How Milwaukee Film Festival’s Black Lens Drew New Audiences

Milwaukee Film was missing a key component, organizers felt: The black audience. So, the Milwaukee Film Festival’s Black Lens program was developed this year to broaden the festival’s appeal to diverse communities. A University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student was one of those running it.

Milwaukee Film Festival co-programmer, Geraud Blanks, talked to UW-Milwaukee’s Minority Media Association on Nov. 7 about that inaugural effort, in which the festival showcased the importance of black films and black filmmakers.

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The Minority Media Association is a club comprised of UWM journalism students that is devoted to media diversity. The club focuses primarily on covering issues faced by Milwaukee’s minority communities. In the past, the group has showcased LGBT issues, domestic violence and the Sikh temple shooting.

As a guest on the MMA’s “U View” television program, Blanks talked about his almost 20- year history working with UWM as a film student and what led to his involvement in the film festival. He cited films as being his biggest influence growing up.  Along with a former UWM classmate, Blanks was co-programmer for Black Lens, a new venture by Milwaukee Film this year that sought to draw more of a black audience to the festival. Black Lens featured eight films by black artists. The U View airs on campus television at UW-Milwaukee.

“When I was young, and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up, it would change all the time. As I got older, I realized that I based every idea that I had of an occupation, was based off of a film I saw,” he said. “I realized then that I wanted to be a creator of images.”

While attending UWM as an undergraduate, Blanks started a student group called SCOPE, which stood for: Student Creative Outreach Providing Education/Entertainment. The organization focused on arranging cultural events that ranged from lectures to open-mic nights on campus.

It was his involvement with SCOPE and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that eventually got him the position as programmer for a portion of the 2014 Milwaukee Film Festival.

The directors of the festival had found that in past years, a lot of black Milwaukeeans were not attending and they wanted to find a way to better engage them. This led to the creation of Black Lens. Blanks explained that the showcase was about a lot more than simply showing black films in Milwaukee.

“We need to find a way to outreach to the black community and let them know that we want to include them. So what’s the best way? You say to the black community that we’re not just going to give you some black films to get you to come, but we are really going to support the idea of blacks making films,” he said.

The films associated with ‘Black Lens’ this year all focused on culturally important or controversial topics like HIV, a black actor trying to make it in Hollywood, domestic violence, and racism.

Blanks said that ‘Black Lens’ is trying to promote and expose films that can help to eventually advance peoples understanding of black culture.

Within the next five years ‘Black Lens’ may become the premier showcase for black filmmakers anywhere, according to Blanks. He explained how Milwaukee is a difficult place in general for artists to thrive.

“If you’re involved with anything creative, Milwaukee is hard. The arts community here is not nearly as big as places like Chicago, Atlanta or New York. It’s harder to promote and sell your product.”

This meant that exposure for most of the films in the showcase happened by way of mouth. The first few films in the showcase had a much larger percentage of white audience members than black, but by the last film, half of the theatre was occupied by black people.

‘Black Lens’ aims to give artists in this genre a platform to build their career on. The showcase is concerned with having films that are good but also that have significant meaning or value to society.  Blanks had said that now that they got the first year out of the way, they are already looking ahead to next year.

“Next year we will have much more time to put it together. I’m hoping that means it will be even more successful. I also really want to make sure we are building our network so that people feel invested, and feel a part of it.”