AIFF 2011: Busy Thursday, Lots of Interesting Choices

Hard decisions tonight.

For the early birds, Lesson Plan is playing at Out North at 5:50pm and  High Sierra:  A Journey on the John Muir Trail is playing at 6 at the Alaska Experience Theater.

Lesson Plan has won several Best Documentary prizes at other festivals.

Then, lots of good features:

Inuk - the opening night movie from Greenland which features a cast of kids from a real shelter for troubled kids going on a traditional seal hunt is showing in both theaters at the Alaska Experience Theater.  The main theater at 8pm and the smaller theater at 8:15pm.  I saw it last Friday - a story Alaskans can relate to.  Link goes to post showing  Q&A with three of the film makers.  Audio works, video dim. 

The short Views and Voices of Bristol Bay will have a free showing in the large theater at 7:20pm

An Ordinary Family (see audience reactions from last night here) is showing at Out North at  7pm.  Man brings boyfriend to annual family holiday.  At the door he tells bf the family doesn't know.  Brother is a minister, has trouble handling the unexpected guest.  Saw it last night and enjoyed it.

And at 8pm at the Bear Tooth is The Casserole Party.  From the trailer it's 1960's, five couples, the men will judge who made the best casserole, and then things get out of hand - here it's sex rather than violence.  As Mark Bell writes at Film Threat:

Image from IMDB

As the evening wears on, and the couples get drunk and silly, stupid parlor games turn to couple-swapping. From there, the film deals with the fallout of a bunch of sexually repressed couples working out their sexual appetites under the false pretenses of dinner get-togethers. As you can imagine, it’s all fun and games until someone falls in love… or gets pregnant… or may be a closeted homosexual.

 Ethan Berkowitz look-alike (at least in this picture) and actor in the film, Garrett Swann, is scheduled to be at the showing. 

And there are Snowdance  (Alaska related) shorts at Out North at 8:15 - including Nanuq (see interview with film makers Jill Jones and Brent Yontz from Tuesday night.)

Then at 10:15pm at the Bear Tooth - wear clothes you can get blood on - is Canadian film The Corridor.  James McCormick at The Criterion Cast writes (in part):

The Corridor is a very good low budget horror effort from Canada, which harkens back to the good old days of Canadian genre films of yesteryear. While watching it, I got the influence of The Thing mixed with an early Stephen King short story but is well executed with their limited budget. When it comes to the script, it is more about the psychological elements, where friends start to go against each other, maiming (a fantastic gore effect that is best left unmentioned until you see it, but it involves Jim, played by Glen Matthews, who is the friend who didn’t take part in the intro to the film, that is one of the best I’ve seen in quite some time) and murders, showing the underlying anger and what something as mysterious as the corridor can do to a group of lifelong friends who are all in a mid-life crisis.

Sounds like Casserole Club without the women.