Susan Kerns (She/Her)
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ssk8.bsky.social
Susan Kerns (She/Her)
@ssk8.bsky.social
730 followers 1.4K following 31 posts
MKE Film & Mke Film Festival. Professor, writer, filmmaker. Refocus: The Films of Susan Seidelman out now from Edinburgh UP.
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Reposted by Susan Kerns (She/Her)
shittychallenge.bsky.social
#ShittyCameraChallenge Black & White Tie Winter Wonder Challenge!

December 1st through January 31st, a B&W themed #ShittyCameraChallenge

Dress up cause it’s gonna be classy as fuck.
a man wearing a tuxedo and bow tie is adjusting his jacket .
ALT: a man wearing a tuxedo and bow tie is adjusting his jacket .
media.tenor.com
November 20, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Reposted by Susan Kerns (She/Her)
isaacrowlett.bsky.social
Milwaukee, one year ago today
Black and white photo of Milwaukee’s Oriental theater
November 18, 2025 at 11:49 PM
Reposted by Susan Kerns (She/Her)
mkefilm.bsky.social
😯 So, apparently our theaters can talk. And sing. And they also wrote an entire musical number explaining why we’re having an end-of-year giving campaign!
Huge thanks to our partners at Ski Team, Independent Studios, and The Electric Sun for creating this masterpiece for us: youtu.be/DUlCCLDseFU?...
Help Milwaukee Film Spruce Things Up!
YouTube video by Milwaukee Film
youtu.be
November 20, 2025 at 6:21 PM
Reposted by Susan Kerns (She/Her)
david-rooney.bsky.social
Wasn't sure what to expect from SONG SUNG BLUE, but Craig Brewer's film of a Milwaukee couple's real-life love story is a disarming crowd-pleaser. As a Neil Diamond tribute act that become local legends, Hugh Jackman & a never-better Kate Hudson shine.
www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...
‘Song Sung Blue’ Review: Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson Bring Sparkling Chemistry and Impressive Musicality to Disarming Boomer Love Story
Ella Anderson, Michael Imperioli and Jim Belushi also star in Craig Brewer’s account of a real-life blue-collar Milwaukee couple whose Neil Diamond tribute act makes them local legends.
www.hollywoodreporter.com
October 27, 2025 at 6:46 AM
Reposted by Susan Kerns (She/Her)
pressreleases.urbanmilwaukee.com
Milwaukee Film Brings Back Take a Seat Campaign at Oriental Theatre
Milwaukee Film Brings Back Take a Seat Campaign at Oriental Theatre
The Take a Seat Campaign offers community members the chance to invest in the power of film and leave a mark on the historic Oriental Theatre.
urbanmilwaukee.com
November 11, 2025 at 8:50 PM
Reposted by Susan Kerns (She/Her)
volksbeard.bsky.social
Our theater the Oriental in Milwaukee initially had it in their small theater… so many people demanded to see it they moved it to the BIG theater. I absolutely loved the film, saw it twice.
December 1, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by Susan Kerns (She/Her)
tmj4.com
Relive the Milwaukee musical duo Lightning and Thunder's inspiring story of love, success, and overcoming tragedy as it becomes a Hollywood film starring Hugh Jackman.
Reliving Lighting and Thunder ahead of the premiere of 'Song Sung Blue'
Relive the Milwaukee musical duo Lightning and Thunder's inspiring story of love, success, and overcoming tragedy as it becomes a Hollywood film starring Hugh Jackman.
www.tmj4.com
December 2, 2025 at 4:18 AM
Reposted by Susan Kerns (She/Her)
washingtonpost.com
Some 22 million Americans are set to lose health insurance subsidies by the end of the year.

Here's who it will affect and what will happen if the subsidies are allowed to expire:
Who will lose out when ACA health insurance subsidies expire?
Here’s a look at who could be affected by the end of the Affordable Care Act credits and how much prices could change.
www.washingtonpost.com
October 14, 2025 at 12:04 PM
Reposted by Susan Kerns (She/Her)
mkefilm.bsky.social
From Executive Producer Michael Moore and Palestine's Official Submission for the 2025 Academy Awards, From Ground Zero is a collection of revealing stories from 22 Palestinian filmmakers.
Tickets for From Ground Zero 10/2 at 7 PM and more Milwaukee Muslim Film Fest screenings: mkefilm.org/mmff
September 22, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by Susan Kerns (She/Her)
tubemapper.bsky.social
Charing Cross Tube Station has been temporarily renamed Haring Cross in tribute to Keith Haring’s iconic artwork.

There are free prints & a temporary gallery in a usually unused part of the station, displaying 2 original 1986 artworks featuring Absolut Vodka

Open 17 - 18th Sep
September 18, 2025 at 11:20 AM
ssk8.bsky.social
New silent auction items just dropped! Including a 3-night stay at The Dunes for $100 and VERY reasonably priced VERY fancy booze! Closes Sunday and all proceeds support Milwaukee Film my.onecause.com/event/organi...
OneCause
my.onecause.com
September 16, 2025 at 9:53 PM
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dean.bsky.social
Ben Shahn
Natchez, Mississippi
October 1935

In the early 1930s, Shahn learned a great deal from Walker Evans, whose studio he shared. But Shahn did very little picture taking after he left the Farm Security Administration in 1938.
A young black man sitting in front of a barber shop
September 12, 2025 at 3:53 PM
ssk8.bsky.social
Holding Liat screens Thurs, Sept 18, 6:30pm at Milwaukee Film’s Oriental Theater as part of the Dialogues Doc Fest. One screening only so a must see!
holdingliat.bsky.social Holding Liat @holdingliat.bsky.social · Sep 10
"★★★★ Powerful and complex... HOLDING LIAT is a valuable work" – @peterbradshaw1.bsky.social @theguardian.com

Winner, Documentary Award, Berlinale

In UK cinemas this Friday
www.theguardian.com/film/2025/se...
September 14, 2025 at 2:49 PM
Reposted by Susan Kerns (She/Her)
jewishchron.bsky.social
Holding Liat review: ‘A loving family rent apart by October 7’ ★★★★

www.thejc.com/life/holding...
Holding Liat review: ‘A loving family rent apart by October 7’ ★★★★ - The Jewish Chronicle
This documentary reveals the anguish and shock of a family torn asunder by the massacre, and its attempt to reconcile the horror with their politics of peaceful coexistence
www.thejc.com
September 9, 2025 at 4:21 PM
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hmdob.bsky.social
Documentary "Holding Liat" examines the anguish of a hostage family in Israel. "We are being led by crazy people on both sides,” he complains, reserving particular contempt for Netanyahu, whom he believes to be using the suffering to extend his political life.
www.theguardian.com/film/2025/se...
‘It’s so different from the media narrative’: telling a different story of 7 October
Brandon Kramer’s documentary Holding Liat follows an Israeli family torn apart by the Hamas attacks, but clinging to hopes of reconciliation
www.theguardian.com
September 10, 2025 at 10:36 AM
Reposted by Susan Kerns (She/Her)
theguardian.com
Holding Liat review – powerful study of a family torn apart by Hamas’ 7 October attacks
Holding Liat review – powerful study of a family torn apart by Hamas’ 7 October attacks
Brandon Kramer’s documentary complicates any simple view of the Israel-Gaza war in its portrait of one family’s agonising divisions
www.theguardian.com
September 10, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Reposted by Susan Kerns (She/Her)
scsheil.bsky.social
There's an interesting section in David Foster Wallace's piece about Lynch's Lost Highway, where he talks about the difference between Lynch and Tarantino (and how much Lynch was an influence on a whole crop of filmmakers)
In 1995, PBS ran a lavish ten-part documentary called American Cinema whose final episode was devoted to "The Edge of Hollywood" and the increasing influence of young independent filmmakers - the Coens, Jim Jarmusch, Carl Franklin, Q. Tarantino et al. It was not just unfair but bizarre that David Lynch's name was never once mentioned in the episode, because his influence is all over these directors. The Band-Aid on the neck of Pulp Fiction's Marcellus Wallace - unexplained, visually incongruous, and featured prominently in three separate set-ups-is textbook Lynch. So are the long, self-consciously mundane dialogues on pork, foot massages, TV pilots, etc. that punctuate Pulp Fiction's violence, a violence whose creepy/comic stylization is also resoundingly Lynchian. The peculiar narrative tone of Tarantino's films - the thing that makes them seem at once strident and obscure, not-quite-clear in a haunting way — is Lynch's tone; Lynch invented this tone. It seems to me fair to say that the commercial Hollywood phenomenon that is Mr. Quentin Tarantino would not exist without David Lynch as a touch stone, a set of allusive codes and contexts in the viewer's deep-brain core. In a way, what Tarantino's done with the French New Wave and with Lynch is what Pat Boone did with Little Richard and Fats Domino: he found (rather ingeniously) a way to take what is ragged and distinctive and menacing about their work and homogenize it, churn it until it's smooth and cool and hygienic enough for mass consumption. Reser voir Dogs, for example, with its comically banal lunch-chatter, creepily otiose code names, and intrusive soundtrack of campy pop from dec ades past, is Lynch made commercial, i.e. faster, linearer, and with what was idiosyncratically surreal now made fashionably (i.e. "hiply") surreal... Take the granddaddy of in-your-ribs Blue Velvet references: the scene in Reservoir Dogs where Michael Madsen, dancing to a cheesy '70s tune, cuts off a hostage's ear. This just isn't subtle at all. None of this is to say that Lynch himself doesn't owe debts-to Hitchcock, to Cassavetes, to Bresson and Deren and Wiene. But it is to say that Lynch has in many ways cleared and made arable the contempo- rary "anti-Hollywood" territory that Tarantino et al. are cash-cropping right now.12 Recall that both The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet came out in the 1980s, that metastatic decade of cable, VCRs, merchandis- ing tie-ins and multinational blockbusters, all the big-money stuff that threatened to empty the American film industry of everything that wasn't High Concept. Lynch's moody, creepy, obsessive, unmistakeably personal movies were to High Concept what the first great '40s noir films were to toothy musicals: unforeseen critical and commercial successes that struck a nerve with audiences and expanded studios' and distribu- tors' idea of what would sell. It is to say that we owe Lynch a lot. And it is also to say that David Lynch, at age 50, is a better, more complex, more interesting director than any of the hip young "rebels" making violently ironic films for New Line and Miramax today. It is particularly to say that - even without considering recent cringers like Four Rooms or From Dusk to Dawn - D. Lynch is an exponentially bet- ter filmmaker than Q. Tarantino. For, unlike Tarantino, D. Lynch knows that an act of violence in an American film has, through repetition and desensitization, lost the ability to refer to anything but itself. This is why violence in Lynch's films, grotesque and coldly stylized and symbolically heavy as it may be, is qualitatively different from Hollywood's or even anti-Hollywood's hip cartoon-violence. Lynch's violence always tries to mean something. 9a a better way to put what i just tried to say Quentin Tarantino is interested in watching somebody's ear getting cut off; David Lynch is interested in the ear.
February 28, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Reposted by Susan Kerns (She/Her)
mkefilm.bsky.social
Susan is here to tell you a little bit more about the upcoming fest, and Robyn is here to... make sure you're really listening 😡💕
Explore the ever-changing world of Documentary Film with us at Dialogues Documentary Film Festival presented by Potawatomi Casino Hotel Sept 18–21: mkefilm.org/ddf
#mke
August 5, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Reposted by Susan Kerns (She/Her)
mkefilm.bsky.social
We had a wonderful time on Wednesday introducing several films featured in the 2025 Dialogues Documentary Fest! Thank you to everyone who came out for a preview of DDF movie magic starting September 18th through the 21st.
Make sure not to miss out: mkefilm.org/ddf #documentaryfilm #filmfestival
September 12, 2025 at 1:47 AM
Reposted by Susan Kerns (She/Her)
okfox.bsky.social
Julia Sweeney spoke with the director of a new documentary called We Are Pat after the IFC screening tonight. I've shared my thots. My ★★★★★ review of It's Pat on Letterboxd boxd.it/9ZctG1 ☯️
f. @papapishu.bsky.social & @screenslate.bsky.social
June 13, 2025 at 5:21 AM
ssk8.bsky.social
Michael Schultz surprised folks by stopping by last night’s Black Lens happy hour and screening of The Last Dragon! Don’t miss his Q&As today for Car Wash and Cooley High at Milwaukee Film’s Oriental Theatre! youtu.be/YFbwmvg3M5c?...
Cooley High (1975) Trailer
YouTube video by The Duke Mitchell Film Club
youtu.be
September 13, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Reposted by Susan Kerns (She/Her)
gregpak.net
The NY Art Book Fair doubles as a tremendous display space for agit-prop and activist posters and graphics.

Absolutely worth checking out for that alone, if that's one of your interests.

At MOMA PS1.

nyabf2025.printedmatterartbookfairs.org/visit
Wall of posters at the NY Art Book Fair, mostly poitical, including messages like "YOU CANNOT COVERUP GENOCIDE," "GENDER LIBERATION," WE WANT TO LIVE FREE," "ACTUP*OCCUPY," "A Benefit for Jesse Jackson," and much more
September 12, 2025 at 4:43 PM
ssk8.bsky.social
Very proud of Jay! One of my fave former students 💖
September 12, 2025 at 7:37 PM
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chrispolansky.bsky.social
Happy New Liquid Mike Record Day and New Jens Lekman Record Day to all who partake
September 12, 2025 at 5:28 PM
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sandeelio.bsky.social
#AugustMovieChallenge
#Moviesky
Day 26 - African American Role Model in a Movie
Richard Pryor in Car Wash!
August 27, 2025 at 1:08 AM