Milwaukee Film Festival shows slight drop in attendance, gains in membership and fundraising

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The 2018 Milwaukee Film Festival had 78,510 attendees, a 6 percent drop from 84,072 last year. But at the same time, the film festival's parent organization reported gains in membership and fundraising.

Milwaukee Film, which operates the film festival, said in a statement Wednesday that it now has more than 5,000 members, a 31% increase since the end of the 2017 Milwaukee Film Festival.

In the public phase of Milwaukee Film's $10 million capital campaign, nearly $600,000 was raised during the 2018 festival, which ran Oct. 18 to Nov. 1. That included 120 sponsored seats in Milwaukee Film's Take A Seat campaign to finance upgrades for the Oriental Theatre.

Milwaukee Film took over operation of the Oriental, 2230 N. Farwell Ave., in July. While the theater has been the festival's home base for years, this year the festival occupied all three screens there for the first time.

Milwaukee Film also announced during the festival a $1.5 million challenge grant by Bud and Suzanne L. Selig, two of the film festival's biggest backers.

"2018 has proven to be a year of unprecedented growth and evolution for Milwaukee Film, on many levels," Milwaukee Film chief executive officer and artistic director Jonathan Jackson said in a statement.

The 2018 Milwaukee Film Festival's audience awards for best feature and best short — which also are sponsored by the Seligs — went to "Science Fair," the popular documentary co-directed by Milwaukee native Cristina Costantini, and "Liberty Hill," a short directed by Katie Graham. Costantini also received the festival's first Women in Film Award, a $2,500 prize for the top-rated feature at the festival directed by a woman.

(If you missed it at the film festival, "Science Fair" is showing at the Oriental under a continuing "Best of the Fest" series at the east side movie palace.)

The 2018 film festival's juried prizewinners included:

• "Hale County, This Morning This Evening," which won the Herzfeld Competition Award
• "A Boy. A Girl. A Dream.," the Black Lens Feature Jury Award winner
• "Minding the Gap," winner of the Documentary Jury Award
• "Pet Names," the Cream City Cinema Award winner
• "Yen Ching," winner of the first-ever Cream City Emerging Voices award

In addition, 12 projects received juried awards of a total of more than $110,000 in cash and production services from the Brice Forward Fund.