Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival Set for 10/18-21

The Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival returns this October 18-21. This year's series will be the long running Festival's "2nd Annual 25th Anniversary Edition."

Cloudburst

The Festival will open with Cloudburst, a romantic comedy/road movie starring Oscar winners Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker as life partners who flee a nursing home and head to Canada for the sanctuary of legal marriage.Cloudburst was directed by veteran LGBT filmmaker Thom Fitzgerald (The Hanging Garden; Beefcake). 

The Festival closes with Sally El Hosaini's My Brother The Devil. Set in an Arab immigrant community in London, the film, described as a study in masculinity, examines the seductions of gang life for two brothers, entanglements that will test their loyalties. The film earned honors at this year's Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals. 

Other highlights include Ira Sach's Keep the Lights On, an intimate portrait of the relationship between two men, one of whom succumbs to addiction; Aurora Guerrero's Mosquita y Mari, a sharply observant film about the developing friendship between two Chicana teenagers; and Facing Mirrors, the first narrative film from Iran to center on a trans character. 

Documentaries, always a part of the Festival's mission, will this year include Jim Hubbard's United in Anger: A History of ACT-UP, about the front lines activist organization that fought government inactivity on AIDS; and Call Me Kuchu, a harrowing documentary about slain civil rights leader David Kato and his struggles for LGBT rights in Uganda. 

The packed four days will also include comedies, cinematic artifacts and oddities, shorts programs and more! Opening Night, Thursday, October 18 is at the Oriental Theatre; the remaining three days unspool at the UWM Union Theatre.

Complete schedule and ticket info will soon be posted at arts.uwm.edu/lgbtfilm. Regular updates available at the Festival's Facebook page www.facebook.com/mkelgbtfilm . And for more information: lgbtfilm@uwm.edu or call 414 229 4758, ext 3.

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