The second annual Milwaukee Film Festival had a 50 percent ticket sales increase over last year's festival, and sold-out showings of "Blue Valentine" on its opening night, and the public education documentary "Waiting for Superman" on Sept. 26.
The closing night screening of "Buried" sold out in all three venues, The Oriental Theatre, the North Shore Cinema in Mequon, and The Ridge Cinema in New Berlin.
The Film Festival released this list of jury award winners:
Jury Award winners were announced Sunday:
Fiction Competition
"A Brand New Life" (Yeo-haeng-ja)
Director: Ounie Lecomte
Jurors: Florence Almozini (Curator BAMcinematek), Lars Knudsen (Producer:
"Cold Weather," "Treeless Mountain," "Old Joy") Scott Tobias (AV Club Editor)
$2,500 Cash Award
Documentary Competition
"My Perestroika"
Director: Robin Hessman
Jurors: Barry Polterman (Director: "The Life of Reilly," "Editor: Collapse," "The Pool"), John Scheinfeld (Director: "Who is Harry Nilsson," "U.S. vs. John Lennon"), Jack Turner (Producer: "Lovely Still," "Racing Dreams")
$2,500 Cash Award
The Milwaukee Show
"Mickey Burgermeister'
Director: Tate Bunker
Jurors: Ericka Frederick (Kodak Executive), Ken Wardrop (Director: "His & Hers") and Samuel Anderson (Producer: "Lucky Life," "Munyrangabo")
$2,500 Cash Award; $20,000 and Production Prize Package; 1-year Artist in Residency at Milwaukee Film
Audience votes were counted Monday in the Allan H. (Bud) and Suzanne L. Selig Audience Awards and the winners are:
Best Feature
"Waiting for 'Superman'"
Director: Davis Guggenheim
Best Short Film
"Drunk History: Tesla & Edison"
Director: Jeremy Konner
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
