Milwaukee Film unveils the lineup for its first Dialogues Documentary Festival

The lineup for Milwaukee Film's first Dialogues Documentary Festival offers a lot to talk about. And that's the point.

The 30 feature films and five shorts programs in the lineup unveiled Wednesday explore artificial intelligence, voting rights, homelessness, food insecurity, gentrification and other subjects that don't have easy answers.

"We wanted to choose films that didn’t close the conversations but opened them," said Cara Ogburn, artistic director of Milwaukee Film. "The programming team … started from that kind of basic idea of documentaries that help start conversations that are timely and relevant to Milwaukee, whether they were zeitgeist-y in the world right now or specifically the kind of things that were of interest … in Milwaukee."

Unlike the 15-day Milwaukee Film Festival, the Dialogues Documentary Festival, which will run Sept. 26-29, doesn't have a big opening-night movie or special events. It just dives right in, with screenings starting midday on two screens at the Oriental Theatre and one at the Downer Theatre. (Both theaters are operated by Milwaukee Film.)

That, too, is by design, Ogburn said. Like Milwaukee Film's Minority Health Film Festival — which turned into the much-bigger Cultures & Communities Festival — the new documentary festival is "less about the volume of films and more about the impact of each one and kind of holding space for the conversations that they can start," she said.

Looking for hope, and ways to thwart a coup

That certainly applies to "War Game," one of the higher-profile movies booked for the new festival. The movie — whose producers include Jack Turner, a prolific documentary filmmaker who went to Whitefish Bay High School — follows a bipartisan group of U.S. defense, intelligence and elected officials as they take part in a role-playing exercise in which they have to face a military-backed coup following a contested presidential election.

"War Game," showing at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 27 at the Oriental, is one of just three movies with a political focus at the Dialogues Documentary Festival — a little counterintuitive, considering the festival is six weeks before the 2024 election.

"We watched a lot of films that are political that felt didactic or argumentative," Ogburn said. "And these three films, while they certainly have opened up conversations around American politics, all feel like they make things more complicated and open more doors than close them, which feels like the result we wanted. …

"We also wanted to find films that gave hope or possibility and not just doom and gloom, which can be tricky in the world of documentaries."

Earlier this year, Milwaukee Film cut its education and artist services programs and a number of positions to focus on core operations while rebuilding its finances, after the nonprofit reported a deficit of more than $1.78 million in 2022. Those cuts included eliminating the Cultures & Communities Festival, which ran for eight days in 2023.

Despite those cuts, adding another film festival fits with Milwaukee Film's renewed focus, Ogburn said — and with what its members respond to.

"We know that our audience loves documentaries. They rate the highest at our festival in the spring," she said.

Other highlights of the 2024 Dialogues Documentary Festival

While the festival's lineup doesn't have a focus on Milwaukee- or Wisconsin-centric content, there are several movies anchored here. Among them:

• "An Invitation to Wonder: Waubesa Wetlands," in which Milwaukee filmmaker Ben Albert explores the wetlands in his grandparents' backyard in central Wisconsin (showing at the Downer, 8:30 p.m. Sept. 27).

• "Beyond the Bridge: A Solution to Homelessness," in which a pair of filmmakers' search for answers to the problem of housing insecurity starts in Milwaukee (Oriental, 6:30 p.m. Sept. 26).

• "The Book of Mary — A Memorable Man," in which Milwaukee filmmaker Dan Ollman chronicles 40 years in the life of blind Milwaukee savant and musician Leslie Lemke (Oriental, noon Sept. 29).

Other highlights in the lineup of the inaugural Dialogues Documentary Festival:

• "Emergent City," a "civic epic" examining the impact of gentrification on a neighborhood in Brooklyn (Oriental, 11 a.m. Sept. 29).

• "Food and Country," in which food writer Ruth Reichl travels the country to report on America's broken food production system (Downer, 11:30 a.m. Sept. 29).

• "One Person, One Vote?", an in-depth look at the Electoral College (Downer, 7 p.m. Sept. 26).

• "Union," which follows the first successful effort to unionize an Amazon workplace (Oriental, 2:30 p.m. Sept. 29).

Talk-backs are planned after many of the movies screening at the festival, Ogburn said, including some with the filmmakers.

The program guide for the Dialogues Documentary Festival, including the full lineup, is available online at mkefilm.org/ddf. Physical copies of the guide are expected to be available by Sept. 6 at several locations, including the Oriental and Downer theaters.

Tickets for screenings at the 2024 Dialogues Documentary Festival go on sale for Milwaukee Film members at 8 a.m. Sept. 4; for the general public, they go on sale at 8 a.m. Sept. 5. Tickets are $15, $13 for Milwaukee Film members. Six- and 10-packs of tickets are available online for $80 and $115 respectively ($15 less for each for Milwaukee Film members). Tickets will be available at mkefilm.org/ddf and the Oriental and Downer box offices.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee Film unveils lineup for first Dialogues Documentary Festival