Milwaukee filmmaker in a class of her own
As Film Festival opens, Brandt’s entry ‘Pet Names’ picks up national buzz
Ask Carol Brandt where she learned to think like a filmmaker, and she’ll point to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s well-regarded film department.
Ask her where she began to develop directing and editing chops, and she’ll point to her childhood, when she taught herself to make animations in her bedroom on dairy farms in Viroqua and Deerfield.
Those self-determined Wisconsin influences essentially come home in the form of one of the most anticipated films of the Milwaukee Film Festival, which opened Thursday and runs through Nov. 1.
Her film, “Pet Names” — shot over 21 days in Wisconsin, with cast and crew living together — is one of the best independent films made in the United States this year and a “landmark film for our local filmmaking community,” said Jonathan Jackson, Milwaukee Film’s executive director. It is a “gorgeously realized” film that makes rural Wisconsin “sparkle on screen,” he added.
The film premiered at the SXSW Film Festival, generating a new level of buzz around Brandt’s work.
Brandt’s creative voice is more evident in “Pet Names,” a project that also marks the start of a
rich, new partnership with Meredith Johnston, who wrote and starred in the intimate, indie film about grief set in Milwaukee and an “up north” Wisconsin campsite.
The film is a rarity for other reasons, too.
When Brandt was interviewed recently about the increase of female filmmakers at the festival this year, she asked us a question: Are there other Milwaukee women who have made a fulllength fiction film with a theatrical release?
We put the question to Milwaukee Film, which checked its records going back at least a decade, and conferred with the UWM film school. There are plenty of women who have produced feature films, and lots of directors of documentaries, shorts and experimental films. But it appears that fiction films are “few and far between,” said Cara Ogburn, the festival’s programming director.
Brandt is largely in a class of her own, they say.
It’s an important distinction that went almost unnoticed, said Jackson.
The rarity of a female-directed fiction film is not just a local issue. In general, festivals across the United States showed almost three times as many narrative features by men as by women in the last year or so, according to the Center for Study of Women in Television and Film.
This year, nearly half, 47 percent, of all films screened at the Milwaukee Film Festival are directed by women, including documentaries and shorts, though only 19 of the 142 films directed or co-directed by women were made locally.
“Carol is, of course, a two-time feature fiction film director, so she has been fighting strong against this statistic and is, at this stage in her career, incredibly impressive in terms of what she’s been able to achieve,” said Ogburn.
When asked about her filmmaking style, Brandt talks a lot about nuance and subtext.
She also talks about the “quiet genius” of filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, a revered independent filmmaker of whom Brandt is obviously a fangirl.
“I want to be her, and I want to be like her,” Brandt said of Reichardt, who is known for films such as “Night Moves” and “Certain Women.”
Despite having gone to film school, Brandt learned a lot from turning to Google and online resources like No Film School. She creates an entire second script for her projects, writing down the purpose and meaning behind every bit of dialogue, every action, line by line.
“Sometimes ‘I like that shirt’ really means ‘I love you,’” she said.
This approach keeps her mind organized on set so she can go off script when she needs to, as she often did for “Pet Names,” where much of the narrative unfolds in quiet moments, without spoken dialogue.
“Pet Names,” which screens at the Oriental Theatre at 2 p.m. Sunday and 6:30 p.m. Oct. 27, and at the Jan Serr Studio Cinema at 4 p.m. Oct. 29, is about a grad student who returns home to care for her seriously ill mother and who takes respite in a nostalgic camping trip with an old flame.
The film, which cost about $12,000, puts a lot of emotion into a small frame. Literally. The film is presented in an oldschool, almost-square aspect ratio, which is quite different from the ruling rectangular shapes most moviegoers are used to.
“The more we thought about the tiny tents, the tiny campsites, the big tall trees and the gorge — it just made sense for us to go that route,” Brandt said of the unusual stylistic choice.
Brandt and Johnston are now working on a new film about a queer couple who get priced out of their Chicago apartment, end up living in their van and break down in rural Kansas, in what they assume is “Trump country,” Brandt said.
They’re sharing writing and directing credits on the new film, called “Pink Moon,” and have ideas for several other projects.
“We are taking this partnership into some bananas places,” said Johnston, who calls “Pink Moon” a “queer heist movie” that’s also “about hyper liberalism and hyper conservatism.”
“It actually really heartwarming, what happens,” said Brandt of the storyline inspired by some real experiences. “It will be timely and important.”