New Day Films
Growing Up Female is part of a November series of films by documentarian Julie Reichert.
Creating thought-provoking movies that are well before their time, Ohio-based documentarian Julie Reichert has been called the Godmother of American independent film. Her progressive documentaries have earned her three Academy Award nominations and in 2018 she was given the International Documentary Association’s Career Achievement Award. Known for challenging the status quo, it’s fitting that Cinematheque on UW-Madison’s campus will feature four weeks of her films in November.
Cinematheque is an art house cinema, open and free to the public, that is a vestige of a once-thriving film society scene on the UW campus that, at its height, had more than 20 different groups.
There is no buttery popcorn or any other food allowed. The seats don’t recline and the line-up isn’t based on marketing budgets or projected box office numbers. But the four walls are home to one of the most interesting and fantastic cinemas in the country. According to James Kreul, Isthmus film critic and freelance journalist, Cinematheque creates magic on the fourth floor of Vilas Hall.
During the school year, Cinematheque regularly offers films at Vilas every Friday and Saturday evening, as well as screenings Sunday afternoons at the Chazen Museum of Art. Additional screenings and talks with filmmakers are usually added to the calendar throughout the year.
In the summer, showings are usually Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings for
For Halloween, this year: "Revenge of the Creature" in 3D.
about six weeks. Though the free admission means Cinematheque isn’t tied to economics to define success, the curators still aim to have a schedule with wide appeal.
The fall season starts Labor Day weekend with The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, kicking off a series of more than a dozen films and shorts on loan from the Chicago Film Society.
As a screening facility of the Wisconsin Center for Film & Theater Research, and a member of the International Federation of Film Archives, Cinematheque has access to a huge array of film archives that only trust their collection to locations that have proven they know how to handle them with the care they demand. These affiliations give Cinematheque access to a wide selection of films outside their own archive and allows them to consistently offer distinctive viewing opportunities in Madison.
This year, that includes a number of silent film restorations from The George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, as well as a trilogy of feature films by Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, plus a number of his shorts and documentaries.
For Halloween, newly installed 3D technology will be used in a double-header of horror films featuring Revenge of the Creature, which is the sequel to Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Parasite, one of the first films to feature Demi Moore.
The next month, Reichert’s first film, Growing Up Female, will screen on Nov. 2. The movie features six women from age four to age 35 and examines the forces that shape their lives. The first documentary that grew from the Women’s Liberation Movement, this pioneering work, released in 1971, was selected by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry. It’s a dramatic introduction to feminism in the early 1970s that Reichert’s own New Day Films says shows how much has changed, and how much has stayed the same.
David Bordwell, a film professor emeritus at UW-Madison, says the world of film has changed dramatically in past decades, making Cinematheque even more important.
“Before, film culture was a culture of scarcity. Now it’s a culture of abundance,” says Bordwell, who has written several volumes of film history. “One of the things you don’t have more of is time. [Cinematheque has] experts to steer you and curate what you see, which is really valuable.”
As a city, Madison tends to be supportive of all kinds of arts programming, but other than the Wisconsin Film Festival, that massive support doesn’t seem to extend to the cinema.
Nearly 30,000 people attended the festival in 2019. Kreul points out that Cinematheque uses the same care (and many of the same resources) to provide a year-round line-up of films, but scarcely any Madisonians take advantage of the truly world-class resource located right in the center of town.
There are few facilities like this anywhere in the country, and even fewer that never charge admission. Jim Healy, director of programming at Cinematheque, isn’t sure what the barriers are to more locals taking advantage of what Cinematheque offers. Far from only catering to critics or cinephiles, he says the staff at Cinematheque try to choose films that have appeal and provide a fulfilling filmgoing experience. “We program films that we think are significant to film history and contemporary cinema that otherwise would not have a theatrical venue in Madison … We like to show films we know the audience is going to be moved by, entertained by, and enjoy,” says Healy.
Cinematheque helps bring moviegoers back to the medium’s roots, showing as many
"The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford" will screen Labor Day weekend.
films as possible in their original format, providing the scale, color and feeling of a film as it was originally presented in the era in which it was created.
“I do think that creates a more authentic experience that allows us to really see the work more for what it’s meant historically and how and why it was conceived and why it exists. I think it brings us closer to the experience of why it was created,” says Healy.
Even with his lifelong love of movies, it’s still possible for Healy to find something new and exciting to watch. His favorite memory from his time at Cinematheque involved a colleague recommending that he watch La Horse by French filmmaker Jean Gabin, a film he had never heard of. Not only was Healy blown away by the film, but he recalls how nearly all of the 60 people who attended the showing approached him afterwards to share how much they’d enjoyed it. The capacity of film to present the unexpected and to unite strangers for a communal experience drives Healy; it’s also why Cinematheque exists.
“I think it’s becoming a rarer experience to be surprised going to the movies. At Cinematheque, there are plenty of opportunities to have no idea what you’re going to get, and you really have your eyes opened to the possibilities of what can be done with images themselves,” says Kreul. “Cinematheque brings in films that do explore the artistic potential of the cinema.”
Healy puts it another way: “There are no new old movies or new movies, there are only movies you’ve seen or haven’t seen.”
