This Saturday at the Downer Theater, you can combine your loves of poetry, popcorn and movies. Milwaukeean Petey Balestrieri created a new free monthly film series called “Petey’s Popcorn,” where he finds local a host and partners with a charity of their choice. Balestreieri's day job is cinema operations director for Milwaukee Film, but this series is a passion project launched on his own.
The films are free to the public and all box-office donations benefit a charity that highlights the people and organizations working to show what great things Milwaukee has to offer. The series kicked off in February with films from Bronzeville to benefit the CR8TV House, followed by Sky High Skates raising funds to benefit two local DIY skateparks.
This month, “Petey’s Popcorn” is hosted by Woodland Pattern to benefit their Milwaukee Youth Poet Laureate program. "[Petey and I] have a lot of things in common and part of what we really love is Milwaukee and all the great things that Milwaukee has to offer. So for Petey's Popcorn, he partners with the Downer Theater and they host a movie a month in support of a nonprofit that sort of highlights what makes Milwaukee great and special, unique," explains Antonio Vargas-Neito, education director at Woodland Pattern.
Woodland's Milwaukee Youth Poet Laureate program started in 2022 in partnership with poet Dasha Kelly Hamilton, Milwaukee Public Library, the UW-Milwaukee's Writing Project, UWM's Graduate Program in Creative Writing, and Milwaukee Public Schools.
"The Youth Poet Laureate sort of represents the youth poetic voice of Milwaukee," notes Vargas-Neito. "We partner with organizations to highlight a cause that the Youth Laureate feels strongly about and sort of bring that to the forefront, give people the opportunity to sort of learn more about things going on." He says that most people would be surprised about how many young people write poetry, but perhaps prefer to keep it to themselves.
"Part of the Youth Poet Laureate Program is to help students see that there's value in sharing their poetry, see that there's value in writing poetry, see that there's value in growing community through poetry," adds Vargas-Neito.
In addition to leading a poetry camp at Woodland Pattern, the youth poet laureate receives a book allowance, mentorship opportunities and competing in regional and national titles. For their edition of Petey's Popcorn, Woodland Pattern is showing Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated Lord of the Rings.
"We picked [this film] because Petey and I really love it. It's sort of campy, but it's also really imaginative, but it also feels like low budget, but it also tries to condense the huge story that is Lord of the Rings in a short amount of time," says Vargas-Neito. "It is a very cool like slice of that era of cinema and we also think it's really cool that it was one of the very first early renditions of Lord of the Rings... And then we also wanted to pick a movie that was literary, but not too on the nose of having to do with poetry."
Whether it'll be your first time seeing the animated film, a nostalgia trip, or perhaps a core memory of someone who wants to share it, Vargas-Neito says "we're trying to touch many generational ties with this selection."
Petey's Popcorn featuring Ralph Bakshi's "The Lord of the Rings" will take place on Sat. April 11 at noon at the Downter Theatre on Milwaukee's East Side.
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