They live in Rhinelander and Kenosha, Sheboygan and La Crosse - and many places in between. Jews have been a part of more than 300 communities across Wisconsin since the 18th century. Whether members of a small, struggling synagogue in Appleton or the only Jewish family in Viroqua, all have faced the same enduring dilemma: how to balance their Jewish identities with the practical need to assimilate?

This issue is sensitively explored in the new documentary film Chosen Towns: The Story of Jews in Wisconsin's Small Communities. The documentary is a partnership between docUWM and the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning's Wisconsin Small Jewish Communities History Project. Chosen Towns was produced by docUWM, a documentary media center based in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Peck School of the Art's film department that offers students opportunities to produce professional work under the guidance of faculty.

Chosen Towns will air statewide on Wednesday, Oct. 15, at 7 p.m. on both Wisconsin Public Television and Milwaukee Public Television. A series of seven public screenings begins on September 18 at Discovery World, 500 N. Harbor Dr., in Milwaukee. The free screening, co-sponsored by Milwaukee Public Television, begins at 7 pm and is followed by question-and-answer with student filmmakers and local experts.

The hour-long film follows the lives of nine Jewish families who span the breadth of the state and 150 years. From a short-lived Jewish farming experiment in Arpin to the dynamic"miracle" synagogue in Wausau, from a Rhinelander boy who received little Jewish education to the Janesville girl who became Rabbi Dena Feingold of Kenosha, the complexities of small-town Jewish life emerge in this unique documentary.

Chosen Towns was made possible by a generous grant from the Helen Bader Foundation. Additional funding was provided by The LE Phillips Family Foundation, Inc., and The Lucy and Jack Rosenberg Philanthropic Fund.

docUWM students under the direction of animation artist/instructor Tim Decker created animated poems in 2008. Sweet, simple, daring, arresting and everything inbetween, the animated movies range across styles. Novelist Liam Callanan helped direct the project, and the Poetry Foundation commissioned it.