AIFF - Thursday, A Good Day at the Movies

El Pallasso i el Führer
(The Clown and the Führer)

A first rate movie. From a play, presumably based on a true story (they did tell us at the end what happened to the main characters) from Spain (in Catalan I believe). So, I'm going to guess the clown was from Spain. 1944, invited, as the greatest clown in the world, to perform for Adolf Hitler's birthday. This was a film with many layers that somehow managed to tell a rich, complete story in movie time. Its theater provenance, I'm sure, made this much easier than had it been adapted from a book. I'd say this was the best film I've seen at the festival. Funny - in deeply ironic humor, not sitcom funny - layers of intrigue, subtlety, good acting. My favorite so far.

A Cheval à Travers l'Alaska
(Crossing Alaska with Horses)

I have a vision of a giant cross superimposed on a map of Alaska - the cross entirely made up fo horses. But while crossing Alaska from Valdez to Prudhoe Bay by horse was a fantastic adventure for the two Frenchmen and the Korean-American in the film, the film was not so fantastic. This is of the "let's make a movie about our adventure so we can pay for our travel" genre. Asiemut's story of biking from Mongolia to Calcutta was the same sort of thing, but they made as good a movie, if not better, without a film crew following them around. Perhaps this is because when you live in Alaska, Alaska is not exotic. And Alaskan love to see movies about Alaska and love to catch all the errors. Watching the DVD version may also have diminished the film. There was lots of (in French) "Gee, wow, magnificent, natural wonderland, traveling in the wilderness" gushing about Alaska. At least the travelers realized and told us that once they got here they realized that maybe traveling with horses across Alaska wasn't such a smart idea. Perhaps one of the more ironic scenes was when they met with a couple of the Pilgrim family sons in McCarthy and went with them to see the glacier. Last week in Anchorage the Pilgrim children testified in court how Papa Pilgrim beat them and raped the oldest daughter and he was convicted to 14 years in prison. In the movie the sons talk about the idyllic life living in the wilderness. Not everything is what it seems to be.

This movie was sold out. People came into the theater and had to leave because it was totally full, with even some people sitting on the floor. They've added a showing Saturday at 5:30 (check the AIFF website for sure) as well as the scheduled Sunday showing, or so they said.

The director came all the way from Paris and answered questions after the film. But no one turned the lights up and we had to get to the museum.

Then we rushed down to the museum to catch the shorts there. We figured that there would be at least one really good one - but the feature movie at the Bear Tooth and the one at the Fireweek, if either wasn't great, we were stuck. The shorts turned out to outstanding. I particularly liked

Il était une fois ... Sasha et Désiré
(Once upon a time ... Sasha and Desire) which took us to the day the daughter of Russian (Jewish it appeared) immigrants to Paris, met the cafe-au-lait descendant of African slaves and French colonists in Martinique. A beautiful film.

To Spiti me tis Elies
(House of the Olive Trees) another, very different young couple, in Greece. Interesting people in real situations. While we've previewed her stubborness in the opening shot of her baptism, we don't know anything about him. This felt like a excerpt from a feature film, but it had a sobering ending that left many possibilities.

Dear Lemon Lima, was another snippet, it seemed, from a future feature length film. Beautifully shot with good acting, it had lots of potential. Though I think the mother was a bit exaggerated. (I'm sure the writer will say 'not at all, I know her well'.) The director - I think that was her role - was there after the film to talk. She also talked about a feature to be filmed next summer that is set in Fairbanks. To her credit, she's been to Fairbanks - after writing several chapters of the screen play - but it will be filmed in Seattle (did she really say Seattle? How can you do Fairbanks in Seattle?) because, you know, it's really expensive to do it in Fairbanks. You know, I think that people in Fairbanks and Anchorage would put the whole crew up in their houses to help you keep the costs down. If those other guys could walk their horses across Alaska, you can surely shoot your film that takes place in Fairbanks, in Alaska. Imagine a movie, "Crossing Alaska with Horses" filmed in the Alps, because, you know, going to Alaska would be so expensive.

I've got some video, but it's going on 1am and tomorrow morning is the Kott sentencing. I'll get some up tomorrow.

I'll put this up now and check maybe do some editing tomorrow if it's terrible.