Wisconsin Film Festival features Wisconsin’s own

The 2002 Wisconsin Film Festival April 4-7 offers films from around the world, but homegrown filmmakers also will receive plenty of screen time.

The festival will present 55 films shot in Wisconsin or made by filmmakers with Wisconsin ties as part of the “Wisconsin’s Own” series and in the “Student Filmmaker” competitions.

Films include the Midwest premiere of “Thirteen Conversations About One Thing,” written and directed by Jill Sprecher and sister Karen Sprecher, both Madison natives, and “Home Movie,” Milwaukee filmmaker Chris Smith’s latest documentary.

Other scheduled screenings include:

• “E-Day!,” a comedy short written and directed by Scott Dikkers, former editor-in-chief of “The Onion.” Chevy Chase stars as President Horace Lumley, stuck with the task of calming the American public as the threat of an Eskimo military invasion looms.
• “Mexicanidad,” an innovative video history of mural art by Milwaukee filmmaker Dan Banda, commissioned by the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, Chicago.
• The program “Perceptions of Perception: Short Film and Video Works” by acclaimed experimental filmmaker Scott Stark, including his 2002 Whitney Biennial selection “Angel Beach.”
• Experimental films including “At Home and Asea” by Beloit native Mark Street, who has shown his work at the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Cinematheque, and the Toronto International and Sundance film festivals.
• “No Sleep ’til Madison,” an ensemble comedy about 30-year-old Owen Fenby, a stunning case of arrested-development syndrome who lives for the annual high-school hockey pilgrimage with his old pals. This low-budget feature was shot entirely in Dane and Dodge Counties by four-headed directing/producing team Peter Rudy, Erik Moe, David Fleer and Ivo Knezevic, all buddies from Madison’s West Side now working in film and television in Wisconsin, California and Chicago.
• “Man Hunt.” This humorous and revealing documentary presents an unflinching look at a year in the life of three single women in pursuit of Mr. Right. Producer Matt Rader was born and raised in New Berlin and Waukesha.
• The program “Art and Community in Wisconsin” includes Gretta Wing Miller’s Madison-made documentary “The Sid Boyum Sculpture Project” and Brooke Maroldi’s “Stating the Arts in Milwaukee.”
• The program “Stories from Up North” includes “The Dogs of El Niño,” a documentary on the annual sled-dog races on Madeline Island off the northern tip of Wisconsin, by Chicago filmmakers Cyndi Moran and Eric Scholl.

The “Wisconsin Shorts” program includes short films such as:

• “Pickup Polka,” a comedy short with a surprising twist on pickup basketball by Madison filmmaker Chris Collins.
• “Robot Bastard!,” written and directed by Milwaukee native Rob Schrab, creator of the “Scud the Disposable Assassin” comic book.
• “Cat Lady,” a comedy short by Madison native and Columbia University grad Liesel de Boor, featuring renowned “dingbat” Irma St. Paule, who has appeared on “Saturday Night Live” and “Comedy Central.”
• “Tiger Show,” a documentary on an abandoned roadside circus shot in Aniwa, Wis., by Milwaukee filmmaker Nate Gubin.
• “Laid Out,” a documentary portrait of a flamboyant funeral director by Oconomowoc filmmaker Thomas Grable.
• “The Book and the Rose,” a romantic drama based on the popular short story by Max Lucado, starring Chris Kennedy, a Waunakee native who played on the 1994 Rose Bowl Championship Badger football team at UW–Madison.
• “The Bear Garden,” a hand-painted experimental short by Milwaukee filmmaker Andrea Leuteneker.

Wisconsin filmmaker talks include “The Making of ‘Red Betsy,'” featuring writer/director Chris Boebel, a Boscobel native; producer Andrew Lang, an Oconomowoc native with family in Delafield; and New York casting director Adrienne Stern, recent projects include Jill and Karen Sprecher’s “Thirteen Conversations About One Thing.” The filmmakers will discuss how they got their feature film projects developed and produced — and shot in Wisconsin — while staying true to their creative visions.

Advance ticket package went on sale March 7; advance single ticket sales start Thursday, March 21.

For information, call the festival hotline, (877) 963-FILM.