The 22nd annual Wisconsin Film Festival may have been just another victim of the COVID-19 pandemic, but unlike the city’s performing arts events, the festival’s artistic content — the films themselves — live on, untouched and ready for viewing.
The festival, a joint presentation of the UW-Madison Division of the Arts and the Department of Communication Arts, had planned to show 155 short and full-length films April 2-9 at five different venues, four of which are on the UW-Madison campus. The closure of campus and a March 13, declaration by the State of Wisconsin Department of Health limiting the size of public activities in light of the pandemic, dealt the festival a one-two punch.
“It was hard to let it go,” says Jim Healy, the festival’s director of programming. “That none of the films will be screened is disappointing, but it seems kind of irrelevant in the face of the pandemic.”
The roster of films included 41 categorized as Wisconsin’s Own, movies made by filmmakers with state ties. Several of them, in fact, earned Golden Badger Awards, awarded by a jury of arts professionals that included Isthmus arts and culture editor Catherine Capellaro, and filmmakers Lori Felker and Carol Brandt.
In addition to the organizers, the filmmakers themselves are disappointed, if not crushed by the loss of opportunities to screen their work. Therese Barry-Tanner, producer of the film Determined, about progress made at UW-Madison in Alzheimer’s disease research and challenges to families caring for sufferers of the disease, was especially let down.
“We had done a great job getting the word out and expected to fill all 330 seats in The Marquee at Union South for the April 5 premiere,” she says. “We weren’t surprised when we received official word of the film festival’s cancellation, but we are carrying on with our goal to make sure Determined is seen across the U.S. once the pandemic threat has subsided.”
Felker, a filmmaker and professor who this year served as judge for the Golden Badger Awards, also expressed frustration.
“It’s an absolute bummer that the film festival can’t happen right now. I was really excited with the prospect of giving out the awards at the opening night ceremony and meeting the filmmakers whose films made me laugh and cry,” Felker says. “I’ve got films screening at seven cancelled festivals this year, but I also am relieved that we’re not endangering any lives by trying to go forward with the festival.”
Along with disappointment, the festival cancellation comes with a high financial cost, and planners will be able to recover little of its operating budget. “My impression is most of the operating budget has already been spent,” says Ben Reiser, who programmed the Wisconsin’s Own lineup. He anticipates festival losses “in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Festival organizers are working with the Campus Arts Box Office, part of the Wisconsin Union Directorate, to develop ticket refund scenarios that may include options to donate the refund to the festival program itself or earn credits toward admission to 2021 festival films.
The group also is looking for opportunities to still screen some of the festival films throughout the year at Cinematheque, the on-campus film society, or in area theaters. This is especially true for the Wisconsin’s Own category, and organizers’ efforts may even result in a special screening ceremony and Golden Badger Awards presentation for the winning filmmakers.
Unfortunately, a virtual online festival is not one of the options, Reiser and Healy say, and for different reasons.
“The vast majority of festival films are already owned by filmmakers, studios or distribution companies and the festival showing is just one stop in their journey,” Reiser says. “Most of them would not give permission to screen the films online out of fear of piracy. In fact, just thinking about it feels like a ton of work without great results, and it’s not our thing.”
Healy objects to online screening for more esoteric reasons. “You can watch a film at home sitting on the couch with your dog, I suppose, but it's really a matter of size, scope and setting,” he explains. “It’s an entirely different experience when you see a film sitting in the dark with other people, even if it’s a roomful of strangers. Madison has a good cinema audience eager to see the films, and that makes the festival experience here especially rewarding.”
Both Healy and Reiser are looking ahead to the 23rd annual Wisconsin Film Festival, scheduled for April 8-15, 2021. It’s possible that a few of the films scheduled for this year’s festival could show up there as well, Reiser says.
