AIFF 2017: Some Of The Film Makers I've Met This Weekend

It's been a film-packed weekend.  Not much time to post about everything, but here are some of the people I had a chance to meet.  Meant to get this up already, but busy trying to catch up with movies, blogging, sleep, and the rest of my life.

Emily Pando (director) and Jesse Amorratanasuchad (cinematographer - I think I got that right) whose short "8 A.M." showed Saturday morning in the program Love and Pain.  It shows again Friday Dec 8 at 7pm at the AK Exp Theater.

"8 A.M." plays on one well used trope - the alarm clock and groggy sleeper - and one well used premise - the audience knows that someone is going to die but the characters don't.  But in this case they use an incredible set of twins who act as the Greek Chorus.  A very well done film with an important message.  You can see a little more - including a screenshot with the twins - on my Shorts in Competition post.

I met Jason Mott between films in a film maker meet and greet session.  It turns out he's the winner of the film festival's screen writing contest.  His script is called Endings LLC about a company that helps plan people's demise.

Jason's from North Carolina and is a novelist.  He mentioned two books - The Returned and Wonder of All Things.  I looked them up and they are available at Loussac.  Actually, he was being modest.  There are several more titles with his name on them.

Here's AIFF director Rebecca Pottebaum hamming it up with volunteer Pablo who sold tickets this weekend at the Alaska Experience Theater..









And here's John Zahs, the subject of the documentary Saving Brinton which played at the Bear Tooth Sunday evening.  It was a great film festival film that looked at John's successful efforts to save and restore films of the Brinton family that were found when the estate was sold.  These are films from the first decade of the 20th Century and some are the only existing copies.  I've got video of his Q&A after the showing along with some of his saved movies.  He said it would be ok to post them here.  So when I catch up, I'll get them up.  You can see more about the film and the trailer at my post on the Docs In Competition.

And, again I think I have this right, here's Dita Gruze who is the co-producer and film editor for the documentary A to B Roller Ski about a Latvian Olympic champion's trip from the Arctic to Baja on roller skis.  It plays again Friday Dec 8 at 9pm at the AK Experience Theater.













Here's AIFF President Rich Curtner (right) introducing Yochi Executive Producer Craig Holden for Q&A after the Shorts program Global Village in which Yochi played.



There's more on video, but that takes me a little longer to turn around.