Public
The Doom Generation
Union CinemaTeens Jordan White and Amy Blue pick up a handsome drifter named Xavier Red. Red tends to create combustible situations - for example, a trip to a convenience store leads to a clerk getting decapitated. Afterward, the trio voyages through small-town America, where Amy is accosted by various men claiming to be her lovers, and she and Jordan find themselves drawn to Xavier. But can any amount of sex lift the sense of doom hanging over them?
Nowhere
Union CinemaIn Los Angeles, a colorful assortment of bohemians try to make sense of their intersecting lives. The moody Dark Smith, his bisexual girlfriend, her lesbian lover, and their shy gay friend plan on attending the wildest party of the year. But they'll only make it if they can survive the drug trips, suicides, trysts, mutilations and alien abductions that occur as one surreal day unfolds.
Experimental Tuesdays presents: From the Archives
Union CinemaFrom the Archives is an ongoing series curated by MFA candidates in the UWM Film Department. For each program, the curator is invited to program a selection of films around a theme of their choosing from the remarkable Cinema Arts Archive collection, which contains over 400 essential works from the history of experimental cinema. Curated by MFA candidate Matt Feldman.
Gospel of Revolution
Union CinemaThrough powerful archival footage and contemporary interviews, the film shows how these radical Catholics fought injustice alongside peasants, workers, and Indigenous people, refusing to accept poverty and oppression.
Soundtrack To a Coup d’Etat
Union CinemaUnited Nations, 1960: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, jazz musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe, and the U.S. State Department swings into action, sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup. Director Johan Grimonprez captures the moment when African politics and American jazz collided in this magnificent essay film, a riveting historical rollercoaster that illuminates the political machinations behind the 1961 assassination of Congo’s leader Patrice Lumumba. Richly illustrated by eyewitness accounts, official government memos, testimonies from mercenaries and CIA operatives, speeches from Lumumba himself, and a veritable canon of jazz icons, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat interrogates colonial history to tell an urgent and timely story of precedent that resonates more than ever in today’s geopolitical climate.
The Decay of Fiction
Union CinemaThe walls of the Ambassador are cracked and peeling, the lawns are brown, and mushrooms grow in the damp carpets of the Cocoanut Grove. The pool is empty, and the ballroom where Bobby Kennedy died is shuttered and locked. A tall, elegant blonde stands transparently on the terrace of her bungalow, smoking and watching the sunrise. Voices and tinkles waft across the lawn. A contingent of vaguely sinister men arrive and ask for Jack. Jack is expecting trouble, but not this kind of trouble. Louise, a guest, replays a nightmare in which she drowns Pauline so that she can marry Dean. The sun sets and rises again.
Nightshift
Union CinemaOver the course of a single nightshift, a West London hotel clerk plays mute witness to a nocturnal constellation of guests ranging from punk rockers and scenester magicians to seemingly staid businessmen and old-world gentry. As the hours march deeper into night and the varied clientele depart the waking world, the hotel transforms into an otherworldly, liminal space swaying between the everyday and the enchanting.
Nightshift
Union CinemaOver the course of a single nightshift, a West London hotel clerk plays mute witness to a nocturnal constellation of guests ranging from punk rockers and scenester magicians to seemingly staid businessmen and old-world gentry. As the hours march deeper into night and the varied clientele depart the waking world, the hotel transforms into an otherworldly, liminal space swaying between the everyday and the enchanting.
The Decay of Fiction
Union CinemaThe walls of the Ambassador are cracked and peeling, the lawns are brown, and mushrooms grow in the damp carpets of the Cocoanut Grove. The pool is empty, and the ballroom where Bobby Kennedy died is shuttered and locked. A tall, elegant blonde stands transparently on the terrace of her bungalow, smoking and watching the sunrise. Voices and tinkles waft across the lawn. A contingent of vaguely sinister men arrive and ask for Jack. Jack is expecting trouble, but not this kind of trouble. Louise, a guest, replays a nightmare in which she drowns Pauline so that she can marry Dean. The sun sets and rises again.
24th Poet Laureate of the United States: Ada Limón
UWM Union Wisconsin Room 2200 E. Kenwood Blvd., Milwaukee, United StatesAda Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her most recent book of poetry, The Hurting Kind, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. She is the 24th Poet Laureate of The United States, the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, and a TIME magazine woman of the year. As the Poet Laureate, her signature project is called You Are Here and focuses on how poetry can help connect us to the natural world. Her first books for children include In Praise of Mystery and And, Too, The Fox.