Music Box Films
From left: Lauren ‘Lolo’ Spencer, Steve Wolski and Chris Galust.
Unlike widescreen spectaculars, independent filmmakers often use visual scope to make the intimate obvious and the subliminal centermost. Give Me Liberty, scheduled for release in late August, is an unlikely tale of separate communities whose members find they share a common sense of humanity.
The cinéma vérité-style film came about itself from an unlikely collision of cultures with distinct Wisconsin ties. Directed by Russian-born filmmaker Kirill Mikhanovsky with a script by Milwaukee playwright Alice Austen, Give Me Liberty was filmed entirely in Milwaukee against a bleak inner-city landscape that becomes a visually and emotionally dull backdrop against which the movie unflinchingly unfolds.
The film has its Madison premiere Aug. 29 at 7 p.m. when the UW Cinematheque kicks off its fall film season with a free screening in Room 4070 of Vilas Hall. Give Me Liberty, distributed by Chicago’s Music Box Films, will go into general release the next day at Marcus Point Cinema on Madison’s west side.
The story follows Russian immigrant Vic (newcomer Chris Galust) who drives a courtesy van for Milwaukee Liberty Express, ferrying passengers with disabilities to appointments and destinations. He’s a younger member of a large community of mostly elderly Russian expats, a dozen of whom need to attend a countryman’s funeral and have no way of getting there.
Ever the good son, Vic bundles his relatives into the van with several regular clients including Tracy (Lauren “Lolo” Spencer), a young African American woman with ALS who uses a wheelchair and who works on behalf of other clients with disabilities. The awkward situation becomes even more so when the relatives miss the burial and Tracy’s client misses his job interview. But the passengers in the van, who each experience isolation and discrimination, begin to integrate, finding common ground despite their obvious differences.
The film is rich with humor, much of it brought on by the Russians, who seem to travel everywhere with their own accordion player. It also has significant drama — in the form of continuing clashes between the Milwaukee police and black protesters demonstrating against police violence.
All of the film’s characters gain a better understanding of the challenges facing people with disabilities as they interact with Vic’s clientele. Mikhanovsky, who studied film at UW-Milwaukee, drove a van for people with disabilities. And he recruited his cast members through Milwaukee’s Eisenhower Center, which provides vocational training for people with disabilities. Spencer, who plays Tracy, has ALS.
The film already has earned critical praise at both the Sundance and Cannes film festivals and, according to news reports, is currently playing on 120 screens in the director’s native Russia, where he says audiences have responded strongly to the film’s sense of humanity.
The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis wrote that the film “draws you in with its moving performances and blasts of broad comedy.”
For those who know Milwaukee’s mean inner-city streets, the all-too-familiar landscape may help bring the challenges of its residents into an even sharper focus.
