Sponsor

Podcast: Diving into Wisconsin Film Festival 2016

Chris Lay walks us through some highlights of this year’s 158-film lineup.

By &
●
Film
●
March 18, 2016
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

“Frank And The Wonder Cat.”

Chris Lay walks us through some highlights of this year’s 158-film lineup.

Now that the Wisconsin Film Festival’s 2016 schedule is live, we’re starting to dig in and preview the highlights and, as we do every year, trying to make sense of a rather overwhelming slate of options. Tone Madison contributor Chris Lay wrote about some initial highlights this week, and he joins us on this week’s podcast to talk in more detail about some of his selections, from the VHS-tastic documentary Frank And The Wonder Cat to famed documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles’ final work, In Transit. We also talk a bit more generally about how to get the most out of the festival, which takes place April 14 through 21.

Chris will be bringing you more coverage of specific films and thematic strands in the festival lineup over the next few weeks.

Sponsor

Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and catch WORT-FM’s weeknight news show In Our Backyard, which partners with us to produce these. Thanks to Dylan Brogan for producing this interview.

We can publish more

“only on Tone Madison” stories —

but only with your support.

Sponsor
Authors
Scott Gordon

Scott Gordon co-founded Tone Madison in 2014 has covered culture and politics in Madison since 2006 for publications including The A.V. Club, Dane101, and Isthmus, and has also covered policy, environmental issues, and public health for WisContext.

Profile pic by Rachal Duggan.

Chris Lay

A longtime Tone Madison contributor and former archivist for the Wisconsin State Journal, Chris Lay has also been referred to as a “cool ninja” by the Insane Clown Posse.

Related Articles
In a spacious and opulent house, two sisters stand at a medium shot in a sunlit room and look out to the right (through an unseen window). Both women have dark brown hair that is pulled back. They also both wear comfortable, long-sleeve clothing.
Evaluating tenderness and depth of family dynamics in “Sentimental Value”
By &
●
Film
●
December 10, 2025

Grant Phipps and Lance Li argue in favor of and against the artistic framework of Joachim Trier’s latest psychological family drama.

A photograph shows a medium close-up of different sizes of two t-shirt designs hanging on a clothing rack. The leftmost one is "Blade Runner" and the rightmost one is "The Thing." The "Blade Runner" tee prominently features Deckard's face (Harrison Ford) as well as text from the film in yellow and white, while "The Thing" tee includes small portraits of the cast arranged in two long rows with blue text and the iconic alien monster design rendered in black and white.
Movie tee envy
By
●
Microtones
●
December 5, 2025

Pondering a shirt collection, and stumbling upon Cosmic Cabin, which has the goods—at least niche ones for cinephiles.

Still image from the film "The Annihilation Of Fish" shows a rainy park scene in Los Angeles with geese along the grass and paved trail. A man in a tuxedo and black trenchcoat carries a black umbrella in the foreground. His facial expression appears pensive and perhaps a bit upset. In the middleground, a woman in a blue floral dress and red and orange floral umbrella stands still and looks at him with a sense of sympathy and concern.
“The Annihilation Of Fish” wholeheartedly renders the enchanting eccentricities of a senior romance
By
●
Film
●
December 3, 2025

Charles Burnett’s long-lost love story from 1999 screens on 35mm at UW Cinematheque on December 5.