know, we're talking

the early 60s here, but I love doing that. I still have those eight millimeter reader movies in

the basement. The problem is I don't have a projector to show them on. So I thought you could

find one somewhere. Oh, yeah, I could, if I, yeah, if I wanted to, I could do it, but they're

probably so brittle now, but it's just I go back and look at them occasionally and thinking about

all the days I sat there and I kept them in mint condition. And that's amazing. And the kids used to

get in the garage, give 10 cents and I ran like 10 of them. You have like a small business.

Yeah, at, you know, nine years old, I was really pulling in the cash. I mean, you never know

where the winds fit in the next millionaires coming from. All right. So then you have the audience

choice of words. This is where the audience gets to pick out their favorites, huh? Yes. Yeah,

we have these little ballots at every film that you see at the festival. And afterwards we have

our amazing volunteers in the lobby and they collect your ballots and you just pair along the line

of whichever number one through five, five being best, one being not so great. And our volunteers

tell you I'm all up. And then there's like some sort of algorithm because we want to make sure that

we're taking the average from each one and computing it and calculating it and making sure it's

fair. And so after all of that calculation, the best feature film for our audience award was a

documentary called The Librarians. And the best short film was a short called Jane Austen's period drama.

You know, this is just it's wonderful. I mean, it's just great. Wow. And then you have the documentary.

And now let's talk about the 2026 film festivals coming around. And the dates are already set for that,

huh? Yeah, we just announced the dates, which is exciting. I didn't even know we knew the dates, but

we yes, we have them set to mark your calendars. The 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival is April 16th through

30th, 2026. You know, now the question is, did you show any of these movies really on film or they

are on a hard drive? So this year we did not show any films on actual film during the festival.

Last year we had two films that we showed on 35 millimeter film during the festival, but we are

currently at the Oriental Theater showing the new film sinners on 70 millimeter. I was about to

say there is a new film out on 70 millimeter. Yes, it's really exciting that we like have the

technology and the equipment in order to to screen the film in this format. Our tech team is so

excited. All our projectionists, they love when they get to screen films on actual film. So that's

been running for almost a week and we're having it for two weeks. So there's still another week to

catch sinners on 70 millimeter. Yeah, I feel bad for people growing up. They don't know anything about

that. You know, when I was a kid, we went to the Center Rama Theater. And when they had the

travelogue, even for how the west was one and the world, the wonderful order of the brothers

Graham, it was shown with three projectors. They had an A B and C projector and they would show

it in 35 millimeter with three three projectors filling that big center on the screen. Now you

can see the seam lines a little bit, but I like that. Yeah, but yeah, if you weren't looking for

and if you talk to the directors of these movies, they'll say they would never do it again

because you're dealing with three roles of film in each camera, you know, one big camera,

three roles of film running simultaneously. And if one's got a little glitch in it, you've got to

edit all three. You can't just edit one because it won't match up. Right. And to watch these movies,

and I remember as a kid watching them on that big center on the screen with three projectors,

right? Could you imagine it or be that projectionist? I mean, that was like, you know, talk about

anxiety. Oh, yeah, it's it's a hard job. Yeah, especially when you got three films running

simultaneously. And if you're out of sync with one frame, you'd notice it. Yeah, yeah, it's

incredible. I love I love physical film. It's it's always super exciting. I'm I think I'm going

to go see centers tomorrow truly. Do you get him free? And I've already seen it. You like it

and free. Yeah. Okay. There you go. Now we know the truth. It's the best part of the job.

Who will put together this? The actual booklet, the I was going to call it a play bill,

but the actual Milwaukee Film Festival book. I mean, this is beautiful work. Oh my gosh. Thank

you for saying that. That was a team of us. So it was me, our graphic designer. And we had another

graphic designer contracted. And then there's like it program book time is a couple weeks of

really intense editing and and staying late at the office. So thank you for saying that. I appreciate it.

Oh, it's a you know, I don't tell anybody, but I stole it from here at the radio station.

And I brought it home with me and I've been reading it. But it's it's coffee table book tie.

It's like the paper stock is wonderful in this thing. It's the color separation. Everything is

beautiful in this. You put it together. Oh my gosh. I'm going to tell everyone at work. You said

that. Thank you. Tell them Don Ross and say that they'll say the who've done? What does he know about

books? He doesn't know anything. All right. One more thing for you here. It's a prom time. I'm

going to mention some films. You tell me which is your favorite movie about proms. Okay. Okay.

Yes. We got foot loose. Fast times at Ridgemont High. Carrie has probably the wildest prom movie ever.

Back to the future when Marty McFly's got to get his parents to meet at the prom. Remember that?

And American Pie. Which prom movie do you like the best or is there another one that you mentioned?

That is tough. I was between fast times at Ridgemont High and Carrie. I think I have to go

Carrie. I love Carrie. I love back to the future. I also thought Lady Bird. I don't know. I remember Lady Bird.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. That's a pretty good prom movie too. Well, I had a list of 30 here. I

just picked five because we couldn't let this go for it. Five great ones. But I think of those

Carrie is one of my all time favorites. I just, you know, it's the wildest prom movie. John

Travolta with his pigs blood and everything. Dropping on Carrie and the fire. Everybody's dying in

the fire. I mean, it's the wildest prom. I love Brian De Palma. So I'm a sucker for any of his

films and they're all weird. I still got to pick back to the future because it was a feel good

prom where he's got to get his father to dance with his mother to get him together. He's going to

disappear forever. I mean, that's kind of a wild thing. And then he plays the guitar and his

hands start disappearing. And he can't play the guitar anymore until they start to dance. And

his body comes back and the picture comes back with his brother and sister. And yeah, that's a

feel good. Yeah. It's a perfect movie for sure. Like front to back. I think that's a perfect

tone. I love when he goes back in time, Marty. And he sees his principal and he says,

is that guy ever up here? That's one of my favorites. All right, Robin. Congratulations. I'm glad

Civic Media and WRJM were part of it. I just loved the fact that we're part of a movie thing.

Robin Early is the communications and public relations coordinator for the Milwaukee Film Festival

just ended recently about a week or so ago and that it's 15, 15 day run at the Oriental and

Downer theaters. The historic Oriental and Downer theaters in the Milwaukee, the movie

palaces. They don't make them like that anymore. They're too expensive. They're not profitable.

You've got to even the Oriental has three screens in it now. I mean, they had to do something.

I mean, you know, the problem is when you get these big movie palaces, you get one bad movie stuck

in there for two weeks and you don't make anyone. I know. At least if you have 13 theaters,

you can afford to have a dud in one or two of them, but you can't afford to have one theater

and have a bad movie plan. Hey, Robin, congratulations. Looking forward to the next Milwaukee Film Festival.

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. We loved having Civic Media be a part of the whole thing

and you've been so supportive. So thank you.