When filmmakers say they've been working on a project for 45 years, what they typically mean is that they thought about making a movie for 44 years and then finally got around to doing it.
But when Al Milgrom says he worked on the documentary "Singin' in the Grain" for 45 years, he really means it, and he has the proof: faded 16-millimeter film footage he shot in 1974.
Of course Milgrom, who is 96 — "I bill myself as the oldest emerging documentarian in the world, although I don't have much competition" — did lots of other things in those four-plus decades.
He founded what is now the Film Society of Minneapolis St. Paul, taught cinema at the University of Minnesota and launched the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival, which kicked off Thursday with more than 250 movies, including Milgrom's.
"Singin' in the Grain," which sold out its Saturday premiere, follows a New Prague polka band through three generations, mapping the link between a culture and its music. The film has two more screenings during the 17-day-long festival.
"I don't know how much polka music people are willing to sit through." Milgrom said with a laugh a few days before the film's debut. "We never had a chance to run it past a test audience, so I guess we're going to find out."
Subtitled "A Minnesota Czech Story," the film's original focus was not polka history but rather the story of the Czech community that immigrated to Minnesota and still remains surprisingly tight. A big reason for that closeness, Milgrom discovered, was the music handed down from one generation to the next.
Milgrom's interest in the topic dates to his youth.
