For Milwaukee’s LGBT community October means the LGBT Film/Video Festival. This year it celebrates its 29th anniversary. It’s one of those mainstay “givens” of local LGBT life. It’s also one of those rare moments of group experience that puts everyone in the same place at the same time. Drag queens, priests, lesbians and leather guys queue up together for popcorn then settle into adjacent cinema seats, literally rubbing elbows for hours at a time.
Almost inadvertently, the festival has become an ongoing and ever-growing historical and social record. Its origins go back to 1983. Back then, Carl Szatmary and members of Lavender Commitment, a UW-Milwaukee student association, organized the first Milwaukee Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (the LGBT acronym hadn’t yet been created). Held in the union’s Wisconsin Room, it was a one-weekend affair with an “eclectic program,” as Szatmary puts it. The marquee titles included Boys in the Band, The Killing of Sister George and a French film, We were One Man. The festival continually grew and eventually moved into the union’s cinema.
Early on, gay film played an agitprop role, responding to the community’s need to see itself through its own lens. Today, with our political and social progress making headlines almost daily, the themes explored by LGBT filmmakers are changing. Although many issues remain intrinsic to the LGBT experience, current subjects are not so entrenched in past agendas and genres. The “urgent bulletins” about HIV/AIDS, coming out and political struggles have receded somewhat in relevance. Now, the once neglected “B” and “T” of the acronym, the bisexual and transgender communities, as well as racial and ethnic groups are finding their voices. Current Festival Director Carl Bogner recognizes the evolution of LGBT film. “Queer filmmakers now expand the issues that LGBT film should be talking about to include topics that are no longer distinct from LGBT life. They are making films in a broader context.”
We’ll see that context in this year’s selections. A Portuguese film presents a diary of a man participating in clinical HIV/AIDS trials. He’s also in a relationship. The realities of HIV today are seen within other realities of gay domesticity and outlooks for the current generation. Another focuses on a queer artist joining forces with environmentalists. The intersection of race and LGBT life is the subject of several films.
Also, after an experiment with a single launch weekend followed by monthly screenings, the festival returns to its traditional 11-day format. Bogner explains, “Packing everything into one weekend made it difficult for people to see things. The return to 11 days gives a visible sense of quantity and the opportunity to take advantage of it.” He adds, “In the past, LGBT film festivals weren’t quite underground but they were marginalized. Today we are part of the Milwaukee film landscape. Our programming and audiences are pretty remarkable and recognized as part of our greater cultural texture. The festival aspires to be part of that texture.”
