From Combat Girls [Kriegerin] to An African Election - The Anchorage International Film Festival 2011, First Peek

With over a month before the 2011 Anchorage International Film Festival opens, we can at least start to savor all the films we'll get to see.  The pre-screening committees have chosen the official selections (films that were selected to be in the festival from all the ones that were submitted) and the films in competition (the ones deemed best and thus in the running for the  prizes.)

It's a bit early, but I thought I'd post the feature and documentary films (a lot of the festival jargon and process is explained here) in competition  now for three reasons:

1. To remind folks in Anchorage that the Festival starts December 2.  Start thinking about whether you want a festival pass or you just want to drop in to see a few of the films.  
2. There is still time to volunteer at the festival.  This is a great way to see things from the inside.  Check out volunteer options here.
3. There's something delicious about getting to see the names of the films for the first time.  They mean nothing.  They're just titles, names of directors, and countries.  It's like getting the name of your blind date.  Over the next five weeks, I'll be doing homework on the films in competition and slowly putting up what I find on the blog.  We'll get to know which ones we hit it off with and which we don't.   By mid-December some films will be favorites and Anchorage will have met many of the directors.  And Anchorage is small enough and the festival casual enough, that if the director is here and you want to meet her, you can. 

So, look through the list of names.  Pick ones that sound good.  Imagine the possibilities.  And in six weeks we can look back at this page and remember this day when they were nothing but names, potential blind dates, and how much we've learned about them since. I've put in screenshots from trailers of three of the movies listed.  Can you match them to their titles?  If you click on them you'll be linked to their trailers. 

Features
Title	Director(s)	Country	Runtime	In Competition
Combat Girls [Kriegerin] [Combat Girls was pulled, not sure why.]	David Wendt	Germany	102m	✓
Inuk	Mike Magidson	France, Greenland	89m	✓
Kinyarwanda	Alrick Brown	USA/Rwanda	100m	✓
Mabul	Guy Nativ	Israel, Canada, France, Germany	101m	✓
The Casserole Club	Steve Balderson	USA	95m	✓
The Dead Inside	Travis Betz	USA	98m	✓
The Dish & The Spoon	Alison Bagnall	USA	93m	✓

Documentaries
Title	Director(s)	Country	Runtime	In Competition
Allentsteig	Nikolaus Geyhalter	Austria	79m	✓
An African Election	Jarreth Merz	Ghana	89m	✓
Give Up Tomorrow	Michael Collins	USA/UK	95m	✓
Goold’s Gold	Tucker Capps / Ryan Sevy	USA	76m	✓
The Green Wave	Ali Samadi Ahadi	Germany/Iran	80m	✓
We Were Here	David Weissman	USA	90m	✓
With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story	Will Hess	USA	80m	✓

We Were There is no longer listed on the program

[UPDATE Nov. 15:  I got word that there was a mixup and now African Election, The Green Wave, and We Were Here are no longer listed on list.  I will try to get the details and fill you in.  In their place now are on the updated website page are:
Beatboxing–The Fifth Element of Hip-Hop 
and
Locked Out.]


Go to the Anchorage International Film Festival website for all the entries in these categories and the others.

I have a film festival tab up on top from last year. It was my first use of tabs and I need to update it soon, but it gives you some background on the festival in general and some of the films and directors from 2010.

And remember, this is the long time legitimate Anchorage (not Alaska) International Film Festival. If you have any questions about the two different names, especially if you are a film maker, you can see my comparison of the two events here.