'Hoping this year feels fully normal': Milwaukee Film Festival all in-person, Downer back

Organizers of the 2024 Milwaukee Film Festival are ready to party like it's 2017.

Well, not really. But some of the changes at this year's festival — which runs April 11-25 — do hearken back a bit.

The Downer Theatre, a staple of the Milwaukee Film Festival since its start 16 years ago, returns to the festival's venue lineup for the first time since 2017. The Downer stopped being part of the festival in 2018 after Milwaukee Film, the nonprofit that runs the festival, replaced Landmark Theatres as the operator of the Oriental Theatre.

Landmark closed the Downer last September. In March, Milwaukee Film announced it was taking over the Downer and would reopen it starting with the 2024 film festival.

“I don’t think any other regional festival … has five screens in their festival, all within walking distance,” said Cara Ogburn, artistic director of Milwaukee Film and a lead programmer for the film festival.

In addition to the three screens at the Oriental and both screens at the Downer, the 2024 film festival has programming at the Avalon Theater and Times Cinema, as it has for much of the festival's history.

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The Milwaukee Film Festival unplugs from online screenings

There's one screen that the 2024 film festival won't have: the small screen.

For the first time since The Before, the Milwaukee Film Festival will not have a virtual component.

Part of that, Ogburn explained, is for practical reasons. The number and types of films available to present via an online portal "was pretty limited and non-representative" of the festival's in-person offerings.

Virtual screenings started at the festival in 2021, when the event was all online. Organizers shifted to a mix of in-person and virtual screenings in 2022, and continued that last year.

At last year's festival, the virtual part of the festival was only available for one week, and saw a sharp decline in viewings from the previous year, while in-person attendance jumped 58%.

“During the pandemic, everything showed virtually in a kind of a broad, on-demand way," Ogburn said. "When we came back, we reduced our venue footprint, which necessarily means you can show fewer films and fewer times.”

With seven screens — back to pre-pandemic levels — the film festival can offer more showings of more titles, Ogburn added.

Milwaukee Film is launching a new documentary festival

In fact, there are so many titles that Milwaukee Film is adding another festival this fall.

Buried in the program guide for the 2024 Milwaukee Film Festival is an advertisement for the Dialogues Documentary Festival, a new festival planned for Sept. 26-29.

Ogburn said Milwaukee Film will disclose more information about the documentary festival during the main film festival this month.

For now, though, Milwaukee Film is counting on the Downer's return to give the Milwaukee Film Festival “a different sort of energy,” she said.

“I am eagerly hoping that this year feels fully normal,” Ogburn said.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: 2024 Milwaukee Film Festival: 'Hoping this year feels fully normal'