MENOMONIE, Wis. — A film festival only in its second year in Menomonie has already had to navigate a global pandemic in order to operate this year.

“I guess as students, we’re just kind of going with the flow now and we’re like okay, we’re still doing this,” said filmmaker Lukas Medin. “We just want to participate any way that we can.”

Medin is a recent graduate of UW-Stout, a sponsor of the Red Cedar Film Festival. The goal of the international film fest is to garner more visibility for the university and bring in money to the city.

Professor Peter Galante is the festival’s founder.

“We have this beautiful theater, we have a university there, we teach video production and it was a logical thing to start,” Galante said.

He’s referring to the historic Mabel Tainter theater in Menomonie, where the festival is traditionally held. The July 2020 event got postponed to Jan. 18 due to the pandemic. It also had to transition to a virtual format. 

“We’re putting the films on our online learning platform, Canvas,” Galante said. "There’s no cost to the film festival and no cost to the university for us to host it.”

Twenty-eight films will be screened and nearly all filmmakers have agreed to still participate in their respective post-screening Q&A sessions, despite having to do so virtually. Galante said coordinating this has been particularly challenging.

“That’s a time-zone issue,” he said. “We have people from India, Singapore, Ireland and to get them doing a Q&A at 5pm Central Time is like midnight in Ireland.”

Lukas will be participating in a Q&A for his two films too.  He’s one of five UW-Stout students who have films in the festival.  His film Shots won Best Student Film for the 2020 season, as the awards have already been given out.

Galante said this will likely be a year. Where the event breaks even in cost and revenue.   The film festival goes until Jan. 21. 

To view the schedule, click here.