🚧 It’s spring. Time for road construction!

⚖️ Legal Fight Threatens Future of Veterans Museum

• Plans to expand the Wisconsin Veterans Museum on the Capitol Square are in limbo because of a lawsuit between the state of Wisconsin and the private property owners.
• The state had been leasing the museum property and planned to buy it outright for $9 million to renovate the museum. But the current owners have resisted any attempt to sell, they plan to demolish the current building and construct a mixed-use residential building and a new Wisconsin Veterans Museum when the state’s lease expires later this year. The owners have sued the state, saying the legal language in the lease is ambiguous. [Cap Times]

🚧 Spring Is Here, and So Is Road Construction

• As City Cast Madison producer Jade Iseri-Ramos says, there are only two seasons in the Midwest: winter and road construction. Starting April 2, the section of East Wilson Street between South Pinckney and King streets will be closed for reconstruction until mid-June.
• Also starting on April 2, the 100 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard will be closed to repair concrete pavement in the intersection. But that closure is only expected to last a week. [City of Madison]

💸 UW To Departments: Prepare For Funding Cuts

• Facing “significant uncertainty” due to potential loss of federal funding dollars for research and the economic impacts of tariffs, UW-Madison leaders have told all academic leaders to tighten their belts this year and prepare for 5-10% budget reductions in the next fiscal year.
• The university is looking to limit non-essential funding and see where one-time expenditures could be deferred. The university will also offer temporary financial support where possible to keep research projects going.
• 🎧 Dig deeper: City Cast Madison host Bianca Martin got an inside look at the “disastrous” effects that research funding cuts could have on the university in her conversation with Dr. Jo Handelsman, director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. [Daily Cardinal, UW-Madison, 🎧City Cast Madison]

Cinephiles rejoice! It’s just nine days until the start of the 2025 Wisconsin Film Festival. On the City Cast Madison podcast today, host Bianca Martin talked to operations director Ben Reiser about what Madison film fans can expect. Plus, we chatted with diehard festival goers about their favorite memories at the event.

One of the most Madison films at this year’s festival is the 25th anniversary screening of Erik Gunneson’s “Milk Punch.” The indie comedy, following two friends trying to track down a stolen Oldsmobile Delta 88, was shot between 1995 and 1997 and captures a very different Madison, with scenes shot at long-gone places like the old O’Cayz Corral on Wilson Street and the Schenk-Huegel uniform store on Atwood Avenue.

Little seen since it premiered at the 2000 Wisconsin Film Festival, “Milk Punch” is returning to the festival April 5 in a digitally restored print. While tickets for that screening are rush-only, Gunneson is planning follow-up screenings at the Bartell Theater on April 11.

Gunneson, who now teaches media production at the UW-Madison’s Department of Communication Arts, talked about revisiting and restoring “Milk Punch.”

What was the process like of restoring the film?

I have a 16mm print of it and that’s it. The original negative was in a lab that went out of business, so I don’t really know where that negative ended up.

[The UW Department of] Communication Arts, where I work, has really got into the film restoration business thanks to some generous alums raising money and purchasing the film scanner that we now use. So I have a quite wonderful scan of that film that looks better than it ever looked on a 16mm projector. It’s pretty glorious. There are a few scratches and some dirt and stuff, but I’m not taking any of that out.

What’s it like to watch it again after so long?

It's been really fun to watch it again and to kind of think about the way it was made. It was really a film that was unlike any other kind of production. The cast members would join the crew, and if somebody who I had cast wouldn't show up, someone on the crew would have to play a role. There was just this kind of sense of camaraderie.

What gave you the inspiration to make a film?

The project really was just something I'd always wanted to do. When I was a student, I was interested in more experimental kinds of films. Films like “She’s Gotta Have It,” “Stranger Than Paradise,” “Chan Is Missing.” They were really inspirational to me. All these films showed me this way of making films and approaching story in a really different way. Making films about really specific places and people, that’s what I was interested in.

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