AIFF 2018: Rising From The Earthquake - Salmon, Rising Ocean's, and A Funny Story

We got to the Alaska Experience Theater late and watched the end of Anote’s Ark,  a film about the island nation Kirimati that is predicted to be underwater by 2040.  Perhaps the first nation to disappear because of climate change.  Anote is the name of the island's president and he's followed on film fighting to save his culture.

I didn't realize that it was preceded by Kings of the Yukon, so it took a while to figure out why the filmmaker was talking about salmon and the town of Emonak.  I'm guessing from the Kings impressive website that this was Matt Fox.  Here he is answering questions.

Citizens Climate Lobby (a group I'm involved with) had a presentation as a follow up to the climate change issues raised by Anote’s Ark,







The final movie of the evening (there had also been something at 3pm) was Funny Story.  The director Michael Gallagher was there with two of the main actors - Jana Winternitz and Matt Glave. (They're in that order left to right in the picture.)

There was a good crowd for all the films as the Festival volunteers have worked really hard to recover from the 7.0 earthquake that temporarily shut down Anchorage on what was supposed to be the opening day of the festival.  The Funny Story crew were on the tarmac in Seattle ready to take off when word came in of the earthquake.  They had to wait 5 hours before the flight was cleared to go to Anchorage.

It was great to hear from the crew of the film after the movie.  The film's website says this is a film about good people doing bad things.  I'd say, maybe, 'normal people doing bad things.'  I'd even allow that no one was malicious, but I have a higher bar for 'good people.'  And I'd say what they did was dumb more than bad, leading to very awkward relationships.

So, the festival is on, and actually was yesterday.  I couldn't tell yesterday and my right leg wasn't going to allow me to yesterday anyway.  But by standing through the films tonight I was ok.

The Bear Tooth might get inspected tomorrow by the city to see if they are safe, but from what I heard, the projector was damaged too.  So it's not clear when we'll see films there.  For now they are showing films at the Alaska Experience large theater.

It looks like the schedule pages are now accurate.  You can get to it here.  Three films are set at the Alaska Experience Theater starting at 3pm, 5:30pm, and 8pm.  I'll post more about what's scheduled tomorrow morning.  But if you can't wait, click on the ink.   [I'd note there are two events planned for 3pm at the AK Experience Theater, but today they told me that only the large theater is being used.  But maybe that was for today and not tomorrow.

OK, if you have kids who are off of school tomorrow, one of the 3pm showings is called FAMILY ANIMATION.   Sounds like a great activity for kids.