Cinebuds · Radio Milwaukee

Sound Vision at the 2026 MKE Film Festival

April 8, 2026·33 min·3 clips

What is the mysterious return favorite in the Sound Vision music documentary lineup at the 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival?

1. CineBuds hosts Christopher Pollard and Dori Zori interview Abby Esterline, a Milwaukee Film programmer, about the Sound Vision music documentary program at the 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival. 2. Abby Esterline has programmed Sound Vision for four years and also works on other Milwaukee Film programming tracks. 3. The episode's purpose is to preview the Sound Vision lineup and explain the programming process behind it. 4. Esterline describes 2026 Sound Vision as unusual because it shifted away from classic 'this is a film about this musician' profiles toward films about music culture more broadly. 5. The Way We Move is Esterline's most anticipated film: it follows ASL sign language interpreters in training with teacher Amber, tracking which of six or seven students are selected to perform at Austin City Limits. 6. El Canto de los Maños is a cross-tag film between Sound Vision and Seniors en Fronteras about a group of Deaf performers in Venezuela staging an opera entirely in sign language. 7. The Marianne Faithfull documentary premiered at Venice and played Sundance; Tilda Swinton serves as a narrator figure, Nick Cave and Suki Waterhouse perform, and Esterline describes it as a 'documentary not documentary' — fantastical and non-traditional. 8. We Are Fugazi from Washington DC is raw found-footage shot by fans; Esterline admits she had never heard of Fugazi before it came to her and used her programming director Kirsten's husband's Letterboxd watchlist as an audience temperature check. 9. Esterline calls this system her 'white boy movies' test — films she wouldn't personally prioritize but that resonate with a specific audience; last year the same method confirmed the Pavement documentary. 10. Stop Making Sense returns to the festival after a two-year absence: A24 bought the rights in 2022-2023 for a full restoration and pulled it from national circulation; in 2025 the festival skipped it because Jerry Harrison was doing an event at the Milwaukee Riverside Theater the same day. 11. Each year Stop Making Sense screens, audiences spontaneously stand and dance through the entire film without being prompted. 12. The Public Access documentary was claimed by three separate programmers at Milwaukee Film — Esterline for Sound Vision, Jack Ferrier for genre considerations, and Kara for art and artists — before they agreed it belonged to all of them; it focuses on New York City public access TV and includes a lot of found footage. 13. If These Walls Could Rock, about the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Los Angeles, features interviews with Dave Grohl, Sheryl Crow, and Kelly Osbourne; its director Tyler Meesom has had five or six films screened at Milwaukee Film Festival, including the opening night film I Want My MTV. 14. Newport in the Great Folk Dream includes previously unseen archival footage and features Joan Baez and Bob Dylan; Esterline jokes she cannot escape programming Joan Baez. 15. Summer Tour follows Grateful Dead fans (Dead Heads) on tour rather than the band itself, with artsy, trippy crowd cinematography that mirrors the Grateful Dead experience. 16. Esterline describes the programming workload as watching over 20 films just for Sound Vision in 2026, a lower number than usual because many submissions arrived late. 17. She describes the analytical difficulty of programming work: watching films not for personal enjoyment but to assess whether a city-wide audience will connect, which makes it hard to experience films as a fan. 18. The episode uses film questions to learn about Esterline personally: she cites Spy Kids 3: Game Over in 3D at Navy Pier as her first theater memory, The Pacifier and New York Minute as most-watched childhood films, and Bottoms as the film that made her laugh hardest in recent memory. 19. The tone is loose, funny, and enthusiastic; the hosts share frequent personal digressions about film history and Milwaukee Film trivia. 20. Milwaukee film fans and regular Milwaukee Film Festival attendees will get the most value; listeners unfamiliar with the festival or Sound Vision as a program will need some orientation.

As heard by us

A warm look at Sound Vision, music docs, and the work behind programming choices.

CineBuds stays close to Milwaukee Film's Sound Vision program, with Abby Esterline framing it as a set of documentaries about music, music culture, musicians, and related subjects.

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Want the inside story on Milwaukee Film's Sound Vision program?

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