Hilldale movie theater to reopen for Wisconsin Film Festival

The theater at Hilldale has had several names and several owners over the years, and was known as AMC Madison 6 when it closed last November.

It will have one more name when it reopens for one week in April: Wisconsin Film Festival Hilldale.

Festival and Hilldale officials announced at a press conference Tuesday morning that the shuttered theater will host the 2023 Wisconsin Festival, which runs Thursday, April 13 through Thursday, April 20.

It’ll be the last hurrah for the theater, and the festival will fittingly show Peter Bogdanovich’s 1970 drama “The Last Picture Show” on the final night as a sendoff to the theater, which opened in 2007 as Sundance Cinemas 608.

“We’re very, very grateful to Hilldale,” festival director Kelley Conway said in an interview. “We were sad that AMC closed that theater. We think film exhibition in Madison is fragile. We’re doing what we can with our UW Cinematheque screenings and the Wisconsin Film Festival, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see films. So we’re very, very happy that Hilldale agreed to partner with us for this one last festival (at Hilldale).”

Once the festival is over, Hilldale will donate the equipment that AMC left behind in the theater to the Wisconsin Film Festival for utilize in future years.

“This is an incredible community event, and we are proud to be able to expand on that support with a donation of theater equipment,” Hilldale general manager Nanci Horn said in a statement. “Hilldale strongly believes in the arts and we’re so grateful to be able to contribute in this way.”

Film fest schedule to come

The lineup for the 2023 Wisconsin Film Festival, the 25th edition since it began in 1999 as the Great Wisconsin Film Festival, will be announced at a special “First Look at the Fest” event at the Great Dane Brewing Company at Hilldale on Wednesday, March 8. The full schedule will appear online and in Isthmus on Thursday, March 8, and tickets will go on sale Saturday, March 11.

Conway revealed that one of the special guests at this year’s festival will be New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis, who brought Michael Mann’s “Collateral” to the 2010 Wisconsin Film Festival.

The six-screen theater at Hilldale has been a part of the Wisconsin Film Festival since it opened as Sundance Cinemas 608 in 2007, and was the primary off-campus location for the festival. While the festival, produced by the UW-Madison’s Department of Communication Arts, has several screening venues on the UW-Madison campus, such as Shannon Hall and the Union South Marquee Theatre, booking conflicts have meant that campus screenings were confined to the first four days of the festival.

While the Hilldale theater has changed owners and names, the festival has always been able to utilize three of the six screens there for seven days of the festival. Watching festival films on campus often meant hopping back and forth between different locations, but at Hilldale cinephiles could park themselves all day long.

“People could go to a film at 10 o’clock in the morning, and then stay there all day and watch five films,” Conway said. “It was an efficient and beautiful way to see a lot of films.”

That changed last fall, when AMC Theatres announced that it would not be renewing its lease at Hilldale at the end of 2022. When the theater abruptly closed at the end of November, it left downtown Madison without a dedicated movie theater, and left film festival organizers with the option of either dramatically scaling back to a campus-only festival, or scramble to find another off-campus venue at the last minute.

A city supporter

For Ald. Bill Tishler, who represents the 11th District that includes Hilldale, the loss of AMC Madison 6 was personal. A senior instructional media producer at UW-Madison who is a graduate of the Communication Arts department that puts on the festival, Tishler grew up in the area and fondly remembers spending the summer of 1977 biking back and forth to the former Hilldale Cinema to see “Star Wars” 20 times.

Conway said Tishler was instrumental in getting festival and Hilldale officials together to talk about the possibility of continuing the festival there, at least for one more year.

“I guess what I did is I said, ‘Any chance we could keep the film festival here? Can you go and at least talk to them?’” Tishler said. “I put the two groups together and they took it from there.

“Hilldale didn’t have to do this,” he continued. “This is really an example of putting people before profits. This could have been a really bad ending, with no film festival. Now we have one more chance.”

While Hilldale officials and festival volunteers will have to spruce up the theater to get it ready, AMC left much of its project equipment behind when it exited the theater. The theater’s concessions area is not available, but Conway said the festival will provide food and drink through pop-ups and partnerships with festival sponsors like the Great Dane.

Currently, Hilldale does not have plans for a movie theater as part of its Phase III development plans, and is looking at the space where the theater currently sits to become retail space. Conway said festival organizers have already been talking with other venues about partnerships in future years.

“We are looking for additional venues right now, and we’re feeling positive about our ability to secure spots to keep this festival going strong,’ she said. “We haven’t signed contracts yet for 2024, but we’re feeling really good. The festival is here to stay.”

Tishler said that it’s certainly possible that seeing thousands of film fans come to Hilldale to see films, eat at neighboring restaurants and shop at neighboring businesses might cause developers to re-evaluate their plans.

“That would be a real Hollywood ending,” he said. 

Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified Ald. Bill Tishler’s profession.