The problems and possibilities of defining cinema geographically have long bedeviled scholars of national cinemas, and have become all the more complicated as the contemporary cinematic universe has become increasingly diasporic in nature. As it turns out, many of the questions germane to conceptualizing modern-day film’s regional character (or lack thereof) can be found in microcosmic form in this year’s festival line-up. For every film that comfortably fits into a traditional idea of a cinema defined by local landmarks and culture, there is another that escapes easy classification, pushing us to consider what it is we mean when we claim a film as “Wisconsin’s Own.”

Take perhaps the most basic of regional-cinema boundaries: geography. Certainly, several of this year’s offerings use local spaces and institutions to vivid effect. In Flog Therapy and University of Wisconsin-Madison: Zoological Research Collections, filmmakers (and UW-Madison students) Ayla Larson and Billy Johnson sketch the interiors of the Inferno Nightclub and the university’s zoological research labs, respectively, in playful and unexpected fashion. Towns like Lodi, Sauk Prairie, and Baraboo form the bucolic backdrop against which director Jonathon Quam tells a quietly devastating story of childhood abuse and fraternal bonds in Blood Brothers.

But what to do with a film like Delphine Lanson’s Father’s Birth, a heartfelt love letter to the complexity of modern families that splits its time evenly between Waukesha and Paris? Or The Librarian and the Banjo, in which director Jim Carrier hopscotches from Madison to New Jersey to Tennessee as he tells the story of Dena Epstein, a music librarian who wrote the definitive book placing the origins of the titular instrument in African and African American culture? Their ties to Wisconsin are essential, but their stories cannot be told without leaving the confines of the state.

And what of those films whose “locales” barely reside in the physical world at all? Using stop-motion techniques to animate Lego characters, Eric J. Nelson’s Siszilla pays gloriously low-fi homage to both the Toho classic and the glories of childhood play. On the other end of the tonal spectrum, Meghan Allynn Johnson’s The Howdy House presents a meeting at a restaurant (in St. Louis, natch) through stop-motion as well, though the results swerve between the beguilingly surreal and inexplicably unsettling.

What of works that explicitly enmesh themselves with the issues, mores, and culture of the state? Marc Kornblatt’s Street Pulse (pictured) refracts the experience of Madison’s homeless population through the stories of several individuals, most memorably a married couple whose large difference in age and experience do not deter them from forging a life together, on and off the street. The capitol’s annual summer solstice festival gets captured via a playful pastiche style in Meghan Monday and Brijetta Hall Waller’s Solstice. Such films take a powerful look at the state of Wisconsin today, offering insights and observations that only a ground-level view can provide. Yet might a “Wisconsin” film capture more intangible feelings, moods, thoughts—ones experienced in a given place and time but not bound to it exclusively? An audience in a university town like Madison will laugh knowingly (and perhaps sigh wistfully) at the gentle skewering of fratty men aging semi-gracefully in Mark Kerins’ Drunken Phone Calls, but so will anyone who knows the gentle ache of growing up and apart from one’s college pals. The haze of familial memory and emotion explored so sensitively by Kellie Bronikowski in Somewhere in Between has a reach that knows no geographic boundaries.

And let’s not even get started on the matter of defining a “Wisconsin film” by directorial biography. Nathan Punwar—the director of the dizzying, dazzling Loves of a Cyclops—spent almost his entire youth in Madison, but lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Joel Allen Schroeder grew up in Madison and attended UW-Madison for two years…before transferring to USC and residing in Los Angeles—his heartfelt documentary, Dear Mr. Watterson, explores the lasting legacy of the Calvin and Hobbes comic-strip. Are they any less “Wisconsin filmmakers” than, say, Steve Miosku, a UW-Milwuakee student whose Gears—a masterfully ambiguous tale of a father, daughter, and the mysterious forces threatening to separate them—was made entirely in the state with an all-Wisconsin crew? (Never mind that he grew up in New York City.)

The examples could go on and on, but the message is clear: in an age of ever-increasing mobility and cross-continental communication, filmmakers and films are rarely products of a single environment. Far from suggesting a dilution of regional identity in the face of hyper-connected postmodern culture, though, such imbrication of influence showcased in this year’s “Wisconsin’s Own” selections speaks to the exciting way in which films tied to a particular place nevertheless negotiate multiple influences in surprising and original ways. They suggest that Wisconsin identity itself is not a static bundle of characteristics, but a dynamic way-station where ideas and identities from various times and places overlap, intersect, and fuse together. It should come as no surprise, then, that such a locale would produce such a vivid, unpredictable, and invigorating selection of films.

Madisonians and others will be able to see these films for themselves starting tomorrow and continuing on through April 18^th. Whether lifelong Wisconsinites, globe-hopping transplants, or somewhere in between, we can with pleasure claim these films as “our own”—an identification as multifaceted in theory as it is invigorating in practice.

The Golden Globe awards teeter precariously between two seemingly divergent roles within popular culture. On the one hand, NBC fosters the ceremony’s reputation as an anything-goes Hollywood celebrity bash as a means of stoking excitement and attracting viewer eyeballs. On the other hand, an ever-increasing attention to the Academy Awards race within major news outlets has afforded the Globes the faint aura of respectability–at least within the insular media-verse of awards prognosticating. Pundits feverishly parse the results of the ceremony, hoping to find within them premonitions of future Oscar gold. Both the glitter and the prestige only help the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the organization of international entertainment journalists that hands out the Globes. Each year’s ceremony, then, becomes an exercise in balancing boozy celebrity hijinks and sober Tinseltown tributes. The Globes must be wacky enough to tune into on Sunday night, and respectable enough to be taken seriously on Monday morning.

Such a tightrope act was on full display this year. Ricky Gervais presided over the ceremony for the third consecutive year, riding the wave of tempest-in-a-teapot controversy over his “edgy” remarks from previous hosting gigs. The British comedian brings an intriguing note of grinning hostility to the proceedings. When Gervais asked presenter Johnny Depp whether the star had actually seen his own star vehicle The Tourist, it not only proved the perfect ego-deflator for Depp. It also handily lacerated the celebrity-whoring of the HFPA itself, which gave Depp and co-star Angelina Jolie a pair of please-come-to-the-ceremony nominations last year for the critically-lambasted film.

Still, Gervais might be getting a little too complacent in his provocateur-of-the-stars persona. At one point, he read aloud from a list of topics that the HFPA had banned, concluding with a tired pun about Jodie Foster’s film The Beaver. (Foster gamely gave a thumbs-up sign during the obligatory reaction shot.) Beyond its misfiring as humor, the moment underlined how much the Globes are banking on Gervais to bring the “crazy” quotient to a ceremony whose promises of spur-of-the-moment wackiness don’t always pan out. The show’s relatively-sedate tone made even a mildly-uncomfortable moment like Rob Lowe and Julianne Moore squirming through a Teleprompter mishap stand out. “This is why we love this evening!” Lowe offered limply.

Indeed, the most surprising bit of levity came in the middle of the most sincere moment of the telecast. Morgan Freeman received this year’s Cecil B. DeMille Award, a lifetime-achievement honor complete with heartfelt tributes from Helen Mirren and Sidney Poitier. Freeman’s acceptance speech proved appropriately classy and gracious, but the preceding clip reel included downright-nutty footage of the actor circa mid-1970s, as a singing vampire on the PBS children’s show The Electric Company. Rising out of a coffin filled with bubbly water, Freeman (sans shirt and sporting Dracula fangs) scrubs his back with a brush and sings about how he “loves to take a bath in a casket.” Its utterly oddball quality offered a welcome wrinkle in Freeman’s voice-of-God persona, and made for the most genuinely surprising–and instantly YouTube-able–moment of the evening.

As for its value as an awards harbinger, the Globes gave its usual hints as to which way the winds might be blowing come Oscar time, even as HFPA’s decision to split major film awards into separate categories for “drama” and “comedy or musical” offered enough ambiguity to keep the pundits chattering with uncertainty. The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius’ recreation of/homage to the silent-film era, picked up three awards, including Best Motion Picture Comedy or Musical. This would seem to cement the film’s sprint to the head of the awards pack. Still, Alexander Payne’s much-loved The Descendents scooped the Best Motion Picture Drama prize, as well as a Best Actor in a Drama award for George Clooney. Does it have the potential to upset? Similarly, Meryl Streep’s Best Actress in a Drama win for The Iron Lady all but sews up her long-awaited third Oscar…unless Michelle Williams sneaks in for her turn in My Week with Marilyn, which won her a Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical statuette.

Trying to be both free-wheeling Hollywood bash and serious Oscar precursor, the Globes can sometimes come off a generally muddled affair. Perhaps it’s best appreciated not in its fractured grand design, but in the little moments of glamour, sentiment, and surprise that inevitably bubble to the surface. So, in that spirit of appreciation, a few brief, final thoughts on this lovingly-glorified cocktail party of an awards show. Nice speech, Meryl. Great dress, Angelina. And Morgan, babe, any more of those vampire clips?