Op-Ed: My Two Top Selections from Milwaukee Film Festival's 11th Year
Two Selections for MKE Films 11th Year
The Milwaukee Film Festival hit its eleventh year with a selection of over 350 festival quality films being screened throughout the city for residents and visiting cinephiles alike. Providing diverse viewing experiences and giving an audience to unique and important voices. The festival was filled to the brim with rich documentaries and coming of age dramas that not only tug at your heartstrings but they also provide a lens for you to understand those insecurities you may have always pushed to the side.
The festival took this year’s run as a fantastic opportunity to continue to connect Milwaukee and the world with cinematographic pieces that will continue to inform and entertain long after you’ve finished watching them and even through the festival’s finale. With limited time and such a full list of movies, two individual films stood out the most and gave me a greater a sense of the diverse viewing opportunities of what the festival in its vastness had to offer.
Parasite, possibly the most popular movie to make a festival run this season, was packing the seats of the Oriental this October when luck and circumstance brought me into the chairs for a screening of Premature just next door. Delivering raw and beautiful emotions, it was a viewing experience that had been lacking from other films I’ve seen this year.
Zora Howard delivers the realness of soon-to-be collegiate Ayanna, encapsulating the need for her to grow beyond the abruptness of her most recent romantic relationship while also learning that she must nurture the sororal ones that she has built with the women that are around her. In no sense does this film place a false idea that these relationships are easy or even better through Ayanna’s eyes and what she’s looking for physically, but rather they nurture her and are inclined to help motivate her in directions that will continue to benefit her. All of this is done while also exploring some of the most sensitive decisions and subjects that young women face every day.
The emotion conveyed in the heartfelt and raw scenes brings the viewer into the diverse and complicated landscape of a teenage girl about to take on the world. A string of almost dialogue-free scenes forces the characters to face their futures for themselves, as independent people rather than relying on one another in twisted senses of ownership based on their relationship.
The drama here never feels played solely for entertainment. Every act and motion feels deliberate. The film revolves are the woman Ayanna sets out to be and the woman she feels the world wants her to be. At its heart, Premature is a movie about growth and liberation, of a young black woman whose cultivation of life and art is just beginning as she prepares to move away from home.
On the other end of the spectrum, Framing John DeLorean is a docudrama that delivers the fast-paced and unbelievable life of famed auto engineer and businessman John Delorean through interviews and re-enactments. Even the legend himself would have been entertained by the film.
A man marred by his gung-ho lifestyle and approach to the auto industry, Framing John DeLorean delves deep into why the stainless steel car from the Back to The Future series failed where it otherwise should have succeeded. The re-enactments are carried by Alec Baldwin and Morena Baccarin, largely conveying the man that DeLorean actually was rather than the one cult-adorers make him out to be.
While these scenes don’t provide any more information than what is already presented, they do enable the audience to imagine what the biopic of this unique man may have been like if one could ever finish production. On the other hand, the interviews with friends, colleagues, adversaries, and even prosecuting attorneys provide an in-depth look at the undoing of a man who had the will to topple the status quo of car manufacturing, but didn’t have the right type of mettle to be able to see his vision to the end. In truth, the documentary segments leave many “what if?” moments regarding DeLorean's life and business: Which decision marked the point of no return and how could he have bounced back otherwise?
There’s always going to be the possibility that he could have been so much more but there’s no denying that this film is everything it should be. There’s long been a cult following and still a pop-culture obsession with the sleek design of this man’s car, and this film taps into it perfectly. Don’t look at this film as an expression of John DeLorean ever having been the hero or the villain. This film works because it sets him out as both. It makes no mistake that he was a man who wanted to do something great, but was human nonetheless. Ultimately, his loved ones paid the price for his misdeeds and zealous nature.
A DeLorean parked outside the Rivoli theater in Cedarburg after a screening of “Framing John DeLorean.”
As unique as each of these films are in their rite, they represent less than a percent of the films screened at this year’s Milwaukee Film Festival. With over 87,000 fans participating in the festival this year, there was record attendance across the fifteen days that the festival ran. Each year is a chance to discover something new and if you were unable to attend this year, keep your eyes open for next fall. We have the opportunity every year to see countless movies that will never see global theatrical releases thanks festivals like the one Milwaukee Film runs. They help to make sure that we all can continue to enjoy the unique perspectives of creatives from around the world.