Carl Bogner’s Film Festival

Before he spent the past 16 years running the Milwaukee LGBT Film Festival, UW-Milwaukee’s Carl Bogner worked his way through a series of book stores, where he indulged in a love of reading and literature.

Film was another interest. In those days, people could only see the films he was interested in at universities, and Bogner eventually went from a frequent spectator to running the Union Theatre at UWM.

“Part of is was, when I was growing up loving films, it was before VHS and DVD players, so if you wanted to see older films, you had to go to places like college theaters,” said Bogner. “When I moved [to Milwaukee], I just gravitated towards the Film Department looking for places they showed movies.”

Now, he’s the guy behind the film selections and details that made up this year’s Milwaukee Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Film Festival, which concluded on Oct. 26.  Started 29 years ago by students at UWM, it has been run by the Film Department for the past 20 years.  An 11- day festival that plays over 24 dozen films and shorts, the planning of such an event is no small undertaking.

Bogner is also a senior lecturer of experimental film at UWM, where  he teaches undergrad and graduate classes, as well as a number of independent studies depending on the semester.  Tall and lean, with silver-gray hair that my be combed into place or allowed to do as it pleases depending on his mood, Bogner strikes an interesting figure.  Laid back and quick-witted, Bogner is approachable, and his conversational style quickly puts people at ease.

Born in Milwaukee, Bogner’s father was an agricultural engineer and worked for the soil conservation service.  “He was a bureaucrat, and so like many government jobs, we moved around,” Bogner said. “I grew up on the east coast, in D.C. and suburban Virginia.” That’s where he would get his first undergraduate degree in English.

“I loved literature, I loved reading. It didn’t occur to me to study anything else. Where I went to school there wasn’t a film program,” said Bogner.

Bogner worked at a number of book stores in Virginia, reflecting his passion for literature, until he helped a friend move to Madison and thought the town looked interesting, crediting atmosphere and lakes and scenery with the appeal.  Two years out of his undergraduate career, “I was still sort of romancing college, so a college town looked good to me,” says Bogner.

So he moved to Madison for a time, working at another book store, until he decided perhaps it wasn’t for him, and went back to Milwaukee following another book store job.

That’s when he started attending college films. Bogner would see films and talk to members of the Film Department as well as sit in on film classes, saying, “In some sort of strange destiny, I started sitting in on a class I now teach,” he says.

Bogner went back to school as what he called a non -traditional student, pursuing his second undergraduate degree in film production while simultaneously running the Union Theatre.

He had changed his career path towards the curating and directing that allowed for him to do some of the writing he enjoys.  It was through managing the Theatre that Bogner was eventually asked to direct the LGBT film festival.

The film festival is a year- round project for Bogner, as fundraising, acquiring sponsors, and screening and obtaining the films to show are all part of a never-ending cycle that for the most part falls on Bogner’s shoulders. He does get some help.

“I use other LGBT festivals as my programming committee, meaning I see what’s playing elsewhere, I see what’s winning awards,” he says.

Bogner also receives help with planning through the Peck School of the Arts, where another employee is in charge of fundraising, and some of the community sponsors help out by supplying some of the extras that are often associated with film festivals.

Bogner defines the Film Festival as both a film fest and a community event.  The pursuit is to serve the LGBT community to further representations of LGBT people and issues.  It is supposed to be a textured experience.

“Sometimes I wonder if we’re more accurately a film series that happens in a confined time,” says Bogner. “Because festivals usually mean bells and whistles, enhancements that I don’t usually have the logistics to mount.  It helps when you have community partners that want to do more like post screening discussions and the like.”

The audience he works to get is a mix of the very loyal LGBT community but also the film crowd.

“I pick them because they were the strongest films. Texture is important; you want drama, and humor… to show art house films as well as films that pair well with a community sponsor.”

Reflecting on all he does for the festival, Bogner acknowledges that he could stand to delegate a bit more to his volunteers.

“There are a lot of good models to do a festival, I don’t do any of them,” says Bogner jokingly.