UWM Department of Film, Video, Animation and New Genres

10/13/2026

16mm Student Film Showcase
Thursday, 10/15 @ 7pm UWM Union Cinema

Join us for a celebration of analog filmmaking at UWM! The legacy of our department has long been tied to a history of and ongoing support for artist-made works made with analog filmmaking practices, a tradition that continues to thrive here through creative exploration and hands-on learning. This event marks the second annual celebration of student-made 16mm films!

Come see what’s been made in the camera, the lab, and the projector’s glow.

Films by: Ian Dugenske, Owen Benson, Nicholas Ancheta, Ally Ramirez, Joshua Miglieri, Natalie Schomisch, Nicholas Dachelet, Edward Ziemba, Ike Lavitschke, Cooper Kleibor, Faraja Mukome, Ruby Anderson, Riley Pace, Sean Egan, Enzo Aiello, Leo Link, Lando Doty, Mary Wheeler, Riley Nelson, Brooke Smith

✨See you at the cinema!

10/13/2026

The Ceremonial Technologies of Karthik Pandian
October 13 | 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm
Director in person!

Born on the ancestral territory of Tongva peoples in what is now known as Southern California in 1981, Karthik Pandian is a conductor of energy, son of healers who landed in the Bronx region of Turtle Island in 1972, and grandson of Tamil Nadars who survived invasion, migration, and caste discrimination to see the end of British imperialism in India. Currenly professor of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University, Karthik joins us to present a selection of his politically and formally radical short film and performance.

And don’t miss Pandian’s feature SURRENDUR tomorrow evening. SURRENDUR transmits the stories of Mike Forcia (Bad River Anishinaabe), the American Indian Movement activist who orchestrated the toppling of a monument to Christopher Columbus, and Ta Pe’juta Wičháȟpi Win (Hunkpati Dakota Oyate), whose political consciousness was awoken when she danced around the fallen statue with her daughter. Forcia and Pandian will join us after the screening for a conversation.

UWM Union Cinema UWM Peck School of the Arts karthik pandian 🕳️

10/06/2026

FILMS BY JULIE MURRAY
10/6/26 7pm FREE
The Union Cinema, UWM

Beguiling and beautiful, metaphysical and material, playful and profound, Julie Murray’s moving image works are utterly transfixing.

Tonight’s program features a variety of work on 16mm and digital, with prints on loan from Canyon Cinema and our very own Cinema Arts Archive. (Thank you Kati Katchever !)

Julie will join virtually after the screening from her studio in Ireland and she promises to show off all her do-dads and what-nots that go into making her materially incisive and captivating works.

UWM Union Cinema UWM Peck School of the Arts

09/29/2026

! Tonight ! 7pm | The Union Cinema | Experimental Tuesday | FREE !

TCB – The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing is a biography of the influential writer, filmmaker and cultural worker, who with humor and deep insight, inspired a generation of artists to dedicate themselves to community empowerment. The film is structured as a series of lessons on cultural organizing, gleaned from Bambara’s life and shared by her friends, colleagues and students.

“On the thirtieth anniversary of her death, Louis Massiah has conjured the great Toni Cade Bambara back to life. Through archival footage and personal testimonies—most notably and eloquently by her friend, editor, and champion, Toni Morrison—this formidable writer and warrior for social justice blazes back into consciousness. There was simply nobody else like her. TCB - The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing offers a tonic for today’s woes and a lesson in joyousness for today’s challenges. With its propulsive jazz soundtrack and knowledge of history, Massiah’s film feeds a bone-deep hunger for inspiration.”
      —B. Ruby Rich

Following the screening, we will be welcoming questions that will be brought to Louis Massiah for an extended conversation that Assistant Professor Marquise Mays will be recording and posting for our community shortly.

TCB - The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing UWM Union Cinema UWM Peck School of the Arts Marquise Mays

09/23/2026

https://radiomilwaukee.org/podcast/uniquely-milwaukee/2026-09-23/milwaukee-documentary-heavy-is-the-crown

The documentary takes a decade-long look at how Vaun Mayes and other key individuals work tirelessly to make our neighborhoods safer.

09/22/2026

Tonight’s the night! Milwaukee legend and co-founder of our department, Dick Blau

As part of the UWM Union Cinema’s Experimental Tuesdays series, on September 22 at 7 p.m., the UWM Union Cinema will be presenting An Evening with Dick Blau, presented in conjunction with the UWM Archives. Blau, a local photographer, artist, and filmmaker, has been making films and video works for over 40 years, and recently donated his archival collection to the UWM Archives. The evening will highlight his film and video works, including three 2K restorations remastered from original elements stored at the UWM Archives. The event will also include discussion about his career, and stories about working in the Milwaukee art community. The event is free and open to the public, and is sponsored by the Department of Film, Video, Animation & New Genres.

Dick Blau (BA Harvard 1965; PhD Yale 1973) is professor emeritus and founder of the UWM Department of Film, Video, Animation, & New Genres. He is the author of six photo books and numerous films on many different subjects: from interpersonal family dynamics to the music and culture of the Roma of northern Greece. Covering a wide number of subjects and styles, Blau’s work ranges across the genres — from documentaries to fairytales to studies in pure abstraction. Blau’s films show internationally and his photographs can be found in major collections both here and abroad: in the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Thessaloniki Museum of Contemporary Art, and locally at the Milwaukee Art Museum and Museum of Wisconsin Art.

09/15/2026

TONIGHT TONIGHT! Our Fall 2026 Experimental Tuesday series begins with a delight of sights and sites! 7 pm, free at the UWM Union Cinema

BEING WHERE
Location, location, location. A neighborhood of experimental shorts, drawn from the UWM Cinema Arts Archive and the world at large, focusing on place. We are where we are, often here, sometimes there, always where. And the cinema too is a there, a where, a place we share to gather paradise and expand our sense of the possible.

David Rimmer - REAL ITALIAN PIZZA

Daina Krumins - BABOBILICONS

Stephanie Barber - letters, notes

Shirley Clark - BRIDGES GO ROUND

Fern Silva - SPINNERS

Mary Ellen Bute - SYNCHOMY NO. 4: ESCAPE

Jim Jennings - SILK TIES

Tom Palazzolo - JERRY’S DELI

09/08/2026

School is back in session and so is Special Features! Our first guest, Amber Love will kicking off the series with a workshop on documentary filmmaking!

Documentary filmmaking takes more than a great story—it takes a plan. This workshop explores the practical side of documentary production, from budgeting and line producing to managing a shoot and shaping footage in the edit. Students will gain tools for turning a documentary idea into a realistic production and navigating the filmmaking process from planning through post-production.

Amber Love was raised in the Midwest, a daughter in a line of headstrong single mothers. Her work has been supported by HBO, IF/Then, The Gotham, PBS, and Short of the Week as well as screened at festivals including Doc 10 and Camden International Film Festival. Her most recent short film, “Lifetimes,” REwas funded by Firelight Films’ Homegrown: Future Visions initiative and is now available through PBS Digital. She has been a 2023 HBO/Gotham Diversity Development Fellow and a 2020 Sundance Art of Editing Fellow. Her debut feature, One Another, premiered at SXSW 2026.

Special Features is an art and film focused professional development workshop series curated by the Film, Video, Animation & New Genres department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Open to students, staff and the community!

08/26/2026

05/20/2026

It was so exciting to see our outstanding graduating seniors and graduate students from the Department of Film, Video, Animation & New Genres cross the stage last Saturday night at the PSOA Graduation Convocation! Congratulations to all of our graduates! Let the deeply deserved celebration continue!