Xavier Leplae creates spaces of possibility. He’s an artist, a filmmaker and a keeper of some of Milwaukee’s most inventive humans. The experimental film scene of years past and, to an extent, present, wouldn’t be what it was, or is, without him. He is perhaps best known as the owner of the astute and tiny video shop, Riverwest Film & Video, once affectionately known as Pumpkin World, which in more recent years became a cocoon of sorts for another radically open space for expression, Riverwest Radio, the low-power FM station WXRW-LP. The square block around Xav has always been “a knot of creative people and thinking,” and Xav is as much a part of the fabric of Riverwest as anyone. Xav was a 2009 recipient of the prestigious Mary L. Nohl Fellowship for artists. His film work includes "I'm Bobby" (a Sundance Film Festival selection), "The Foreigners" (winner of the Best Narrative Feature award at the Wisconsin Film Festival) and contributions to Chris Smith’s “The Pool” (an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival). Xav, who was born in Belgium and attended Cooper Union in New York, played Polonius in the time-traveling film "Hamlet A.D.D," appeared in Frankie Latina’s exploitation film “Modus Operandi” and also David Robbins’ “The Ice Cream Social.”