Courtesy Independent Film Company
Dakota Fanning, left, and Cory Michael Smith in 'The Sun Never Sets.'
Dakota Fanning, left, and Cory Michael Smith in 'The Sun Never Sets,’ which kicks off the Thursday premiere series on Aug. 27.
UW Cinematheque, Madison downtown's repertory venue and the nexus of all cinematic avenues, is doubling up this fall season. Or, more accurately, skillfully squeezing in 12 of the 14 cancelled screenings this summer after a chilled water line burst on June 29. That means Katsuhito Ishii's lovingly eccentric The Taste of Tea (2004) will be lighting up the local screen after all (on Oct. 23).
In a couple of cases, summer holdovers are paired in a double feature, like The Producers (1968) and The Twelve Chairs (1970) on Sept. 19 in honor of Mel Brooks' centennial, or utilized to complement the tone and timbre of a new selection, like Dorothy Arzner's The Wild Party (1929) following another early sound-era melodrama, Clarence Brown's Letty Lynton (1932) on Oct. 16.
The 2026 Fall Arts Preview logo.
Though, if you'd ask one of the senior programmers, Mike King, the 25th anniversary, 35mm presentation of Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan's postmodern music chronicle Josie and the Pussycats (2001) on Nov. 7 reigns supreme. A film that King has stanned for years and watched more than 10 times since its initial release, "its sugar-rush satire of product placement seems to finally be building up a bit of a fanbase, so it's nice that people are catching on and I'm no longer in a cult of one," he playfully writes via email.
The aforementioned features define the Cinematheque's mission to be a home to all decades of the medium. But even if you'd cherry-pick a handful on the fold-out print calendar, it wouldn't quite reveal the breadth of what the UW-Madison campus program has artfully assembled most Thursdays through Saturdays between Aug. 27 and Dec. 13 at 4070 Vilas Hall.
But let's start somewhere. The Thursday premiere series, established in 2022, brings Chicago-based "mumblecore" director Joe Swanberg back to Madison on its opening night for The Sun Never Sets (2026), starring Dakota Fanning. And the new films continue for the next 12 consecutive Thursdays with more unorthodox, genre-elusive fare like the uncannily animated The Misconceived (2026), made in a 3D game engine, on Sept. 17. The 2026 Palme d'Or-winning, Romanian-Norwegian family drama Fjord debuts Oct. 15.
A new documentary on the Vietnam War's first Black special operations unit, Soul Patrol (2026), sees director J.M. Harper in conversation with journalist Jesse Lewis after its Oct. 29 screening. Concluding this series is Chronovisor (2026), a scholarly mystery that thrillingly flirts with and subverts tropes of science fiction and horror genres, enveloped in a lavish orchestral score, on Nov. 19.
A once-per-month Sunday afternoon series at the Chazen Museum puts the spotlight on Manhattan-based distributor Zeitgeist Films (Sept. 27, Oct. 18, Nov. 22, Dec. 13). "Distribution is one of the key unsung aspects of shaping film culture," King writes. Considering that companies like A24 and Neon have come to cultivate their own fanbases and merchandise, "giving a showcase to a company like Zeitgeist [that's] put in decades of essential work is a natural," King says.
The Sunday screenings include international art-house cinema like Todd Haynes's queer experimental anthology film, Poison (1991) and Guy Maddin's German Expressionism-inspired Careful (1992), "which has a completely unreal color scheme," King emphasizes. The fall season's coup de grâce, Derek Jarman's singular essay film, Blue (1993), is an autobiographical work beyond conventional cinema forms, analogous to video art in its unchanging International Klein Blue frame over a beautiful 75-minute sound collage. If that weren't enticing enough, "everything will be shown on original release [16 and 35mm] prints," King says, from the collection archived at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Reseach (816 State St).
Cinematheque is also delving headfirst into the Telugu-language (Tollywood) spectacles of director S.S. Rajamouli for a dense autumn weekend (Nov. 13-15). The epic four-film block of commercial Indian cinema is the first of its kind since 2010, after a one-off like the Bollywood masala Om Shanti Om (2007), which last screened in 2022. Though, these Indian blockbusters are often booked in surrounding theaters like AMC Fitchburg 18 and Marcus Point, notes JoAnne Powers, Indian cinephile, WORT-FM producer and host of the "Wages of Cinema" live biweekly movie calendar.
In the years since the original release of Rajamouli’s Eega in 2012, “Tollywood and Kollywood [Tamil-language films] have greatly increased their footprint in Madison’s cinema landscape,” says Powers. Powers sees these film industries as “one of the Cinematheque’s most neglected areas in the past couple decades...so it’s nice to see them focusing on it a little bit.”
If nothing else, the Rajamouli series will serve as a test run to see how well it's received and determine the future of this branch of Indian movies at the Cinematheque. It's one that extends beyond the independent origins of the Indian Parallel Cinema movement, where campus programming has more routinely gravitated (see this past spring's Days and Nights in the Forest (1970)).
Director of programming Jim Healy has also lent his stamp of approval to guest curators, doubling down on the series premise from late February 2026, when Owen Kline (Funny Pages) visited with his own profound mini-festival of sorts. For four straight days starting Dec. 3, director Casper Kelly will be in Madison to premiere his latest horror comedy, Buddy (2026), and share his own picks — from the Maysles' Salesman (1969) on Dec. 4 to The Dreamlife of Angels (1998) on Dec. 6, to name just two.
All events are free and open to the public. Visit cinema.wisc.edu for specific screening times.
