What Do I Know?: AIFF2024: Sunday Schedule Overview

Saturday, December 07, 2024

AIFF2024: Sunday Schedule Overview

The Festival day begins at the Alaska Experience Theater at 9am for a conversation on

The Art of Indie Acting: Bringing Characters to Life in Independent Cinema

333 W. 4th Avenue (NW corner of 4th & C St. – enter on C), Anchorage, Alaska 99501

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The AIFF2024 Tab on top has an index of all my posts on this year's festival. Or here.

Everything else is at the Museum

I apologize for not giving you more info on the shorts. There are just too many of them. But I love shorts programs. If you don't like what you're watching, it will end soon and some magic may be ahead. Also, shorts are how film makers start out. If a short gains traction, it's easier to raise money for a longer version. So do go see the shorts programs.

10:00 AM – 12:00 PM: is the Documentary Shorts #1 Program

Swimming With Butterflies – 7:44
Handwoven – 9:00
I’m Still Here – 25:42
How We Rise – 23:00
Cone People – 11:27

12:30 PM – 2:30 PM: is Documentary Feature: 76 Days Adrift

"From Executive Producer Ang Lee comes 76 Days Adrift – a profoundly immersive documentary that plunges you into the heart of one man’s extraordinary survival story.
Steven Callahan, the author of the New York Times bestseller Adrift: 76 Days Lost at Sea, recounts the night of February 4, 1982, when a catastrophic collision with a whale left his boat sinking in the dead of night. With the Atlantic Ocean surging into his vessel, Steven had only moments to grab what he could before launching himself into the dark, unforgiving sea in a life raft, clutching a basic emergency kit.
For an astonishing 76 days, that fragile inflatable raft became Steven’s entire world as he drifted helplessly across the vast expanse of the Atlantic. Forced to confront his deepest fears, limitations, and the raw power of nature, he discovered an inner strength he never knew he possessed" From the film's website.

An interview in the Lexington Observer with a high school friend of Steven Callahan includes how Ann Lee (who directed The Life of Pi) got involved in the film.

From 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM: Narrative Feature: Life’s a Bitch

From a review in CineEuropa:

"Life's a Bitch [+], the second feature film from Xavier Seron, . .
Beware of the dog! It all starts with Tom. Tom is the kind of man nobody remembers, someone you just can’t place, a poor sod ill at ease with both life and the people in it. One day, however, his radiant neighbour knocks on his door. Cécile has a very particular mission for him: to pick up the dead neighbour’s dog. This dog, however, might very well be Satan incarnate. Greta, meanwhile, tends to treat other people like dogs. Well, not as nicely as she treats her own beloved dog, Sophie. So when the latter passes away — and Greta is also forced to replace her personal assistant, severely injured in the accident that took Sophie’s life — Greta is at a loss. She struggled to cope with her absence — the dog’s, of course. The final trio to experience the human-dog turmoil is composed of Franck, Lola, and Perdita, and it forces the viewer to ask themselves: can a love story survive a person’s phobia for their lover’s pet?
At this stage, you must already know the answer. Naturally, it is bleak and melancholy, yet brought about with humour and tenderness; it is also implacable, Xavier Seron once again exploring the unfathomable complexity of human relationships. Are we ultimately made to live with our fellow human beings? Wouldn’t it be easier to limit ourselves to our apparently simple relationships with our pets? Through these three intertwined stories, moving between different registers, from the (of course) biting comedy to the offbeat love story and the absurd tale, the Belgian filmmaker skillfully explores the themes he’s obsessed with, offering some of the best Belgian actors working today a wonderful playground and confirming his talent for directing performances in the process."

From 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM: Strange Love Shorts

Allergic to Love – 11:00
Tacenda – 14:50
Church Camp – 13:42
The Ghost – 10:32
Eat Surf Love – 9:03
Things I Made My Roommate Do – 8:30

7:00 PM – 9:00 PM: Narrative Feature: Battersea

We’ve always gravitated to filmmakers like Cassavetes, Ozu, and Kore-eda. Films like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Old Joy, and the Before Trilogy. The conversational film is a genre all in itself—one that challenges conventions and implicates the audience. In a panel discussion with the DGA, Richard Linklater said, “Most film teachers will say, ‘it’s a visual medium—show it, don’t talk about it.’ But I never approached cinema like that. I always thought people talking was so evocative.” We whole-heartedly agree.

From the film's website:

"Battersea is built on two long conversations, and the challenge, of course, is to make that dialogue work for the medium—to make it cinematic, to command the audience’s attention. It’s no small task, which is why this script took a decade to write, why we auditioned over 700 actors to play the two leads. To commit to such an undertaking in a debut feature, the pieces had to be right, which is, perhaps, another hallmark of our credo—an obsession with getting it right, killing darlings, starting over. Much like the conversations in this film, “getting it right” is a long negotiation of narratives and perspective, an upheaval, a series of mistakes and mishaps. It's a doomed and joyful excavation.
Which is how we find ourselves here, a decade later, overjoyed that after all that excavating, after hundreds of drafts, thousands of pages suffered over and deleted, darlings killed. After countless mistakes, humiliations, educations on the business and craft, cold emails, cold calls, crows eaten, dead ends, all our savings. That after one pandemic, all the Zooms, the Skypes, and the many dozens of meetings with the wrong people, we found two dozen artists as foolishly optimistic as we are—every one of them a perfect fit—all eager to help us make this simple but profound film about two people burdened by the past, who risk a great deal in telling their stories."