The Horizon Line Madison assembles the big-screen picture, from top to bottom

Alex Lovendahl’s new Substack project offers Madisonians a centralized resource for weekly movie screenings.

Since the first edition of The Horizon Line Madison, a new newsletter tracking local film screenings, went out on December 26, 2024, its namesake has accrued additional significance as a tribute to the last memorable lines delivered on screen by David Lynch. Portraying a brashly curt and almost cartoonish John Ford in Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical feature, The Fabelmans (2022), Lynch tells Spielberg’s young aspiring filmmaker stand-in (Gabriel LaBelle): “Now remember this: when the horizon’s at the bottom, it’s interesting. When the horizon’s at the top, it’s interesting. When the horizon’s in the middle, it’s boring as shit! Now, good luck to you. And get the fuck out of my office!”

When avid local cinephile and former WUD Film facilities associate director Alex Lovendahl created this weekly Wednesday morning Substack to provide comprehensive overviews of all the film announcements in the greater Madison area, that particular cameo by the late artist stuck with him. “I had been playing with other filmmaking words,” Lovendahl tells Tone Madison. “There’s a long tradition—I’m an admirer of The Dissolve and Screen Slate—they certainly have some influence on this project. But I liked ‘horizon’ as a very literal way of looking at films that are on the horizon.” And now it also serves as a memorializing of Lynch.

Over the better part of a decade—and especially since theaters started reopening from the pandemic shutdown in the summer of 2021—Madison has really gone without a written, centralized resource to provide the full picture of the big screen to keen and casual moviegoers alike. The days of in-print Isthmus and The Onion showtimes are long gone. Madison suddenly lost Silver Cinemas (otherwise known as Market Square), the treasured second-run spot on the west side, in February 2022. Ten months later, the old Sundance Cinemas-turned-AMC Madison 6 over at Hilldale Mall shuttered, too.

But in 2025, events continue to pop up all over town—at the Bartell Theatre, Overture Center, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison Senior Center, Barrymore, and Madison Public Library branches. The existing cinemas mainly on Madison’s margins—Marcus Palace and Point, AMC Fitchburg 18, and Flix Brewhouse—are still bringing in arthouse screenings for at least one week, fan-favorite events from prior decades, and current awards-season films for extended runs in the winter.

Trouble is, those who want to go often have to fortuitously stumble upon the announcements or resort to Googling individual titles on a Tuesday night just to know if something is going to make an appearance near Madison by Friday. After two recent final-straw incidents in December when a close friend missed out on Whit Stillman’s UW–Madison campus visit to present Metropolitan (1990), a late addition to UW Cinematheque‘s fall calendar, and nearly passed over Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End stealthily slipping in to Marcus Point Cinema, Lovendahl wanted to eliminate any further chance of incidental neglect.

Conferring with fellow filmgoer, Tone Madison contributor, and Cinesthesia series curator Jason Fuhrman before seeing The End on Marcus’ discount Tuesday, Lovendhal reasoned: “Well, then, we need to start getting this collected. Someone needs to do this work,” he says, to essentially replicate the same comprehensive specificity that Screen Slate offers New Yorkers. “I gave it a shot, and I felt like it was achievable to do every week.”

In the fifth edition of Horizon Line, sent on January 22, Lovendahl has continued to refine the formatting he initially established. He’s leading each newsletter dispatch with a conversational style that include introductory paragraphs on his state of mind, framing of new films entering the fray, and even noting current events (like wildfire relief efforts in Los Angeles). Below those graphs, he provides vertical listings of films, sorted alphabetically by title into three distinct sections: 1) bolded new releases, 2) films continuing their theatrical run, and 3) repertory or one-off events.

On January 9, partly inspired by our conversation for this article, Lovendahl introduced a “Plug Zone” section to shout-out other writers and people involved in the Madison film community, starting with JoAnne Pow!ers’ “Wages Of Cinema” biweekly segment on WORT (which we highlighted in July of 2023). Rob Thomas’ recent Substack reviews on two opening films, Better Man and The Last Showgirl, were also pull-quoted for their respective listings.

“I want to make it legible for as many people as possible,” Lovendahl says. “Though, I’ll be testing the limits of [this organization] as we sort of get into experimental short films. Screenings of local Wisconsin filmmakers that might not be on Letterboxd yet. Debuts and such,” he adds, after taking into consideration some direct feedback from Mills Folly Microcinema and Project Projection curator, James Kreul, about potentially altering the formatting by venue headings instead of film titles.

Kreul is maybe the ideal Madison figure to toss in his two cents, as he had also pondered starting a newsletter strikingly similar to The Horizon Line Madison as early as last September, Moving Image Madison. Kreul had secured the name, but had yet to move forward with that and send out any digests. Upon learning about Lovendahl’s Substack, Kreul got in touch to suggest streamlining methods of gathering information. “I’m still doing it all manually. [Kreul] had done a little research into how to automate the process [with an RSS web feed]. I don’t know if I’m interested in taking that on just yet, especially while I’m still playing with the presentation,” Lovendahl admits, but he appreciated the support and interest in this project.

“Ultimately, I don’t want to take ownership of [it], but I’m glad it’s something that has this collective energy behind it. If it becomes something that’s a more collaborative effort, I think that’d be awesome,” Lovendahl continues, hopeful that The Horizon Line Madison can carry on weekly for more than just this year, or as his availability allows.

This exact notion follows the last time someone took on a version of this tirelessly by themselves, as former Madison writer and editor David Klein can attest to, from the beginning of April 2013 through mid-October 2016 at LakeFrontRow. (Full disclosure: I was a regular writer there for the majority of that time period.) Klein’s weekly dispatches, “What’s Playing, Madison?” assembled campus-related happenings and attempted to distill what he deemed the most striking special events or releases opening wide “in the hopes of fostering a more discerning local culture,” as he wrote when winding down the weekly feature. The very first one structured screenings by title and offered a “pick of the week.” By the concluding one three and a half years later, Klein had adopted day-of-week headings and used more regular trailer embeds.

There’s some amalgam of spiritual unity and irony here in these small-town ambitions coming full circle, too. Klein’s final note about stopping his work on them was related to the resources of Tone Madison‘s weekly calendars, which we no longer use, and Kreul’s old Madison Film Forum project—which, at one point, overlapping with the ambitions of LakeFrontRow, he collaborated on to cultivate a movie-meetup group. And now Madison Film Forum is inactive, too. They’re no longer posting a screening calendar, hosting program notes, or publishing reviews, because they’ve either physically moved on or advanced in other time-consuming leadership roles.

So that leaves the unmistakably enthusiastic Lovendahl in an enviable spot, especially after diving headfirst into the film culture here as a UW–Madison student from 2011 through 2016. He left for the Nashville area in 2019 through June of 2023, but then returned to the Midwest. “Since moving back to Madison, I’ve been so attracted to theatrical exhibition,” Lovendahl explains. “It gives me space to actually digest the movie and think about it over the course of a day.” His comments further shed light on his commitment to making The Horizon Line Madison a go-to resource for people who value communal spaces for art.

Lovendahl also characterizes part of his initiative for this project as “just to make sure I know what’s coming and am checking regularly myself.” And while Madison has certainly had its struggles with sustaining theatrical attendance for movies big and small, he knows this city is singular. It’s one that is frequently offering a “shared free-screening experience, which is creating a love of exhibition that is […] in no way deterring participation in our commercial cinemas,” Lovendahl says. The Horizon Line Madison aims to capture that energy of the community, “where there’s such an organic desire to see everything” of what the late David Lynch once defined as a “magical medium.”

Subscribe to The Horizon Line Madison through email at https://horizonlinemadison.substack.com/, where you’ll also be prompted to financially support Lovendahl’s efforts on a monthly basis. For any leads or submissions to the weekly Wednesday screening reports, Lovendahl can be contacted at horizonlinemadison@gmail.com.