James Kreul is a moving image curator, critic, scholar, maker and enthusiast living in Madison, Wisconsin. Wittgenstein wrote that “the meaning of a word is its use in the language.” On this website, Kreul will use the term “film” based on its current general use in the language, rather than based on any definition rooted in medium specificity.
Film Studies
Kreul was born in Madison, Wisconsin on September 3, 1970, the day that Vince Lombardi died. He graduated from Madison West High School in 1988, where he took Film Study and Mass Media classes taught by Bill Keys and Mary Moen.
As an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he joined the student group Independent Film and Video Collaborative, which organized screenings of student work and visiting filmmakers including James Benning, George Kuchar, Pola Rapaport and Cecilia Condit. He earned the top prize for a 16mm found footage film, Autobiograffiti, at the 1992 Wisconsin Union Directorate Student Film and Video Festival. He completed his B.A. in Communication Arts / Film Studies in 1992.
In 1994, Kreul began Film Studies graduate coursework in the Communication Arts department. He and graduate student colleagues founded the Madison Film Forum in 1995, which screened experimental films, American independent features, and international art cinema in 4070 Vilas Hall on campus and at the Madison Art Center (now the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art) in downtown Madison.
The UW-Cinematheque appointed Kreul as its first program assistant ahead of its inaugural season in 1998. During his time at the Cinematheque, Kreul served as a founding programmer for the Wisconsin Film Festival in 1999. His own films and videos were included in the Wisconsin Triennial at the Madison Art Center in 1996 and 1999.
Kreul earned his M.A. in Film Studies in 1996, and completed his Ph.D in 2005. His dissertation explained how Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls (1966) emerged from underground film venues and crossed over into mainstream theaters. He traced the history of experimental film distribution in New York, leading up to the Filmmakers Distribution Center (1967-1970). A key filmmaker in his narrative was Shirley Clarke (The Connection, Portrait of Jason), whose papers are collected in the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. His advisor was J.J. Murphy and his committee included David Bordwell and Kelley Conway. He taught in the Film Studies department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington from 2005 to 2011. His courses included histories of avant-garde, animation, documentary, and Indian popular cinema.
Madison Film Culture
Returning to Madison in 2012, Kreul contributed freelance film reviews and local film culture commentary in the alternative weekly, Isthmus, publishing over 60 articles through 2020. From 2014 to 2019, he edited Madison Film Forum, a website he created to promote and discuss local film culture. He wrote over 250 posts in that period, and edited 200 contributions from local writers.
Kreul currently serves as the Public Programs Coordinator at Arts + Literature Laboratory in Madison, where he also programs Mills Folly Microcinema, a monthly experimental film and video art series he founded in 2018. He has curated Rooftop Cinema at Madison Museum of Contemporary Art each summer since 2018, and general MMoCA Cinema programming since 2023. Starting with the 2023-2024 season, he will serve as film advisor for the Duck Soup Cinema silent film series at Overture Center.
About jameskreul.com
Okay, enough with the third person facade. I started jameskreul.com in July, 2023 with the following goals.
- Share my program notes for upcoming screenings at Mills Folly Microcinema, MMoCA Cinema, and Duck Soup Cinema.
- Journal my filmmaking and video essay projects.
- Engage with recent experimental film scholarship and literature.
- Document past and present Madison film culture.
- Investigate large and small questions about experimental, independent, international, and popular cinema.
My close-up selfie on the Blog page was taken at the Wisconsin Film Festival screening of The Last Picture Show on April 20, 2023. That was the last picture show at the now-closed theater in Hilldale Mall that began its life as Sundance 608, and ended as AMC Hilldale 6. Taking that selfie reminded me of another photo at one of the last screenings at one of the incarnations (as a movie venue) of the Majestic Theater. I’m sitting with co-programmer of the first Wisconsin Film Festival, Wendi Weger. Behind us are film enthusiast and one-time Majestic employee Adam Panek, filmmaker Erik Gunneson, and local musician and playwright Marty Mulhern.
Substack and Social Media
I have created a Substack email newsletter called Moving Image Madison, which will be a weekly subjective guide to what is playing in commercial theaters and alternative venues. I say “subjective” because it won’t be objective reportage, it will also discuss what I’m up to with Mills Folly Microcinema, MMoCA Cinema, and Duck Soup Cinema. Many blog posts here will first appear in some form in the Moving Image Madison newsletter.
In addition to Substack, you can also contact me through any of my social media accounts listed on the right side of the website footer, listed roughly in the order that I pay attention to them.