Creating Acceptance Through Film

As autumn approaches and daylight hours diminish, more and more of us will be inclined to spend our nights looking for something bright and clear— especially on the big screen.

From Sept. 4-14, Milwaukeeans get another chance to brighten their eyes and enlighten their minds with the annual LGBT Film/Video Festival, presented by the film department of UW-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts.

Now in its 21st year, festival director Carl Bogner jokes that the 11-day event is “finally old enough to drink whatever it wants.” But the purpose remains serious: the positive representation of diverse sexuality on film.

“The festival has always been an LGBT festival and a film festival, of interest to anyone interested in good movies,” says Bogner, who has been curating the program for 11 years. “The festival’s mission of presenting films by, for and about the LGBT community remains unchanged. We are showing films that would otherwise not be on local screens—even on local art-house screens—allowing a diverse array of images and discussions around LGBT life.”

The festival offers the only way that most Milwaukeeans can catch these features and shorts on the big screen.

Though the mainstream media occasionally delivers coverage of the changing face of gender and sexuality, “only a narrow range of ‘difference’ is ever represented,” Bogner says of the uphill climb for gay and lesbian representation in the media. “There is still a paucity of LGBT images on main stream theater screens.”

Despite that relative scarcity, however, Bogner notes that LGBT films have become more readily available. “If theatrical release remains elusive for LGBT film, there is a huge DVD market,” he says. Indeed, many films are advertised in the pages of The Advocate and other magazines that focus on LGBT issues.

Branching Out

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