Milwaukee Gay/Lesbian Film Festival

For decades, the Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival gave the community an opportunity to see their lives, relationships, identities, and experiences represented on screen, while creating a shared understanding of LGBTQ stories for wider audiences through cinema.

The festival was the lasting legacy of over three decades of gay, lesbian, and later LGBTQ film programming in Milwaukee. Although the festival used 1987 as its starting date, there were organized film screenings as early as Lesbian and Gay Pride Week 1980. UWM began hosting a "Gay & Lesbian Film Festival" in 1983. These early UWM festivals were sponsored by Lavender Commitment, a gay and lesbian arts organization at UWM. The festivals presented LGBTQ-themed films and helped establish film exhibition as an important part of Milwaukee's emerging LGBTQ cultural community.

After 1988, there are no mentions of a Milwaukee gay and lesbian film festival until 1991, when Great Lakes Film & Video began sponsoring screenings of films banned by PBS. In March 1992, Great Lakes Film & Video hosted its first festival at UWM.  Oddly, InStep described the event as the “1st Milwaukee Lesbian/Gay Film Fest."  This seemed to be a new festival produced by new leadership, rather than a continuation of the earlier film series.

Throughout the 1990s, the festival became an increasingly important part Milwaukee's LGBTQ cultural calendar, with the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Union Cinema hosting all screenings. During this period, Great Lakes Film & Video was the primary sponsor and programmer.  Carl Szatmary, later the owner/operator of OUTwords Books, served as director and organizer in these early years.

The festival eventually became known as the Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival and was presented by the UWM Film Department (now the Department of Film, Video, Animation & New Genres) at the Peck School of the Arts. 

In 1997, Carl Bogner became its director and principal organizer.  Bogner, an esteeemed educator, lecturer, and film expert, devoted considerable time and energy to advancing the festival's future. Under Bogner's leadership, the festival became a significant annual gathering for Milwaukee's LGBTQ community and an important venue for independent LGBTQ cinema.

For much of its history, the festival presented a wide-ranging selection of LGBTQ cinema. Programs included independent films and videos, documentaries, coming-out stories, romantic comedies, and films exploring LGBTQ identity through issues of age, race, religion, gender, and culture. The festival also regularly featured collections of men's shorts and women's shorts, showcasing shorter films with gay and lesbian themes. International films gave Milwaukee audiences opportunities to see LGBTQ stories and perspectives from outside the United States.

Screenings generally took place over approximately a week. During its later years, the festival hosted opening night events at the Oriental Theatre, while the UWM Union Theatre remained an important screening venue.

The festival's timeline became increasingly confusing as time went on.  In 2007, a reception was held to celebrate the festival's 20th anniversary. Only eight years later, promotional materials advertised the 2015 festival as the 30th annual event, and the 2017 festival was promoted as the 32nd.

By the 2010s, the festival faced a rapidly changing film and media environment. Streaming services, digital distribution, changing audience habits, and the growth of other Milwaukee film organizations altered the landscape in which the festival operated. The festival continued its traditional concentrated format for many years. 

In 2018, however, the festival announced a significant change. Rather than presenting its traditional concentrated 11-day fall festival, organizers planned a series of mostly monthly screenings extending from fall 2018 through spring 2019.

Festival organizers described the change as an experiment and a period of reflection. They cited the need to find a sustainable way to produce the festival while balancing the responsibilities of the UWM staff members who organized it. They also sought greater input from longtime patrons and community partners about the festival's future. The change reflected broader questions facing the festival: how to sustain a specialized LGBTQ film program, how to reach younger audiences accustomed to consuming films through digital platforms, and how to maintain community support in an increasingly crowded film and cultural landscape.

A 2018 Shepherd Express article, “The State of Milwaukee's LGBTQ Cinema,” documented the festival's transition to monthly screenings. Longtime director Carl Bogner cited limited resources and the competing responsibilities of UWM's film department as factors in the change.

The festival's traditional large-scale format had also faced growing competition from Milwaukee Film, which began in 2003 as Milwaukee International Film Festival. As Milwaukee Film's festival expanded, it increasingly included LGBTQ films and programming, creating another venue for films that had historically been central to the LGBT Film/Video Festival.

By 2019, the Shepherd Express reported that the LGBT Film/Video Festival was continuing with only a small number of screenings. The article reflected on the festival's earlier prominence and the challenges it faced as Milwaukee's broader film culture expanded.

The festival's online presence suddenly came to an end in early 2020.  As the COVID-19 pandemic closed public spaces, the ongoing screening series was cancelled. The Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival subsequently disappeared from the city's cultural calendar -- never to return.

After a long battle with brain cancer, Carl Bogner passed away on December 15, 2024 at age 62.