Friday, June 7, 2013

'A Circus Life' documentary celebrates parade, craftsmen behind it
from: jsonline.com
by — Chris Foran
June 6, 2013
It's probably the closest you'll get to seeing the Great Circus Parade — for a while, anyway.
"A Circus Life," a new documentary by Gene Gamache and Kirk G. Carter, recounts the efforts of Charles "Chappie" Fox and the craftsmen at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo to rescue, restore and put on display hundreds of historic circus wagons for the museum and for the Great Circus Parade.
The movie is showing at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Landmark Oriental Theatre, 2230 N. Farwell Ave. Tickets are available at the theater box office and on its website.

Gamache, an award-winning editor of movie trailers, will lead a Q&A after the screening. "A Circus Life" is his second Wisconsin-connected movie. He also made a 1996 documentary on Harry Houdini.
The Great Circus Parade was held in downtown Milwaukee from 1963 to '73, and returned in 1980, running until 2005, when financial support for the parade crumbled. The parade had a final encore in 2009.
Fox, the parade's longtime champion and Circus World's first director, died in 2003.
The Circus World Museum itself is battling for survival. A recent plan to transfer the museum's operations from the foundation that runs it to the state Historical Society and provide it with additional funding was shot down last month in the Legislature. 

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