One of the rituals of the Wisconsin Film Fest is collecting fest buttons, and this year will be no exception.
While the decision to take the 2021 Wisconsin Film Festival online only wasn’t an easy one, it was perhaps the only one. “We weren’t happy about it, but we had two choices this year: Not do a festival, or do it online,” says Ben Reiser, director of operations. “As hard as we tried, we could not get commitments from campus that they would let us do an in-person festival of any kind.”
The 2020 fest didn’t happen at all. Scheduled for April 2-9, 2020, it was too close to the beginning of the pandemic shutdown to pivot to full online showings (although some selections were streamed free for limited times).
Even so, for 2021, festival organizers moved the traditional fest dates from April to May in hopes of being able to hold some kind of in-person outdoor event for even a few films. They investigated booking an outdoor drive-in theater, and even Camp Randall.
“We had big dreams of doing a couple of nights of films at Camp Randall,” says Reiser. “Even if we managed to attract 5,000 people, which would have been our biggest crowd ever, it still seems we could have had social distancing.” But organizers couldn’t get officials to commit by the time the festival needed to rent a screen and digital projection equipment.
Additionally, Reiser says he discovered that “drive-in theater owners are all snowbirds; they all go to Florida for the winter and none of them have any interest in coming back to Wisconsin before Memorial Day.”
But, he adds, “We found a way to pull together a really great festival.” The content is as strong as ever. While organizers decided to reduce the overall number of films (to 115) to keep things more manageable, the entries for Wisconsin’s Own films were so strong they decided to keep the number of these about the same. There are 37 Wisconsin films this year; 30 are shorts and seven are feature-length.
Nonetheless, Reiser says “it’s heartbreaking” not to have that in-person camaraderie and joie de vivre that veteran Wisconsin Film Festival-goers love, like chatting with strangers in line, seeing the fest trailer for the first time (and the somewhat less joyous experience of seeing it for the seventh or eighth time), and experiencing the stirring films that have packed the Union Theater, like RBG or Knock Down the House, where there doesn’t seem to be a dry eye in the house.
Another downside, Reiser notes (and one that frustrates fellow programmers Jim Healy and Mike King), is that the festival has little control over how these films will be seen and on what devices and under what conditions, whereas it has always taken pains to show films under the best projection situations possible.
However, there are silver linings to the online route. At the in-person festival, with one-time viewings and venues that can be scattered across town, it’s not feasible for a fest-goer to be able to see every film. This year, any film will be available for viewing for the whole festival week, starting at 10 a.m. on Thursday, May 13, through 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, May 20, so it’s theoretically possible for someone who has the time to see every film, or at least a lot more than usual.
That makes buying an all-festival pass this year a more cost-effective option, notes Reiser, especially because it was reduced from its usual $325 to $140 — “We’ve sold close to 400.”
Another beneficial pandemic side effect is that “everyone has been in the same situation, stuck at home,” Reiser says. So while an in-person fest means that only a limited number of directors and cast members can make it to Madison for in-person presentations and Q-and-As, this year “we’ve been able to talk to a ton of filmmakers” and record video interviews or podcasts that will also be a part of the package.
Fest movies will be streamed to a ticketholder’s chosen device via Eventive. Reiser is reassuring that the app is easy to use and has an excellent FAQ and how-to page, even a live chat window for help. “If you aren’t used to streaming or casting it may take a while,” he says, but you can test the app beforehand, never a bad idea.
What are likely to be the hot films to see? “I’m just like everyone else,” says Reiser, “I’ve read the guide, and I’m drooling over some of the films that sound good to me, but I haven’t seen a lot of them.” (The exception to that is the Wisconsin’s Own entries, which Reiser helps program.)
As far as the super-popular hot ticket films that have attracted big crowds to large venues like the Wisconsin Union Theater in years past, Reiser says that nabbing a ticket this year is most likely not going to be an issue.
Because the fest is all online, the seating limits of the smaller venues don’t limit sales, and while the distributors of some films have asked that the fest cap ticket numbers, Reiser doesn’t think that’s going to be a problem either, since the caps are large, on the order of 500 tickets, and he’s fairly confident that if push comes to shove, the distributors will let the fest sell more tickets to those shows.
There’s more good news. There will be film fest buttons, and not only that, there will be two years’ worth of buttons, because the buttons for the 2020 fest were never distributed.
The fest is selling plenty of merchandise this year, including T-shirts, sweatshirts, joggers, and even fest-logo socks, and with any purchase you get a free set of buttons, says Reiser. He’s also considering setting up a table outside of some campus building on University Avenue and “throwing buttons into cars as they go by.”
He might be kidding. But it could make good B-roll for next year's fest trailer.
