Big doings coming to Milwaukee, beginning tomorrow.
It's dialogues, the documentary film festival at the Oriental and Downer theaters.
And with me is the programming director for the festival, Kirsten Larson.
Hey, Kirsten, thanks for joining us here.
Do appreciate it.
Hi, thanks for having me.
If you ever hear me mispronounce your name during the next half hour, I want you to shout out.
Don, it's not my name, okay?
Because I do things like that, all right?
You promise me?
Okay.
Yes.
All right.
The Dialogues Documentary Film Festival, the first question I have for you is, why Dialogues?
Why not just the Documentary Film Festival?
So we always make an effort to program these films to be relevant to issues here in Milwaukee.
And so first of all, it's taking these films in dialogue with our community.
And then we build off of that by having talk backs with the film.
So either filmmaker Q and A's or we find people locally who can speak further on the topics and then allow the opportunity for people in the audience to ask those questions.
So it is literally a dialogue.
See, that's why you get it.
The dialogues documentary festival runs September 24th through the 27th.
How many films are you going to screen?
Um, let me see exactly how many 35
35 documentaries now you split them up between the Oriental and the Downer theaters, right?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
I was at the Oriental theater a couple of quite a few times and if you want to go into a movie palace that was built I was 1919 or something like that beautifully restored and just magnificently kept Go to the Oriental at the Downer theaters gorgeous too, but the already you walk in there.
You see the pillars in this marble lobby
Wow.
How'd you guys ever get your hands on the Oriental?
Well, it was always a dream of ours.
When we were just the Milwaukee Film Festival, we would operate out of the Oriental.
And obviously, it's the best movie theater in the world.
And so
we
really wanted to run it all year round.
And then the opportunity just presented itself once Landmark finished their lease there.
And so we were able to take over.
get things fixed up a bit, because it's actually from 1927.
And so next year will be our 100th anniversary, and we're going to do a bunch of cool stuff for that.
You know what's celebrating this year?
Our 100th anniversary here at WRGM.
Amazing.
100 years, 1926, yeah.
Okay, now, I was standing on line once at the Oriental, because you guys were showing the five
three Stooges shorts that were filmed in color.
The line went halfway around the block on the far well.
I'm standing online and I said, oh, but it doesn't rain.
But the theater was packed to go see the three Stooges, the five color episodes.
I don't know how you guys get your hands on them, but you did.
And my son was in a movie once as an extra and it was at the Oriental.
So we went opening night to go see him on the big screen there.
That was kind of neat.
All right, let's talk about the documentary film festival.
Give us a couple of the titles here to look out for.
Yeah, sure.
So one documentary that's going to be really fascinating is called Mexican American.
And it is a documentary about the filmmaker's parents traveling from Mexico to the United States before he was born.
And the film is composed of new interviews with his family, but then also uses home videos from
during that time.
And so he's able to sort of compile all of that together to learn about the contrast between his upbringing and then everything his parents went through to get him to where he is now.
And that one will have a director Q&A.
So I think that one will be really, really exciting to get even more of the behind the scenes story.
You
do the Q&A right in front of the screen.
Yep.
Oh, good.
That's great.
What else is some of your movies to look out for at the documentary festival?
So we have a short program.
It's a short program called Drawing Lines.
And I mean, I always love these festivals specifically because you're able to show short films because those are movies that aren't necessarily going to be available or spotlight online or anything.
And so, yeah, this short program is
two mid-length documentaries, and the theme is Women Challenging Boundaries.
And our short program, or Jack, always does a really good job juxtaposing stories.
So there are different stories with a common theme.
So one of them is called The Life of the Party, which follows three female politicians in Texas who are confronting the state of the Republican Party in advance of the election.
And then there's also a short film called Women Laughing, which is looking at a group of female cartoonists at the New Yorker and discusses their process of making their cartoons and then also just the history of the magazine.
And that one will have a talk back both with the director of Life of the Party and then Paul Nos, who is a local New Yorker cartoonist.
And it knows the director and the people featured in Women Laughing.
So that one is a good balance of talking to filmmakers, but also having that local connection.
How long did it take you to put this festival together?
Pretty much the entire summer.
We have a little break after the Milwaukee Film Festival, and then we just get right back to it.
You know, the reason I say that is it's easy.
Not easy.
It's difficult enough to program the films.
Then you got to find the people in the films.
Then you got to make arrangements from the come into town.
The holy macro.
My head would explode doing this stuff.
You sound so calm about it, though.
We tried.
We tried.
Hey, hold on.
We have more to talk about here.
We're talking to Kirsten.
I'm saying that right.
Kirsten.
Kirsten Larson.
who is the programming director at Milwaukee Film.
And we're talking about the Dialogues Documentary Festival opening tomorrow, running through the 27th at both the Oriental and Downer theaters in Milwaukee.
We gave away a bunch of tickets earlier last week, and the people are so excited about winning it.
We're talking to Kirsten Larson, she is programming director for Milwaukee Film.
And if you want to check out the complete list of the dialogues documentary film festival movies, you go to mkefilm.org.
M-K-E.
Film like Milwaukee.
M-K-E.
Film.org.
Have it right?
Yep.
I want to screw it up.
All right, because I've screwed up things before.
Talking about documentaries, one of the earliest documentaries I can remember seeing was a movie called The Sky Above the Mud Below.
It came out in 1961.
It was about a tribe in New Guinea and it was an amazing documentary because I remember my dad went to all these documentaries and it was shown at the Drive-In Movie Theater.
It even won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
It was called The Sky Above, The Mud Below.
Turn Your Classic Movies runs it from time to time.
You've got to be careful.
You've got to watch out for these things.
But documentaries are so fascinating and my dad used to go all the time whenever there was one playing in town.
at the drive-in or the local theater.
We used to go see them.
So this is the Dialogues Documentary Festival, film festival that's coming to the Oriental and Downer theaters in Milwaukee, September 24th tomorrow through the 27th.
You can check out the complete list of documentary films at mkefilm.org.
All right, Kirsten, give me some more titles to look out for.
All right.
So one that I'm really excited about is a movie called Agatha's Almanac.
And it is about a woman, Agatha, who is in her 90s and lives in a remote cottage by herself like no electricity.
And she tends to her garden and it is the most incredible garden I've ever seen.
And she has been keeping the practice of heirloom seeds.
which are plants unique to her garden that are maintained annually and have been passed down through her family and so that's a very fascinating sort of scientific process that she talks about.
But then it also includes reflections on her life and aging and it is just such a beautiful film too.
It was filmed on 16 millimeter film so that sort of adds a nice
you know, textured quality to it.
And then that one is going to have a great talk back afterwards.
We're going to have an urban agriculture and community garden specialist from UW Madison.
And then we're also going to have a program coordinator from the UWM Office of Applied Gerontology.
And so they're both going to talk about gardening and just sort of activities to do as
people age and sort of their reflections from the movie.
So that one is going to be really great.
And it's just such a nice film.
So if anyone wants to have a relaxing afternoon, just hearing about gardening, that's that's the one for you.
He sounds so sweet.
And you know what?
It's history.
This is history.
This is not a fake story.
Somebody wrote a screenplay.
These are real people with real stories.
Exactly.
That you don't forget because it's just historic.
And I love that.
There was another documentary I remember seeing in 1967, Rush to Judgment.
It was Mark Lane made this about the Kennedy assassination.
And I actually had my wife had purchased it, I guess, years ago on VHS.
So we still have it.
But it's interesting to see back in the mid sixties, all the things that thought about the Kennedy assassination.
Again, it's historic.
because it was a complete documentary.
They didn't know a lot of stuff that they know now about the Kennedy assassination, but Mark Lane made this documentary, and it's really interesting to watch.
Give me another title.
This is good stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
So, I mean, sort of along those lines, there is a local documentary we're showing called Out of Reach, The Struggle for the American Dream, and it is about the economy in Milwaukee and how it's changed over the past 40 years.
So the film follows four generations of Milwaukee workers and sort of looks how each generation has been able to get by with their jobs and careers and how that has changed over time.
And it is examining what is causing our middle class to disappear over time.
And I'm especially excited for that Q&A because
especially because it's local, that will be especially interesting to hear about.
But also the film was made a few years ago, so I'll definitely be curious to hear how all of the participants featured in the film are doing now.
Oh, wow.
Hey, I want to talk about something else here real quickly here.
Turner Classic Movies will spotlight the Oriental Theater.
Let's talk about that.
Yeah, so they are filming.
today and tomorrow.
But TCM has been doing a series called Still Now Showing where they go around the country and feature different movie theaters and just sort of talk about their history and their programming and talk to their staff.
So they did a bunch of interviews with us yesterday, which was really exciting because I've loved.
Turner classic movies my entire life so when there's the opportunity to be on it I'm like absolutely sign me up.
But yeah so we had them interview a bunch of theater staff yesterday and then they're going to be filming at the member screening tonight and then they'll be filming at the opening night screenings.
at the Oriental tomorrow.
So if anyone shares my enthusiasm for TCM and wants to be on
TV, you've
got to come out
here tomorrow.
So if I just keep walking by in front of the theater, there's a good chance I'll be on there.
Like a duck in a shooting gallery.
Just keep walking back and forth.
I might be on it.
I got to meet Robert Osborne, the original host of TCM.
He was at a book signing at Ten Chimneys in Genesee Depot, and I went to meet him.
And it was just shortly before he passed away.
He wrote a book and I got to meet him and talk to him and I loved that.
Hey, you know what the very first movie ever shown on TCM was, seeing you're such a big fan?
The very first film they ever showed on TCM opening night.
You know what it was?
No, I don't.
It was Ted Turner's favorite movie of all time, Gone With The Wind.
Oh, perfect.
Yeah, that is a treasure, that channel.
No commercials, no edits, nothing.
And they dig up some of the best movies.
They show them.
And I remember when Discovery wanted to close down TCM because it was costing them money.
And they got the biggest directors like Spielberg and Lucas and all these people.
No, you're not going to close this down because TCM is important now to the film community, but to culture.
I mean, where else can you see some of these movies from the 20s, even the teens, the 30s, 40s, 50s intact in perfect form, or at least the best they can get?
So that's great.
This is wonderful.
You do this the dialogue documentary film festival It comes to the Oriental and the Downer theaters.
We didn't talk about the Downer, but the Downer theater also another historic movie theater downtown It begins tomorrow the 24th runs through the 27th again with the Oriental theaters and the Downer theater and you get tickets online pick out the movie you want to go to the times you want to go pick out everything you want to do just go to MKE
film.org and you guys run different festivals throughout the year.
You have the regular film festival, but this is the documentary film festival.
These are important films.
They're historic and they're very interesting to watch, knowing they're real.
These are real people in these movies.
The dialogues, documentary film festival.
One more time, it begins tomorrow and runs for the 27th at the Oriental and Downer theaters.
Go to MKE.
film.org, M-K-E, film.org.
Am I saying that M good enough there?
So people know I didn't say M as in mother.
M-K-E, film.org.
Kirsten, thank you very much.
And how many films you said?
You said you got how many movies you're screening?
35.
35.
And you could choose anyone you want to go see.
And if you go, what's it, tomorrow night?
Or yeah, tomorrow night, if you go, you can maybe be on TCM.
That'll be nice, huh?
Just keep.
Just keep walking around.
Don't sit down there.
Just keep walking and walking.
You know who did that once?
Jim Bellucci, before he was a star.
He was an extra in a movie, and he kept walking back and forth in front of the camera.
And you could see him, I forget the movie, but he kept walking back and forth so he'd be on camera.
If they did any edits or cuts, he at least he'd be in something.
And he said he just kept walking up and down the street, so he'd be in something.
And you could see him in the movie.
They showed a clip.
He's just walking back and forth.
We'd be on camera.
That's what you got to do.
All right, Kirsten, thank you much for waking up early with me this morning.
I do appreciate it.
And if you missed any part of our conversation, it will be podcast later today at WRJN.com, civicmedia.us, Apple podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast, just type in my name and you'll find it.
Thanks a lot, Kirsten.
I do appreciate it.
And big success to you guys.
Thank you for doing this for the movie and film community.
I do appreciate it.
Thank you.
Bye bye now.
Kirsten Larson, Programming Director for MKE Film Milwaukee Film.