AIFF - Awards

It's Sunday morning, the next films start in about 11 hours. The Awards Ceremony at Middle Way Cafe waited for the crowd at Streetsweeper to get over there before things were announced. We already knew that Streetsweeper got best feature and Last Days of Shishmaref got best feature documentary. But I didn't know the others.


So here are the winners:
Best Short Documentary: Leave Her To Die
Best Super Short: Spider
Best Short: Open Your Eyes
Best Animated: Distraxion There's a short clip at the link, definitely worth it to get a sense of this delicious animated film.
Audience Awards were given for
Best Feature: Coyote
Best Feature Documentary: The Wrecking Crew

[Update: The official list, with runners up, plus the Snowdance (Alaska related films) winners are up at the link.]
Wrecking Crew will be shown Sunday at 5:30pm at the Bear Tooth
Coyote will be shown Sunday at 8:00 at the Bear Tooth

I really didn't see much in the way of short documentaries, but I wanted to see Leave Her to Die simply because it takes place in Thailand, and we're headed back in January for three months.

Best Feature: I finally saw Streetsweeper tonight. I was getting mixed reviews from people. I enjoyed it thoroughly. But it is easy to understand why some might not like it. I heard from one person whose taste I respect: "There's no there, there." So I was prepared to be sorely disappointed. But the was the there, just not the one he was looking for. But this deserves its own post. Later.

Best Documentary: I've already commented on Shismaref and posted over ten minutes of director Jan Louter at Saturday's workshop. Good Alaska movie.


Best Short Short: Spider Everything about this is well made. Including the surprises. But aside from being technically well made, does it have any deep lasting meaning? I think I ended up seeing it about four or five times because it kept popping up in places I didn't expect it. In this category, the one I instantly bonded to was: No Regrets. The music, the humor, the whole thing just worked for me.

Best Short Documentary: Leave Her To Die. I've got nothing to say about this category because somehow I didn't get to see any of these.

Best Animation: Distraxion. I loved this film. Kenny G is one of my pet peeves, and so I could totally relate to the poor put upon employee who was hounded by his boss' taste in music. And while I'm not a heavy metal fan either, I thoroughly love his getting revenge through Yngwie Malmsteen. When Mike puts this online, I'll put it up. This one did everything right. But there were just so many imaginative, creative animations. Definitely the most competitive category. Jeff Chiba Stearns' Yellow Sticky Notes was also great, and totally different. And his workshop today was outstanding. I've got lots of video of that coming eventually.