29th Annual Milwaukee LGBT Film & Video Festival Announced

The Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival - one of the region's longest-running film events and a cornerstone gathering for the LGBT + communities - returns this October 16-26. The 29th annual edition will be draped across two weekends, running 11 consecutive days.

The parade of days that this year's Festival offers summons a calendar format that for years was the norm. "The Festival always unspooled so," recalls Festival Director Carl Bogner, also an instructor in the UWM Film Department. "For the last four years we have been concentrating our energies mostly into shoehorning as many films as possible into one long and rich-with-film weekend, with other events through the year. It was a good experiment, with lots of successes, but many of our patrons will appreciate the greater temporal elbow room to experience even more film-going options."

Bogner once again promises a lively and international mix of narrative features, documentaries, experimental media and short films. Already on deck are Moroccan author/ filmmaker Abdellah Taïa's "Salvation Army," a drama about one Northern African boy's coming of age; Sophie Hyde's "52 Tuesdays," the Sundance Festival award-winning drama about a Teenage girl's adjustment to her mother's gender transition; blair doroshwalther's "Out in the Night," a documentary about the plight of The New Jersey 4, a group of young African American lesbians charged with gang assault after defending themselves against an assailant; and Madeleine Olnek's "The Foxy Merkins," an absurdist comedy that parodies cinematic narrative conventions around sex work.

The complete schedule will be posted in early September on the Festival's website at arts.uwm.edu/lgbtfilm and through the Festival's Facebook page.

"The fall is a wonderfully rich time," notes Bogner. "AIDS Walk Wisconsin - with Tim Gunn; the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center's Big Night Out; the Milwaukee Film Festival. The Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival is thrilled to be a singular part of such a mix."

The Festival is presented by the Department of Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres in UWM Peck School of the Arts and made possible thanks to Festival Sponsor Joseph R. Pabst. The Festival also acknowledges the essential support provided by UWM Union Programming, UWM Union Theatre, UWM's LGBT Resource Center, UWM Libraries, the UWM LGBT Studies program as well as generous individuals, businesses, and campus and community organizations.