So Many Book Tie-ins Regarding the Local Arts Scene I Don't Know Where to Begin...How About the Milwaukee Film Festival?

As you all know, the Milwaukee Film Festival is going on from now through October 2, at the Oriental and Downer Theatres in Milwaukee, the North Shore Cinemas in Mequon, and the Ridge Cinemas in New Berlin.

When I was chatting with Ghazal from Milwaukee Film about our event with our Patrick McGilligan last month, she mentioned there was at least one event that she knew we'd be excited about getting behind.  For how could Boswell resist a documentary about the foremost translator of Dostoevsky from Russian into German?  It's called "The Woman with Five Elephants" and it will have two screenings during the festival, on Friday, September 30, 4:45, at the Downer, and Sunday, October 2, 12 Noon, at the North Shore.

Visit the Milwaukee Film website for a complete list of films. And don't forget, we're hosting a series of discussion groups in our book club area after selected screenings at the Downer, starting tonight with a talk about the film "Somewhere Between" at 6:30 pm.

Later on in October, there are five nights of the Jewish Film Festival at the North Shore Cinemas. There are two book-related films playing there as well. On Monday, October 24 at 7:30, there's "Shalom Aleichem: Laughing in the Dark."  Aleichem's stories were the basis of the musical, "Fiddler on the Roof" and Tevye the Dairyman is available as a Penguin Classic. On Wednesday, October 26, at 7:30, an Argentinian film called "I Miss You" looks at the Dirty War of the 1970s from the perspective of one Jewish family.  It's not a direct tie-in, but the JCC highly recommends (as do both Conrad and I) Nathan Englander's The Ministry of Special Cases. More the Jewish Film Festival here.

I was talking to Carl, who programs the LGBT film festival, who said that there showing of "Mary Lou", an Israeli miniseries, on Thursaday, October 27, would have been in his festival had the JCC not snagged it first. I couldn't find any book connections, but many of his picks could be books, of course, so may I just note that his opening night film, "Weekend," will be shown at the Oriental Theatre on Thursday, October 20, 7:30 pm, with the rest of the showings at the Union Theater at the UWM Union.  Here's a link to the website.

There are so many book-related theater events this fall I think I won't be able to fit them all into one blog post.  First Stage is currently performing "Suessical," now through October 16.  First Stage performs the musical Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays--click here for ticket info.  And did you know that the musical was co-conceived by Eric Idle of Monty Python fame?  I only note this because I just spent the evening planning a television network at a dinner party, and this was one of our selections.

And then of course we have a full schedule of arts events. Michael Pink will be talking about the new production of "Dracula" in the Milwaukee Ballet's Dialogue for Dance program on Friday, October 14, 7 pm. The Ballet production is October 27-30.  Buy tickets here. Bram Stoker would be proud.

And then there is our feature event with Kathleen Russo in conjunction with Theatre Gigante for their new production, "Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell."  Russo, Gray's widow, is also a co-editor of the soon-to-be released Journals of Spalding Gray.  We're hosting a talk at Boswell on Wednesday, October 26, at a special earlier time of 6:30, so that Russo can get to the Theatre Gigante show at 8 pm.  Say hi to Theatre Gigante.

Oh, and Soulstice Theater is working with us on our Dava Sobel event for A More Perfect Heaven on Wednesday, October 19. Tickets here.

And Boulevard Theatre is doing "The Importance of Being Earnest" this fall.

Stacie and I had an interesting discussion about why so many Milwaukee companies use the "r-e" spelling instead of "e-r."  It got heated!  Here's a story about why the Guthrie changed their spelling to "theater" in 1970 and the ins and outs of the two usages.