[upbeat drum music]
- Hey, hello, who are you?
[upbeat techno music]
- Hi, I'm Pete Schwaba and it's time once again
for Wisconsin Public Television's
Annual Wisconsin Film Festival episode,
of Director's Cut .
This year's selections include a mysterious radio host,
a lost time capsule, the largest protest in history,
and a remarkable stranger who inspires a sick child.
These are just some of the gripping and inspiring stories
films will tell at this year's festival.
We'll give you a preview of those and more
right here tonight on our show.
This year the Wisconsin Film Festival runs here in Madison,
opening March 30th and running through April 6th.
As always, our first guest today is none other
than the festival's director of programming
and really busy guy, Jim Healy.
Jim, welcome back to Director's Cut .
- Thank you, Pete.
- It's only been 365 days since we've talked last.
- That's probably right. [chuckles]
- So, tell us a little bit about...
Some tidbits, give us the overall view
of this year's festival, if you would.
- Well, the festival is kind of in the tradition
of the other festival of festivals, right.
We program thinking about the audience.
We're not a festival that is about bringing in the press
and launching movies unto the world.
We've picked the best films from festivals around the world
and films that have been submitted to us,
in our Wisconsin's Own section
to make a festival of festivals
that has the best movies that are out there at the moment
that are available to us.
- You know, it's funny, that's how...
When people ask me about the Wisconsin Film Festival,
I say, "It's just run by guys who love movies."
That's what you get.
You have a great spectrum and a great variety of films, too,
which is what I love about this festival.
- That's what I like to think of it as.
- Are there any themes this year?
- There's no overarching theme because movies
come from everywhere
and even every time we've got some
films from film history that are 90 years old
and some things from the 50s and 60s
and then a lot of new contemporary film.
We do have sections of the festival.
We have our usual Wisconsin's Own section,
films by filmmakers from the state
or films that are shot here in the state.
And I know we're gonna be talking to some of them
a little bit later.
We also have our American Visionaries section,
which our new American independent movies
that are particularly original and unique.
We also have new women directors.
After the fact, after we'd programmed the festival,
we realized how many films we had this year
that are by women directors making their feature debuts.
Stuff from all over the world.
From Scandinavia and other parts of Europe
and here in the US too.
And so to kind of put the spotlight on women directors
who, at least in the Hollywood industry, aren't given
the same opportunities that male directors have.
- How do you tell someone where to start?
Let's say I come to you and I say,
"I want to see five movies.
"Where do I even?"
Because the guide is overwhelming.
You look at it and it's like, "Oh, my gosh.
"This sounds great, this sounds great, wow."
How do you tell people where to start?
Do you get that question a lot?
- Sure, I guess I think, the best part
is to look at the guide and go by your instincts,
because that's always the best.
- Carve out a whole morning. - The best thing to do.
But then always to take in the festival experience
and try and do two in a row or at least two in a day,
which, you know, will allow you to kind of compare
and contrast and see the variety that's actually there.
- And stick around for the Q and As, too,
because that's really where you get to see
the movie making process.
- We don't always have filmmakers in person,
but usually we do.
We have some really significant guests
who are gonna be here this year,
along with all the Wisconsin's Own filmmakers.
We have Terence Davies, who's here with A Quiet Passion
which is one of...
Terence Davies is one of the great British filmmakers
of our time
and Alison Maclean, who's a New Zealand filmmaker,
who's here with The Rehearsal .
- Nice. Well, stay put.
Let's take a look at our first sampling
of just a couple of the films that will be
at this year's festival.
[speaking Swahili]
[laugh loudly]
[speaking Swahili]
[eerie murmurs]
- It would be much easier if you don't question everything.
[speaking Swahili]
- [woman] I do think there is
this overwhelming theme of disillusion
in our culture and in our land and everything.
- [older man] But that's kind of
a reasonless conclusion to come to.
And it comes from people's acceptance of the money economy
as the only economy.
The world, in fact, unless you're in prison,
is full of free things
that are delightful.
[various bird species chirping]
Flowers.
It won't be long 'til
we'll be having free flowers around here.
The yard'll be full of dandelions.
The world is also full of people
who'd rather pay for something to kill dandelions
than to appreciate the dandelion.
I'm a dandelion man, myself.
[laugh]
- Who doesn't know what contemporary color is?
Go ahead.
Okay, so contemporary color is this thing.
Do you know who Dave Burn is?
Okay, there's gonna be a concert.
It's gonna include 10 color guards, 10 composers.
You have been invited to be in the concert.
- If you're like me, you're probably wondering,
what is it about color guard?
Well, tonight, you're gonna find out.
[pop rock music]
[applause]
? I was changed
? And I was changed
? From that day you appeared
? I'm not the same
? Whatever may come I will look back and say
- [announcer] Ladies and gentlemen, we invite you
to take your seats and get ready.
10 teams, 10 artists on their biggest stage.
- Everybody kind of gets one shot at this and this is it.
So, yeah, it's pretty intense.
[dramatic music]
- Little toss, and...
[crash] Almost!
[grunting]
That's it, yep. Round.
[grunting "Haa-ii] [thud]
- [Pete Schwaba laughs]
Has there ever been a film, like,
as the director of programming, is there pressure on you
to not miss on a film?
Has there been a film you've rejected
that's gone on to have success at other festivals?
- Well, I can't think of anything too...
Any concrete examples with this festival.
I used to program the Chicago International Film Festival.
I was one of many programmers there
and in the late 90s, I took an early look at a documentary
called Dark Days ,
which was about underground people
living in New York in the subway system.
It was a film that I couldn't quite
get a handle on,
but it went on to be nominated for an Oscar and everything.
We actually ended up showing it in the festival the next year.
So that's happened to me before.
- Okay, I mean, it's bound to when you see that many films.
At some point you probably feel like, you know...
- Oh, sure.
I mean, there are lots of movies I love
that people aren't crazy about
and there are lots of movies that most people
will tell you they love and I just can't quite...
- Nice try, Mr. Tarantino.
- Yeah, I wish.
I've been with Tarantino all the way.
- I saw in your bio that
you're working on a film festival in Italy, too.
Is that new?
- No, no, I've been a consultant
with the Torino Film Festival for about 10 years.
- [Pete] Okay.
- I do some traveling for them.
Double duty with this festival, as well.
And I just recommend films to them.
Sometimes I'm able to hook them up with other filmmakers
and get their work shown and bring them to Italy.
It's in the fall every year.
It's a great festival, too.
- All right, you mentioned Chicago, Italy, and Wisconsin,
what makes Wisconsin so unique?
What's the feel of Wisconsin?
How does it differentiate from some of those other festivals?
- Mostly it's the audience.
I think that this is a festival that is about the audience
and it's about...
It's a reflection of what they like to see,
the things that they're thinking about.
It's not a festival that's interested in
broadcasting to the world about the films and the filmmakers.
It's about bringing the films and filmmakers
to this specific Madison, Wisconsin audience.
- That's great.
So, okay, so I asked you before about where do you start.
Let's say someone comes to Jim Healy this year
and says, "I can only see one movie
"at this year's festival."
Where do you steer them?
- You know, that's tough. - I know.
- My easy way out is to say...
-I ask the tough questions, Jim. You should know that by now.
- The easy thing to say, without hurting anyone's feelings,
is the movie in the festival that I think is just superb
is from 1928.
It's a silent movie called The Crowd ,
directed by King Vidor, which we're gonna be showing
with live piano and almost 90 years later.
It's a film about people trying to survive and make it
in the city and to keep a family going.
It's just still completely relevant, completely moving,
funny and devastating,
and everything you could want in a movie.
It's just a supreme masterpiece. - Well, there you go.
And I assume the director will not be present.
- He will not be.
King Vidor has not been with us for about 40 years.
He left on a great legacy.
- Well, we're gonna talk to you a little bit later in the show.
Jim, thanks as always.
Up next, a short documentary about an eccentric
Chippewa Falls radio station and a 48-year old radio program
that still has listeners tuning in.
- [woman] Jack Raymond was a mystical creature
that lived in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.
- I mean, Jack Raymond's kind of the proverbial mystery
wrapped in an enigma.
- I have no idea who Jack Raymond was except for
this guy who's just been going around Eau Claire
for at least 30 years.
- Like a character that you can't really explain
or that isn't real.
[jazzy piano music]
- [Jack Raymond] And the hours shall be filled with music
and the cares that infest the day
shall fold their tents like the Arabs
and as silently steal away.
- [narrator] What you just heard was the introduction
to the Jack Raymond Show , an hour long radio program
that has been broadcast every day for almost half a century
from a small radio station in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.
- That was a clip from Silently Steal Away,
and this is the film's director, Andrew Swant.
Am I saying that right, Swant? - Yep. - Okay.
All right, so this is really cool.
Tell us about this guy Jack Raymond,
tell us a little more about the subject of your film.
- Well, so...
Jack Raymond had a radio show
called the Jack Raymond Show ,
which has only been broadcast on one station
for the last 35 years, out of Chippewa Falls.
It's called WCFW.
And I went to college up in Chippewa Falls,
or in Eau Claire, and I delivered pizzas all the time.
I was working there,
So every night, I would tune in to this radio show
and so would the other delivery drivers.
We were just fascinated with this old, weird show
that we couldn't tell if it was being broadcast currently
out of Chippewa Falls or if it was old
and they were just re broadcasting them,
but he would play music that you would kind of hear,
maybe that your grandparents would've listened to
30 or 40 years ago.
And then he would read poetry between songs
and tell jokes.
It just felt like a time capsule,
or like a David Lynch kind of a thing.
We were kind of obsessed with it.
- And yesterday when we were talking, you said
he never really talks about current events on the show.
And that's why it's able to have this run.
Talk about that a little bit.
Was that a conscious decision on his part?
Could it have been?
- Well, yeah, I found out after a lot of research
that he was doing something called "bicycling the tapes."
It was reel to reel tapes that he was sending out
because it was a syndicated show.
So he would send the tape out to a station,
then he would get it back after it played,
then he would send it to a different station
and he would just rotate it through all the stations.
He didn't mention current events or anything like that
because he wanted to have all the tapes
seem like they were kind of new.
I think he was thinking like that for a few months out,
but then 40, 50 years later it still kind of works.
- He had no idea that...
Okay, so that's my next question.
Maybe you can't answer this,
but they still play the show today, right?
- Twice a day, at noon and at 11 o'clock.
- Who owns the show? Does he get royalties?
Or his estate, how do they handle that? - [Andrew Swant sighs deeply]
- Did I just bring up something that the...
[chuckles] - That was the biggest mystery.
It ended up being a mystery that I couldn't solve.
The owner of the station won't tell me.
- Maybe the subject of your next documentary.
- Yeah.
- So did you have to just clear it with them?
Were there clearance issues
when you use old footage like this?
- I talked to the owner and I tried as hard as I could
to get the rights.
And the owner said, "Just tape it off the air.
"I'm sure it'll be fine."
So that's what I ended up doing.
- Okay, so you've brought more listeners,
probably, their way.
I have to ask you about something else.
You have a film, I saw on your bio,
called "What What (in the Butt)."
It's on YouTube. It got 65 million views.
Is that like the new $100 million box office?
Becoming a YouTube... having a success on YouTube.
What's that like as a filmmaker?
- I made that with my friend Bobby Ciraldo.
We did it kind of as an art experiment,
just to see what would happen with it.
It was kind of a fun project to see where it would go
and see if we could make it popular.
And then it got much more popular than we were expecting.
But, yeah, the popularity doesn't really translate
to monetary popularity.
- Unless you're like Justin Bieber or something.
- Yeah, I mean, we got a lot of views,
but, yeah, we don't actually get paid as much as the other,
as a lot of other videos because it has "butt" in the title.
Advertisers aren't as interested in endorsement.
- They tend to stay away.
Even Febreze? [both laugh]
You've worked with William Shatner, I saw on your bio.
That's pretty cool. What was that like?
Because you hear stories about William Shatner--
- Yeah, right.
- That are just all over the place.
What was your experience like?
- He was great. He was really cool.
And I'm a huge Star Trek fan, a huge William Shatner fan,
so getting to work with him was kind of a dream come true.
We ended up watching Monday night football with him
at his house, the night that we shot his interview.
That was just absolutely surreal for me.
I couldn't really believe it the whole time.
- He's an eccentric guy.
I remember going to the farmer's market when I lived in LA
all the time and he would be there with
just gobs of white sun block on his face.
And he would walk around like-- like he just didn't care.
Like, "Hey, I'm an actor, I'm protecting my face."
- Yeah, right.
- So you had a good experience with him?
- Oh, yeah, we had a blast.
He was really fun to work with.
- Okay, so we have about 30 seconds left.
I cast Mark Borchardt in a film I made called
The Godfather of Green Bay .
You know Mark from American Movie
and you did something recently with him.
He's truly an indie icon, isn't he?
- Yeah, Mark's pretty incredible.
[chuckles]
Yeah, he does his own thing.
He's very unique
and he was really fun to work with, too.
- Yeah.
So, Jack Raymond , it shows at the film festival.
Are you gonna be there? - Yep, opening night.
- You gonna do any Q&A or anything?
- Sure, yep. - Awesome.
All right, well, thanks for being here, Andrew. Good luck.
- Thanks for having me. - You've got it.
Up next, a documentary about how
a selfless act by a complete stranger
gives a sick girl a glimmer of hope
and changes both of their lives forever.
- I honestly, and I know this sounds really far fetched,
but I don't think Joni would be here
or she wouldn't be the happy person she was,
if it wasn't for Bob Jensen.
[dramatic piano music]
- Bob just kind of came into our lives
and became part of our lives
through this newspaper article.
- My dad sent her a card and then thought, well,
then she's gonna get all these cards
and then they're gonna stop,
and then she's gonna be sad and lonely again.
So he decided to send her another card the next day
and another one the next day.
Basically, sent her a homemade card, usually oversized,
every day for about two and a half years.
- It's easy to not get involved.
It'd be easy just to ignore that old blurb in the paper
and say, "Oh, I hope somebody sends her a card."
But then to do it
and then do it again and again and again
and ongoing for thousands of cards.
That's dad.
- He was always there for us, I mean, you know,
no matter what we needed, what we had to do,
he was always there.
- It's like in the news, in the media, you focus on the bad,
but, you know, there's so much more good happening.
There's little reminders of that everywhere.
? ?
- That was a clip from The Bear and the Owl .
Joining us now are Robert's daughter, Jan Jensen,
and her husband and the film's director, Mark Davis.
Thanks for being here.
- Sure, thanks for having us. - Thanks for having us.
- My first question, this kind of fell in your lap
because it was your dad.
Before we get into the film aspect,
talk a little bit about your dad and what compels someone
to do something like this.
Because it's a commitment.
Two-and-a-half years he made a card everyday
for this sick child who he did not know.
Talk about your dad a little bit.
- My dad started out as an art teacher,
and then became junior high principal,
then school superintendent
and so he really wanted to continue with art
and so that was his way of relaxing.
So even though he had a busy job,
he'd come home and make cards.
He was a really nice guy. - Yeah.
- And felt that he might as well just share his talents
and what better way to that than for sick kids
or elderly people in a nursing home.
Things like that.
A lot of times he would choose children
who were terminally ill because knowing that they might not
come out of the hospital.
Give them and their families something to look forward to
every day other than more tests and things like that.
- Did he do, I would assume it doesn't end here
and he was like ...
He must have been nice to everybody he met.
You can't picture a guy like this being a jerk to somebody.
I mean, even if he gets cut off in traffic or something.
- Yeah, no, he did this for a lot of kids
and a lot of people in the community.
It's just that Joanie, in particular,
had a really rough run from like eight to 10 years old,
about 11 years old, and then has got better
and has had more recent problems again.
But once my dad passed away in 2014
and I got in touch with her and found out she had saved
all the cards he had ever made, almost a thousand cards.
When we went over, we're like,
"Okay, we have to share this story."
- Okay, so you guys are married and this is your father-in-law.
- Yep. - Is there pressure on you?
Like, oh, I guess I'm not a nice enough guy?
What do I have to do?
- You want to tell the right story
in order to be welcomed into the family, I'll say that.
No, it was a great experience and everyone was really open
to helping us and Joanie was really in to telling her story
because I think she felt a little marginalized growing up.
She always felt a little different
and so I think the cards brought a little bit of light
into her world and I think
she really wanted to tell the story.
- You could show some of these cards, too.
You have some of the cards with you.
Why don't you hold a couple up? Those are just great.
- When we were first sort of...
Well, when I found out about this, I had this vision of,
well, Bob went to Hallmark and he bought a thousand cards
and he stamped them, Henry Ford style
and dropped one in the mail everyday,
but, they're hand painted.
They're hand illustrated.
All of the lettering is done by him.
And he would write these long letters to her.
You know, just telling him about what he was up to,
asking how she was.
And so it was really about the bond
and the relationship that they forged together
and really throughout her life.
Even though he sent her a card everyday
for two and a half years, he continued to send her cards.
He went to her wedding, her birthday parties, up really,
until the day that he passed on.
- He did stop at some point doing it everyday?
- He did, he did. - How did he decide to do that?
That must have been a weird, like,
hey, I still care about you, I'm just gonna slow down here.
- There was sort of a "Dear John" letter at some point.
When he said, you know, I can't do this every day anymore.
I'm getting busy and things. - Carpal tunnel syndrome.
- He was the superintendent of schools in Clinton,
so he was a busy guy and had three kids and a family.
He would write this letter and say, maybe it's gonna be
every other day, you know, and then he would continue
to send it everyday.
It's an amazing story, really.
- So it's your dad, but you're the director.
Did you gravitate to this as easily as Jan did?
- Yeah, I mean, as soon as we saw the bins full of cards.
That was sort of the revelation.
When I saw all the cards in a bin
and they were all different, they were all hand painted,
I mean, it was just such a monumental effort.
Even the envelopes were all hand made.
They're great cards, like that one.
Things like this, he would just send through the mail.
- It's a postcard.
- And he would just stamp it.
They would sort of hand cancel it.
So when I saw this stuff, it just felt like a story
that needed to be told.
- Very cool.
Even the postman would be like, "Wow, this is pretty good."
So talk about when are your screenings?
If people are watching, when can they see this at the festival?
- We're screening Sunday, April 2nd at 1:30 p.m.
And something, actually, as a way to tie in the community
and give back, we're also doing a card making workshop.
Anyone can come in from the community
and it's gonna be at the Union South Marquee.
We're going to...
You know, everyone come and make cards similar to this
or whatever anyone wants to do
and deliver them to sick kids in the local hospitals.
- Very inspiring stuff.
Thank you very much, you guys, for being here
and good luck with the screenings.
That's great.
- Thanks so much. - You've got it.
We'll talk more with Wisconsin filmmakers in just a moment,
but first here's a look at three more brilliant films
featured at the Wisconsin Film Festival.
- Now we've got 12 dishes, because on Wigilia,
we put on the table 12 dishes
and each dish represents one month of the upcoming year.
So we should try all of them to have...
luck and happiness through all the year.
- Okay, I might sit out on these guys here,
because I'm a vegetarian.
- Oh, no, no, all dishes here are vegetarian.
- Well, you know, fish aren't exactly vegetables.
You know, they swim about, have little faces and stuff.
- Well, I'm sorry, I just get confused.
Some vegetarian do eat fish and they do eat eggs.
- Yeah, I'll eat eggs, but no, fish aren't really vegetarian
in my world.
- I don't understand.
Jesus was a fisherman and he wasn't a bad man.
- No, no, don't get me wrong.
I'm sure Jesus was good guy,
it's just I'm not so keen on fish myself.
- Well maybe you could at least try a little bit of carrot.
It won't count, you know.
- I think it'll be a little bit too fishy,
I mean, it's been on top of the ...
- If you take a little bit of the edge,
it doesn't touch the fish even.
- No, I still sort of know.
- But then you will be unhappy.
- Well, it's just two, two months.
I mean, happiness can be a bit overrated, you know.
I don't mind being a bit melancholy.
It's kind of good for an artist
to be a little bit melancholy, maybe,
for a couple of months in a year
when it comes to Autumn, maybe October, November.
Get a bit of inspiration going.
- I used to say the same thing when I was a teenager.
- You didn't like the fish either?
- No.
Okay, help yourself then.
- [voiceover: woman] I reckon when I count out all,
first poets, then the sun, then summer,
then the Heaven of God.
And then the list is done.
But looking back, the first so seems
to comprehend the whole.
The others look a needless show,
so I write poets all.
Their summer lasts a solid year.
They can afford a sun the East would deem extravagant.
And if the further Heaven be beautiful as they prepare
for those who worship them, it is too difficult a grace
to justify the dream.
[birds chirping]
[big band music]
- You've probably heard things.
That this first term is a physical and emotional undoing.
That you will be forced to unlearn everything
that you've ever learned.
That you will break.
What happens here?
And what can you do to minimize the damage?
? ?
Acting's hard work, Stanley.
You have to earn my respect.
- My sister had this weird thing
where she slept with her coach.
I was the one who caught them.
- [Stanley] Was he forcing her?
- Not at all.
She wanted it.
Is that the tennis girl?
I think it's current, generational, sex, power.
- Why did you choose the tennis scandal story?
- I know her sister.
- What? That's crazy, how come?
- A man with a secret.
- When you gonna tell your girlfriend?
- It's all about how badly you want it.
- He changed his mind.
[edgy pop music]
- [instructor] You have to go all the way all the time.
If you pull back even a little,
you'll just disappoint yourself.
- The Wisconsin Film Festival takes place in Madison
from March 30th to April 6th.
With over 150 films to choose from, it is a movie heaven.
The festival attracts more than 30,000 moviegoers
that watch films on several screens around Madison.
Go to the 2017 Wisconsin Film Festival website
and start picking your selections.
We've got more directors and more movies coming your way.
Here's a clip from Fake Jewels .
[folksy guitar music]
- Where the hell is it?
If this time capsule was so important,
why didn't we write down where it's buried?
- Well, we said we were going to bury it somewhere special.
- And what's so special about this?
- We got lost here when we were in kindergarten.
Back when the grass was as tall as we were.
We called it "jungle" for a while after then.
- How do you even remember that?
- Maybe we should try the playground.
- By the school, Emily?
That's on the other side of town.
I told some friends I'd meet up with them in a bit.
- But we promised.
- That was a clip from Fake Jewels and joining me now
are the film's directors, Kate Feldt and Wesley Morgan.
Hello. - Hi.
- Thanks for being here.
So you shot, one of you is from New Glarus, Wesley?
- Yep, that's correct.
- Okay, you shot a film in your hometown of New Glarus.
I shot a film in my hometown too,
but they don't make Spotted Cow in my hometown.
Were there distractions shooting in your hometown?
Or was it a benefit?
- It was definitely a benefit.
One reason I wanted to shoot there is
because there's a lot of great locations
and also I know it's small town Wisconsin.
It's known for Spotted Cow,
but the population is only 2,000.
In the film, we use quite a few locations.
We jumped around between 15 and 20 locations.
I was pretty confident wherever we went somewhere
there'd be nobody there.
That was nice from a production standpoint.
- Okay, makes it a lot easier.
I've always kind of thought time capsules were interesting.
Where did the idea come from for this?
- Yeah, so I wrote the script with my sister.
The idea...
I'm not much of a writer-- my sister is.
She's a creative writing major.
So I always think of scripts
from a more technical standpoint.
With this movie, the goals I wanted to accomplish
was I wanted to use a bunch of different locations
and I also wanted to experiment with different times of day.
I'd never shot during the evening or during golden hour ,
so it was kind of an experiment.
It came around the idea of like a treasure hunt might work.
From that came the idea of the time capsule,
that'd be something people our age might be looking for.
- That's cool.
Now explain golden hour for people that might not understand
what golden hour is.
- Golden hour is the hour right before the sun sets
where there's kind of a yellow light, a golden light
in the sky.
It's a very nice time for filming.
It's very flattering light. - Beautiful, yeah.
So Kate, did you enjoy...
Is it hard to direct with somebody else
or did you enjoy that?
Was that a challenge?
- So we co-directed and co-shot it.
Basically we split up the scenes between Wes and I.
The scenes that we filmed we got to direct
and then the two actresses in it, they're also my friends.
It helps that I already kind of knew them.
It also helped that they were both theater actresses.
We had to bring them down a little bit.
- Right.
They were doing jazz hands. - No.
But I think they caught on pretty well to the filming style.
So that was nice.
- Now was that tough casting or did you just go,
well, let's just use our friends?
Did you have a casting process for a short like this?
- It kind of just fell into place.
I met both of them on a volunteer trip last spring break
and I knew that they had done theater before.
We kind of just shot it on Labor Day, right?
- Mm-hmm.
- Yeah, labor day and they were both available.
We just had a time frame.
- I think if I remember right,
it would be as if today's Tuesday and we said,
"Okay, we're gonna film a film on Thursday.
"We need actors and actresses."
It was almost that quick of how we tried to pull
everything together.
It was just such a happy accident that those two
were perfect for the part.
- Yeah.
So what was your favorite process?
You've got pre-production, even on a short.
You've got production and then you've got post.
As co-directors, what was your most enjoyable part of that?
Or what hat did you enjoy wearing the most, I guess?
- Do you want to take this one first, Kate?
- Mine, I really enjoyed production,
just because it was really short
and we got to explore New Glarus.
And finish it all in a day.
And then post-production was the longest amount of time
because we went into it kind of not expecting a lot
since it was such a short time frame that we had.
So then we could really take our time with post-production.
- What about you?
Just a quick answer though, we've gotta get going here.
- Yeah, I think production.
Some of the things that happened,
like they talk about the magic of set.
Some of the things in the script I was very uneasy about,
but the actresses really made them come alive
and that was nice to watch.
- Took it to another level.
I'm excited to see the film.
Good luck with the festival, and thanks for being here.
- Thank you. - Thanks. - You've got it.
Next, a documentary on one of the most divisive times
in Wisconsin's recent history and why it matters even today.
[dramatic music]
- We're marching in the streets today
because they are attacking our university,
they're attacking public services.
We're not gonna stand for it, are we?
[crowd chants "Kill this bill!]
- [man] When we planned it, it was meant to be
a pretty tame action, just to do something.
Dumping a box of valentines on Scott Walker's desk.
- And then, it exploded into something much more
than we were intending.
- [announcer] One week after Governor Scott Walker
announced his plan to gut the middle class of Wisconsin,
we saw the biggest protest to date
in the capital city of Madison.
- [man] 40,000 people.
50,000 people.
80,000 people.
100,000 people.
Not for a couple of days, but for a couple of weeks.
- [crowd in unison] This is what democracy looks like!
- [man] We occupied the State Capitol for 17 days.
That's never been done in American history.
- [man shouting] Whose house? - [crowd responds] Our house.
- [in unison] Kill this bill! Kill this bill!
- [woman] How were we gonna get them
not to pass the bill?
- [man] There must be a strategy
and we are desperate to figure out what it is.
- We have to organize ourselves!
- It was like a whole machine
emerged to get us out of the Capitol.
- [man] We had made our point.
The protesters being here made their point.
- [protestor] We're on the same side. Do the right thing!
- [protester] You're gonna get screwed like we are.
Don't be foolish.
[crowd shouting and cheering]
- [woman] We have the right to be here.
- [woman] You can't wait for the leadership
to catch up to the people.
- Joining me now is director Katherine Acosta.
Hi, Katherine. - Hi.
- Thanks for being here.
So tell us a little, you know...
It was a divisive time for Wisconsin.
What made you think I have to make a film about this?
Were you just drawn to it because of the size
of the protest or the length of it?
Tell us what made you passionate
about turning this into a film.
- Because I felt there were questions that weren't answered.
There were other films that were made
that were very good films,
but I felt there were questions that weren't answered
that I wanted answered.
I experienced it.
I felt the protest from the periphery, you know.
Marching around the square with my relatives and friends,
but I didn't really understand what was going on
on the inside.
I felt some of the other films, they had a different focus,
like big money and politics, or so on.
In this film, I wanted to have a better understanding
of what happened, how this evolved as a social movement
and then how it kind of slipped away from us.
- Yesterday when we were talking, you said your background
is in sociology and you consider yourself a sociologist
who made a film, and you used a lot of teacher's aids.
Talk about that and that decision,
because you spoke pretty passionately about it yesterday.
- Mm-hmm.
Well, it wasn't my original intent to do that,
but of course, as a sociologist,
I started my research that way
and then it became ...
Some of the people that I wanted to interview,
some of the labor leaders,
those were some of the hard interviews to get.
But the TAs in sociology were very eager to talk
because they had been...
You know, they were scholar activists.
They'd been at the center of the action
and yet they were trained to analyze sociological phenomena.
And they had written papers and published articles
and so on.
They did a lot of thinking about the whole thing.
And so, to me, they have something more useful to say
than just an average person talking about it.
- Right.
How do you as a documentarian, how do you decide?
Like, you know, you've got all this natural action happening
with the protests and marching and all that.
How do you decide a balance there with your interviews,
with footage you have, and you have, I assume,
a lot of handy cam footage from people.
How do you...
Is it an overwhelming task in post or did you enjoy it?
- I did enjoy it, but there's so much
that we couldn't include and in fact
an earlier cut was like 10 minutes longer.
We had a story consultant who said, you know,
"You really need to cut this down."
Because people can only sit through so much.
But, yeah, I think you have to continually focus and refine.
You know, what is the question I'm answering here?
What is the story that I want to tell?
And does this serve that purpose?
Even though this is a great little side issue here
or a great piece of action footage here,
maybe we can't use that.
Maybe that's for another film.
- That's a tough decision, isn't it?
You're gonna have to lose something that you really like.
So talk about the differences between being a sociologist
and a filmmaker.
What do you prefer if either?
- Oh, well I always sort of harbored a secret ambition
to do the filmmaking.
It just seemed...
In fact, when I was in grad school, I thought to myself,
"I want to do that."
I had gone to the Great Plains film festival.
I went to the University of Nebraska,
is where I did my PhD.
And they used to have a big film festival.
And I thought, I want to do this.
But it seemed like a pipe dream
and that you ought to be sensible,
finish your PhD and get a job, you know.
- Yeah, right, right.
- And then this happened
and there was so much I wanted to tell
and I thought this told better in pictures than in writing.
It was a chance to try to stake out some middle ground
between sociology and filmmaking
and see if that works or not.
- Talk about the story element of that.
Does the story element help as a sociologist?
And as a filmmaker?
- I'm not sure what you're asking me.
- Me either, I'm just talking. [laughs]
No, I mean, as a sociologist, do you think,
"I have to tell this particular story."
- Yes. - Okay.
- You always have to refine, what is your question here.
For instance, I did interview research
and so you can go and talk to people
and they're going to tell you a lot of interesting stories,
but what is this paper focusing on?
I might have to save this for another paper, you know.
People do that all the time.
They go out and do their interviews.
They might have 30 interviews
and then they focus on a piece of it.
Here's the part I want to tell now.
And I'll focus on this and another time I can go back
to those interviews and tell another part of the story.
- Are you gonna make another film?
- I would love to.
- What's the subject of your next one?
- Well, we'll have to see. [laughs]
- I mean, this is a big event. It kind of falls in your lap.
It made national headlines, I can see.
But it's gotta be something maybe that'll just strike you,
be like a lightening bolt or something.
- Well, that's what I say.
It has to be something that you really care about
and that you're passionate about.
Otherwise, how do you see it through to the end?
- How do you get through that process, yeah.
- I'm really glad I didn't know how hard it was
or I probably would not have started.
- So many filmmakers say that.
That's a great answer.
Good luck at the festival.
Thank you very much for being here.
- Thank you. - You're welcome.
Next, a classic Greek myth is retold through animation
and the imagination of fourth graders.
- King Minos, did you call me?
What can I do for you?
- Yes, Daedalus, I want you to build a prison.
We need a place where we can lock away the Minotaur.
- Yes, Majesty.
- [narrator] And so the great inventor Daedalus
went to his drawing room
and set to work designing a prison like no other.
- My finest invention, the labyrinth.
- [narrator] This is the ungrateful Minotaur
roaming the labyrinth.
Every year the cruel King Minos calls in 14 tributes
from Athens for the Minotaur to eat.
[growls]
- Who here will volunteer to be a tribute?
- I will.
- [narrator] This was no ordinary volunteer.
This was Theseus, the son of the king of Athens.
- [female narrator] He was sent with six other boys
and seven girls to the Minotaur's island of Crete.
Theseus was not planning to be sacrificed though.
He was planning to kill the Minotaur.
- Joining me is the film's editor, Luke Bassuener
and two talented, now fifth graders, Jaeana Sabally
and Jalen Baumbach.
Welcome to the show, you guys. - Thanks for having us.
- Are you missing school by being here?
- Yes. - Yes. - Shame on you.
And some teacher, huh? [laughs]
Looks great.
I'm very excited to see this film.
Did you guys enjoy the process? - Yeah.
- I assume this was your first film.
- Yes. - Yeah.
- Now we've got a list of IMDb credits a mile long.
Luke, what makes you want to do this?
Being an art teacher, it's hard enough.
You jump into not only film, but animation,
which I've heard is incredibly tedious.
Talk about the process a little bit.
- It can be tedious, but it's great.
I mean, you guys enjoyed it, right?
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- This project kind of started
from a couple of different projects.
I'd worked with our music teacher, Shawn McMahon,
the year before.
She had done a composition unit with her kids.
Making music to go with Gustave Holst, The Planets.
We made some sort of free form animation to that
and small groups would plan out 10 to 15 seconds
of space-related animation.
So there's lots of planets blowing up
and space ships running into asteroids and stuff.
But then we had also been doing this thing
with the fourth grade teachers who teach mythology
for their literacy units.
Where we had been doing graphic novels and
I was like, 'We could probably put these two things together.
We could probably make a narrative film.'
And so, really, last year we had no idea
if it was actually gonna work.
It was just gonna be a lesson plan for process.
We were gonna try out story boarding things
and see if we could fit all these different little groups
together and make one narrative film.
It worked, guys. Well done.
- Yeah. - Yep.
- How much of the year did it take?
- Almost all of it.
- Almost the whole year. Wow.
And what was your favorite part of the process, Jalen?
- Probably making the characters.
Yeah, it was really fun to draw all the characters
and then do all the printing of the characters.
- [Pete] Yeah.
And what about you, Jaeana, what was your favorite part?
- Mine was either shooting or making the backgrounds.
- Oh, nice, okay.
Were you surprised how long it took you guys to make a film?
Even a short film like this.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
[chuckles]
Luke, I have to ask you, has the bar now been raised
in your class?
Is your class this year
thinking they need a Golden Globe nomination, or?
- The bar has been raised.
We're working on the follow up.
This year it's an Egyptian myth.
We're doing the myth of Isis and Osiris.
We just finished most of the animation.
Now they're writing bits of script and they're getting ready
to do some of the voice acting stuff.
So, yeah, we're bringing it for the next one.
- You're busy.
So you talked about writing.
Obviously it's an adaptation.
Who did the writing?
Did you guys do the writing?
- Yeah. - No kidding.
- Kind of.
- [Pete] Kind of? Your parents help you?
- No. - No.
We kind of wrote the scripts,
but Mr. Bassuener kind of put it together
so it would make sense.
Now do you guys both have a filmmaking bug?
Do you want to make other films now?
- Yes. - Yeah.
- What's your favorite genre of film?
What would you do next?
- I don't know. It's hard to say.
- You've got a lot of time to figure it out.
So what else do you teach in your class?
You can't just teach filmmaking, right,
because you're an art teacher, right?
- We do all kinds of stuff.
This project involved a preliminary,
kind of like a graphic novel project where we
first read the myth and sort of broke it down,
piece by piece to get it into 15 different scenes
that each group of four or five kids could animate.
There was the printmaking project
to make sure that our characters were consistent.
If one character turns this way or this way,
they had to work together to make sure they made block prints
that would look like the same character.
There was the whole landscape lesson
where we made the giant paper backdrops
that make up the background.
- I've gotta tell you, I applaud you
for just exposing kids to this.
This is great.
And it's hard enough being a teacher.
It's great work.
Are you guys gonna be at the festival?
Are you gonna go to the screening?
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Yeah, are you gonna answer some questions, maybe, after?
- Yeah.
- Sign some autographs. - Yeah.
- Jaeana seems a little less eager.
You want the limelight, Jalen. She's more behind the scenes.
- Yeah. - Nothing wrong with that.
Thank you very much for being here, you guys, today.
- Thanks for having us. - Good luck with the screening
and good luck with the next project, whatever it may be.
Thanks to all the filmmakers who've joined us
for this preview.
Here's our final grouping of film clips.
A forbidden romance set in the shadow of World War I.
A haunting drama about a masked shooting,
and a love story that won the grand jury prize
at this year's Sundance Film Festival.
[light piano music]
[speaking in German]
- There's your hat and I love you.
- I love you too.
[laughs]
I love you too.
So you've been in a kayak before?
- Yeah, I was in a kayak before.
- In the ocean?
- Not in the ocean, no.
It was more like the Delaware river, I think.
- Do I look good in a bathing suit?
- You look beautiful, sweetheart.
- Well, you saw me at the pool party.
- Yes, I did.
- So not too bad for an old woman.
- You're not an old woman. Will you stop?
You're beautiful.
Come here. [mm-mwah]
- Good going. - Thank you.
[edgy rock music]
? Just another dreamer
? Waiting for another dreamer
? Just another lover
? Looking for another lover in life
? Just another [mumbles] on my end
? Just another vampire on the loose
? Just another being out on the dale
[screaming]
[woman sings hauntingly] ? You are my sunshine
? My only sunshine
? You make me happy
? When skies are gray
? But you'll never know dear
? How much I love you
- [man] One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17.
? My sunshine away
- We're back with festival program director Jim Healy
to wrap things up here.
So Jim, it looks like a great batch of films, as always.
- It is, yeah.
- I expect nothing less from you.
Are there any changes in the festival,
venues, where the parties are,
that people need to know, maybe?
- No, we're pretty much at the same venues
we were at last year.
We are at the Barrymore Theater on the east side.
- Opening night. - Opening night
and for the three days after that.
It's a big theater and can accommodate a lot of people.
I think we have tickets available for almost everything
that's screening there right now.
- I would encourage people to go to that,
because opening night is an absolute blast.
The film is always great, the party's fun.
- It's a beautiful theater.
It was built as a movie theater.
It's meant to be a room where you get to see movies
in a big room on a big screen.
- The way it's supposed to be, right? - Exactly.
- Awesome, well, thanks again.
I guess I'll see you in 365 days.
- Yes, certainly, count me in. - For next year's festival.
Yeah, book it, it's in.
Thanks so much for being here, Jim.
Thanks to all the filmmakers that joined me today
and thank you for watching Director's Cut .
For more information on the Wisconsin Film Festival
go to WPT.org and click on Director's Cut .
Also, don't forget to like WPT on Facebook
or follow us on Twitter and look for the new season
of Director's Cut , our 10th, which premieres this spring.
In the meantime, I challenge you to see
as many independent films as you can
at this year's Wisconsin Film Festival.
We'll see you next time on Director's Cut .
[upbeat music]
- We'll all leave this place.
No one stays here forever.
[light piano music]