Year Zero - Zombie Invasion

Watching Year Zero at Out North AIFF 2011

I'm not into zombies.  I understand that they are metaphorical in the best zombie stories.  But they generally are not my thing.  So I was surprised by how an animated zombie film at the 2011 Anchorage International Film Festival captured me.

I got to chat with the film maker, Richard Cunningham, who taught himself video making by asking google all his questions and, as he said, learning from 15 year olds who had made Youtube videos answering all questions.

I think what caught my fancy was Richard's unique visuals and music and story.  He spent over a year essentially locked up in his New York City apartment making this.  I suspect that experience helped him write the story and to use his own imagination rather than copying what others have already done.  

So I'm pleased the whole film is now available on line.  Enjoy.



Looking at the link to the Cunningham video, I see it also includes Travis Betz whose vampire musical won the best feature that year. I liked that too. Maybe I've been infected.

Record Your Skype Calls Easily With Call Recorder

Back in October I talked to Brent Scarpo via Skype before his trip to Anchorage.  I wanted to record it, so I used my digital camera on a tiny tripod to do it.  It was ok (the problems were more in the quality of his cam), but I realized what I needed was software to do it through Skype directly.

I quickly found ecamm's Call Recorder - made especially for Macs.  One of the perks of being an Alaska Apple User Group member is that if you review books and software and other products for them, you get to keep the item.  So I checked to see if they could get Call Recorder for me.  Actually, it was only $19.95 so it wasn't that big a deal.  But I figured writing up the review and this post, got me twenty bucks.  And I can buy my wife some flowers or use it for a dinner out.

click to make clearer

This software is really easy to use.  You download it, turn it on (and they walk you through all this), and there it is.  You turn on Skype and you get this little Call Recorder box (upper left.)

Click the middle circle with the yellow dot and it starts recording.  The dot turns red when it's recording.  And the green volume indicators get bright.

Click the circle to the left of that and you get the skype preference box with the Recording options.

If you click on the image you can get it bigger and sharper.  (Blogger, why do they have to do that?  Why can't you make it sharper right here?)   Anyhoo, you can see that you can set it different ways.
The key ones that mattered for me were:

1.  Tell it where to save the files.  Once you click record, it starts recording.  When you stop it, it automatically saves the very compressed files (about 11 minutes was 14mb).  So you might want to figure out where you want it to be saved and do that on the preference window.  If you don't, the button on the right of the yellow dot, shows you where the files are.

2.  Set how you want the video to record.  It came set to record both cams, split screen.  I just wanted the person I was interviewing.  So I set it that way.  But you can also just record yourself or put yourself in a small box with the person you call.

3.  You can mark the recording as it is happening so it will have separate chapters.  I haven't tried that yet.

4.  You can record a voice chat as well.

Very cool and very easy.

Of course, this also means that your Skype chat could end up on YouTube so be careful who you chat with and what you say.  [Update Dec. 31, 2012:  People have been telling me that there's a red light on when it's recording.  Then I saw the red light too.  So, if the other person is paying attention, they may notice the red light and figure out they are being recorded.  I'm not sure if this was there the whole time or it was added more recently.]

Ecamm does note on their site that different states have different laws about recording phone conversations without the other party knowing.  In Alaska, just one person has to consent (me or the other guy).  You can check Summary of Consent Laws Requirements for Taping Telephone Conversations which has  a table of states (38+DC) that allow one party consent and all party consent (12 states).  But even if you are in a one party state, if you call another state, its laws and federal laws apply.  And there's no date on that website and laws change.

I was making videos for the blog, so I let the people know.  I think it's probably a good idea to tell the person you are recording and keep the clip that says they know in case anyone says they didn't know they were being recorded.

The video quality is only as good as the Skype video - and nothing I got was nearly as great as what ecamm shows on their website. 

I did three of these of film makers who had films at the Anchorage International Film Festival, but who weren't able to get to Anchorage.  You can see how it turned out.
1.  Nayeem Mahbub - He was in Nairobi, Kenya.  The video quality was terrible on Skype.
2.  Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter - They were in Tilburg, Holland.
3.  David Andrade - He was in San Diego, California. 

David's was the best video.  You could see his lips and the audio wasn't synched right, so I had to move the audio track a smidge to get it to synch.

For what I need, this is perfect.

[Disclosure:  As I said on top, I did get a free copy through the Alaska Apple User Group and I had to write a review for them.  But otherwise I have no obligation to the company and I'm posting this because I think it's neat and easy and some of you might be looking for a a way to record Skype conversations.  It doesn't do iChat or MSM.]

Check the website for more details.

AIFF 2011: Landscape with Duck Filmmakers Patrick and Michele Neary

Screen Shot from Landscape with Duck

One more of the animated films in competition was Landscape with Duck by Portland filmmakers Patrick and Michele Neary.  It's about a duck who missed the flock's departure for the south from (Alaska?) and finds alternative transportation.  There were so many really good animated films, displaying a wide range of techniques.  This was simple (nothing's simple in animation) first rate, hand drawn work. 

I was able to catch Patrick and Michele at the Awards dinner of the Anchorage International Film Festival Sunday Dec. 11.

AIFF 2011 - Peter Pasyk's Dueling Posters in "The Pole"

[The Anchorage Film Film Festival ended Sunday, Dec. 11, followed by three more days of Best of the Fest. I'm trying to put up video I didn't get to during the festival.]

I got to see The Pole as part of the supershorts before the Awards Dinner/Ceremony Sunday Dec. 11. Then I met the director, Peter Pasyk, and got him briefly on camera. I don't know about Peter, but I was getting tired and I used up most of my questions on other folks. Thanks Peter for putting up with my camera in your face with grace and humor and not too big a smirk.



The Pole is a nice super short which shows the competitive spirit of two young men who work putting up posters on Toronto street poles.  I can see it as a case study in a business or public administration class.  It raises lots of questions about free enterprise and government regulation. The fact that I was totally absorbed in the story suggests that he did all the technical stuff just right. I didn't even think about it.


The Pole could also be a nice metaphor for the US Congress today.
 The young men get so caught up in their short term goals, they lose all perspective and start engaging in self-defeating behavior in an attempt to out do each other. They pause and try a little cooperation, but that quickly falls apart too. If I were a better journalist, I would have asked him about whether he had intended this to be lesson for more than pole posters. If I remember correctly, he said this stemmed from personal experience.

Here's a clip of the movie from the YouTube site of the musicians Freres Lumieres.

AIFF 2011: Skype Chat from Holland With Best Animation Winners

All the animated films I saw were good in some way.  This was the category I tried to know best and I've gotten some video on most of the film makers whose films were in competition.  I had this conversation with Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter Dec. 7 (Anchorage time).  They were delightful to talk to and they give us a sense of the life of serious animators.  They are currently in Holland on a grant for animators.



Ru lived in Anchorage for a couple of years as a child when her father, who worked for Japan Airlines, was located here.  She clearly was disappointed that she couldn't be here for the festival, but they promised to submit what they are working on now when it's done in 2013.

And you can see the film that won Best Animated Film at the Anchorage International Film Festival last week.

AIFF 2011: No Love Tonight, But Meet You at Apartment in Athens at 7:15pm

I emailed AIFF features coordinator Tony Sheppard to get some more information about the film Apartment in Athens.  It appears our showing is the North American premiere.

I was conflicted between seeing Apartment or Love Me To Death which I missed the first time round.  But it turns out the copies of Love You To Death have gone missing.

So, unless something happens between now and 7pm, Love You To Death is cancelled according to the email I just got.  I don't have to make a decision.

The only film tonight is 

Apartment in Athens.  7:15pm Alaska Experience Theater.  Tonight (Tuesday).  

This is a seriously good film.  I just posted about it here.  When it was first supposed to play, Sunday Dec. 4, the DVD didn't last past the first 15 minutes or so.  It kept stopping.  I haven't been able to find anything using the English title on Google except the Anchorage International Film Festival.  Using the Italian title (the film is an Italian film, but the 15 minutes I saw were in German and Greek [Italian]), I found that the world premiere was October 14 at the Bombay International Film Festival.  It played again - and won best film - at the Rome International Film Festival about Oct. 22.

I can't find any record of it playing in any US or Canadian film festivals.


[UPDATE Dec. 17:  I wasn't as impressed with the whole movie as I was with the view of the beginning I had a week earlier.  Most of the movie was shown in the wrong aspect ratio which made everyone look shorter and stouter.  Then about 60 minutes in, the disk stuttering problems started again.  The projectionist switched it to his Mac for the end of the movie and the aspect ratio seemed better and there were no problems.  But the technical problems didn't help my appreciation of the movie.  But this was an adaptation of a novel, and I think that trying to get the whole novel into a movie meant subtleties were lost.  The significant change in the German officer when he returned from Germany is explained, but it still seems extreme - especially given how he subsequently acts.  Perhaps in the novel this is better explained.

But this is a good movie that raises interesting questions about how humans use and react to power with a number of interesting twists to make it more complex.  The father's role is perhaps the most interesting.]

AIFF 2011: An Apartment in Athens or Love You To Death?

[UPDATE:  It's not totally clear, but this could be the North American premiere of Apartment in Athens.]

I haven't seen Love You to Death because it was playing at the same time as In The Shadow.  The good news is that Love You to Death was the runner up for Audience Choice Award for best feature at the festival, so it is playing again tonight in Best of the Fest.  The bad news is that it's playing at the same time as Apartment in Athens.

Both appear to be very good films.  Love You To Death got the Audience Choice Award Runner Up for feature films at the Anchorage Festival.  Apartment in Athens was Best Film at the Rome International Film Festival in October. 


Love You to Death begins at 7pm and An Apartment in Athens at 7:15pm.  Both are at the Alaska Experience Theater (mall at C St. and 4th Avenue.)

I saw about 15 minutes of Apartment last week, before the disk started stopping.  It got so bad they shut it down and tried a second disk.  It did the same thing.  I've talked to Brandon McElroy who was the technician.  I'll do a post on the topic of glitches during the film festival, an issue that has bothered film makers and audiences alike over the years.  Brandon has given me some explanations for why it happens and what we'd lose in order to make it rare.  And film makers I've talked to say it also happens in much bigger festivals than Anchorage.

Because Athens didn't get played during the festival, they are showing it again tonight.  If they can get a disk that works.  (It's in PAL format which limits the machines here that can use it.) 


Apartment in Athens

Image from Appartento Ad Atene

Athens felt like a very good movie for the short part I saw.  It takes place in WW II when a German officer moves into the apartment of a Greek family.  The officer takes a fancy to the young ten year old daughter.  The father is troubled but hopes that with the officer in the house, they might get better food rations.  The mother is upset, but knows how to act properly in front of the officer.  The 12 year old son doesn't hide his anger.  And that's about all we saw.  But it had the makings of a powerful movie.  And a translated Italian review suggested this was a film which explored deep issues about freedom and subservience.

The image - the only page of the movie's website - says it won Best Film at the  Rome International Film Festival last month. An Italian Website says its world premier was to be at the Bombay Film Festival (ironic that Yuki Ellias, actor in Love You to Death, is from Bombay).  It was scheduled in Bombay October 14.    It's based on a 1945 novel by Glenway Wescott.  From Wikipedia:

. . .  Wescott was born on a farm in Kewaskum, Wisconsin in 1901. . . He studied at the University of Chicago, where he was a member of a literary circle including Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Yvor Winters, and Janet Lewis.  Independently wealthy, he began his writing career as a poet, but is best known for his short stories and novels, notably The Grandmothers (1927). He lived in Germany (1921–22), and in France (c.1925–33), where he mixed with Gertrude Stein and other members of the American expatriate community; Wescott was the model for the character Robert Prentiss in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.


. . . Apartment in Athens (1945), the story of a Greek couple in Nazi-occupied Athens who must share their living quarters with a German officer, was a popular success. From then on he ceased to write fiction, although he published essays and edited the works of others. In her essay on The Pilgrim Hawk Ingrid Norton writes, "After...Apartment in Athens, Wescott lived until 1987 without writing another novel: journals (published posthumously as Continual Lessons) and the occasional article, yes, but no more fiction. . .

[See further comments made after seeing the whole movie here.]

Love You To Death
An Anchorage friend who was born and raised in India had high praise for Love You to Death.  It's not a typical Bollywood film, but an alternative look at the same old stars and same old ways of making Indian movies, she said.  It's in Hinglish - a mix of Hindi and English.  As you can see in the video below, the star's English is excellent.  There are subtitles when needed. 
Here's the video I got of Love You To Death actor Yuki Ellias when she was in Anchorage last week.

AIFF 2011: "You Wanna Touch My Penis?" Asks Best Feature Director

The prizes in the Anchorage International Film Festival are called "Golden Oosikars."  Oosikar is a fusion of Oosik and Oscar.  Everyone who's seen the Academy Awards knows what an Oscar is.  But Oosiks are not as well known.  From a page on walrus ivory and bone at BooneTrading:

RW10 WALRUS OOSIK SPECIMENS (walrus penile bone). Oosik (pronounced "oo' sik") is the Eskimo word for the walrus penile bone (baculum). Oosik is the original "ugly stick"; large ones were used as clubs by the Eskimos or used for making tools like picks and knives because the bone is so dense. They're an excellent conversation piece, color's mostly a rich brown tone.  These ancient specimens are polished glassy smooth. Available July - October, prices are approximate, these sell out quickly so order early.

From a post on the legal sale of ivory on Gustavus.com:

WALRUS (non-fossil)-
Regulated by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act. Raw walrus ivory predating the Dec. 21, 1972 law, tusks bearing the Alaska state walrus ivory registration tags or post-law walrus ivory that has been carved or scrimshawed by an Alaskan native (Eskimo) are legal to buy, possess, and sell.

Raw walrus ivory obtained after 12/21/72 is not legal to buy or sell unless both parties are Eskimo (it is legal to own). A $30 export permit is required to ship walrus ivory or oosik (legal as per above) out of the United States.

FOSSIL WALRUS IVORY-
Not restricted as it pre-dates the 1972 cutoff, it is legal to buy and sell anywhere within the United States. Shipping ivory or oosik (fossil walrus penal bone) out of the U. S. requires a $30 permit.

So after receiving his Golden Oosikar last night (Sunday) for Best Feature Film, Director Travis Betz would smile when people came up to him and ask, "Do you wanna touch my penis?"  And then he'd whip out his oosikar.

The winning movie, The Dead Inside, plays again Wednesday at 7pm at the Alaska Experience Theater.  A lot of people I talked to were both surprised, but in agreement, with the choice of the zombie musical love story as the winner.  I'll try to write about the film tomorrow.

Tonight (Tuesday), at 7pm also at Alaska Experience Theater, they are showing Audience Award Runner up  Love You To Death, a modern Indian comedy that I haven't seen yet.  So I'm glad it plays again.  Except it plays at the same time as Apartment in Athens which had DVD problems when it showed in the festival.  The first 15 minutes were great and I pestered features programmer Tony that they had to show it again.  But I can't be in two theaters at the same time.  (Thanks for scheduling it, I know there's not much time available, but grrrrr.)  It is contingent on them working out the disk problems they had the first time.  (I'm planning a post on technical glitches sometime soon.)

And to take the Oosik theme in another direction, you can listen to the music of a group called OosiK if you click here and listen.  Or just watch the video.
OosiK "Dark Toffee" (excerpt) from Ryan K Adams on Vimeo.

AIFF 2011: The Awards List

Here's the whole list from the Official AIFF 2011 website.  I've added some pictures,  and links to posts if I had one about the film. (Super short director Dan Holechek's video hasn't been up before this post.)

Golden Oosikar Awards
Feature
Winner The Dead Inside directed by Travis Betz

Runner-Up ”The Flood [Mabul]” directed by Guy Nattiv
Honorable Mention ”Kinyarwanda” directed by Alrick Brown


Documentary
Winner “Give Up Tomorrow” directed by Michael Collins
Runner-Up “Goold’s Gold” directed by Tucker Capps and Ryan Sevy
Honorable Mention “With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story” directed by Will Hess

Snowdance Documentary
Winner “Tashalaska” directed by Tessa Morgan
Runner-Up “Chad Carpenter: The Man Behind the Comic” directed by Stefan Quinth

Snowdance Short
Winner “Bike, Ski, Raft Denali Traverse” directed by Luc Mehl
Runner-Up “Could’ve Been More” directed by Matt Jardin

Short Film
Winner “North Atlantic” directed by Bernardo Nascimento
Runner-Up “Two-Legged Rat Bastards” directed by Scott Weintrob
Honorable Mention “I’m Coming Over” directed by Sam Handel

Super Short
Winner “Love, At Last” directed by Alexander Jeffery
Runner-Up “A Finger, Two Dots Then Me” directed by David Holechek and Daniel Holechek
Honorable Mention “The Man at the Counter” directed by Brian McAllister

Animation
Winner “Something Left, Something Taken” directed by Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata





Runner-Up “This Is Not Real” directed by Gergely Wootsch


Honorable Mention “Year Zero” directed by Richard Cunningham III





Aurora Winner
“Andante” directed by Assaf Tager


Quick Freeze
Winner
Runner-Up
Honorable Mention



Audience Choice Awards
Feature
Winner “Inuk” directed by Mike Magidson
Runner-Up “Love You To Death” directed by Rafeeq Ellias
Honorable Mention “The Wedding Party” directed by Amanda Jane









Documentary
Winner “With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story” directed by Will Hess
Runner-Up “Lesson Plan” directed by Philip Neel and David Jeffery
Honorable Mention “Goold’s Gold” directed by Tucker Capps and Ryan Sevy

AIFF 2011: Live Blogging - The Awards - Documentaries

Top Three:

Give Up Tomorrow
Goold's Gold
With Great Power:  Stan Lee Story

Winners:
Honorable Mention: With Great Power:  Stan Lee Story

Runner Up: Goold's Gold


Winner: Give Up Tomorrow

AIFFF 2011: Audience Awards Feature and Documentary

Features:
 Honorable Mention:  The Wedding Party

Runner Up:   Love You To Death

Winner:  Inuk


Documentaries:

Honorable Mention:  Goold's Gold

Runner Up:  Lesson Plan

Winner:  With Great Power:  Stan Lee Story

AIFF 2011:Snowdance Awards

Snow Dance Documentaries

Top Three: Two

Chad Carpenter:  Man Behind the Comic

Tashalaska
 

Winners:
Honorable Mention

Runner Up:  Chad Carpenter:  Man Behind the Comic


Winner:  Tashalaska


Super Shorts:

Winners:

Runner Up:  Could Have Been More


Winner:  Bike, Ski, Raft, Denali Traverse

AIFF 2011: The Awards - Eating and Chatting So Far

The Inuk crew.

Amanda Jane of The Wedding Party and Travis Betz of The Dead Inside.





The Wifi was out, but it's back on.  Nothing has happened yet.  I'll post this and start a new one.

AIFF 2011: Sunday Tips and I'll Live Blog Awards at 5pm

There's lots to see today.  Here's a link to the Sunday schedule.  I suggest going to "Print Schedule," (light blue)  then in the drop down window hitting "Print Filtered Schedule" which will get you just Sunday.  It's a little more than a page.

11:00am - Living River - a movie on the Ganges in India.  Out North (Haven't seen it) I might get to this if I can post fast enough. 

11:45am - Give Up Tomorrow - Alaska Experience - a very compelling Filipino film on a criminal misjustice.  I saw this one, it's very good.  A contender for best documentary.  Focuses on Paco who has 40 witnesses he was in Manila at the time of the murder in Cebu.

12:00 Shorts 3 Program:  Native Tongue - Out North - I'm headed to this for sure.  They're are four films - Japanese, Belgian, German/South African, and Korean.  I'm not sure about the title of the program.  It looks like they aren't in English.  But I haven't seen enough shorts yet and this one fits in my schedule.  Check out more yourself here.

1pm Allensteig  Alaska Experience Theater - This is one of the documentaries in competition about a German military base.  It says:

A portrait of the Allentsteig military training area, the last blank spot on the Austrian map. The Nazis evacuated 42 villages-driving more than 7000 people from their homes-to set it up in 1938. Allied forces and the Austrian state continued to use the facility after the WWII. Today, residents of the adjoining village live happily along the soldiers, so long as no shells land nearby.

An appropriate film for a military town like Anchorage.   I'll probably leave Native Tongue early to go see this one.

2pm Smoking Fish Out North - This is an Alaskan documentary.  Sounds interesting.

Cory Mann is a quirky Tlingit businessman hustling to make a dollar in Juneau, Alaska. He gets hungry for smoked salmon and nostalgic for his childhood. He decides to spend a summer smoking fish at his family's traditional camp. It's a story of one man's attempt to navigate between the modern world and an ancient culture.

 2pm Corridor Alaska Experience Theater - Horror buffs should go.  I saw this the other night late.  It's a group of young men meeting at the cabin in the snowy woods in Canada for the first time since one of them went mental and stabbed another in the group.  He's on meds now.  But the others aren't.  And there's strange stuff happening in the woods.  I don't normally like horror flicks, but this was had believable characters and some clever plot twists.  I left after the scalping, but I really wanted to know what happened. 

3pm Shorts 4:  Dark Reflections - Out North - look it up.  (despite the 4, there are only 3)

3:30pm Super Shorts 2:  The Hipsters Almanac - Alaska Experience - I'm headed for this one.  Check Details here.

4:30 Cast Me If You Can - Out North -  a Japanese film about an actor.  A comedy I'm told. Details.


4:30 Short Documentaries:  On the Edge  - Alaska Experience Theater -  Four shorts.  Check here.

5:00 pm  The Awards Ceremony - Organic Oasis -  I checked and they have wifi, so I'll try to live blog the awards.

8:00pm The Dish and The Spoon - Bear Tooth - Bad scheduling here.  This is a feature in competition, but it's playing the first time AFTER the awards ceremony.  I mentioned this to Tony.  Then I said, "How can you do the Audience Favorites when the audience hasn't seen one of the films yet?"  The Feature favorites may be delayed until Monday night. 

Monday night you ask? 

There's more.  There will be three best of the fest nights at Alaska Experience Theater Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday at 7pm.  More on this later.  Check the Festival Website Schedule for those days.    (Link goes to Monday, you can find Tuesday and Wednesday)

AIFF 2011: JT Hood, Workshop Participant, Tells Us About His Stuff

[Here's Sunday's schedule.]

Just after Travis Betz's workshop ended I got a chance to ask one of the younger and more inquisitive members of the group some questions.  I think the chance for young film makers to hear real film makers talk about their trade and to be able to ask questions is a great opportunity we get from the film festival.  We're going to see JT's videos at the festival before long I'm sure.  He stayed for Richard Cunningham's workshop too. 




[I'm not as careful about getting names of people I catch on video as I ought to be.  I figure they're agreeing to talk to me. And if they have a problem, I'll take it down.  But kids are different. JT was there with his grandfather and I got his permission to post the video.]

AIFF 2011: The Dead Inside - Travis Betz and Year Zero -Richard Cunningham

Year Zero showing at workshop today

I spent all day at two Film Festival workshops. The afternoon workshop was Animation with Richard Cunningham's workshop and video. I'll do more on the workshop later. 

The Animation group is showing at 6pm at Out North, and if you haven't seen it, GO!  I think this is the strongest category at this year's festival and I think Cunningham's Year Zero is the best film in the festival. (My opinion, take it for what it's worth.)  It has a look and feel that, for my Anchorage eyes, is original and spectacular.  Watching the whole thing for the second time today it was even better.  The sound too is amazing.  And the detail.  This is, for me, great animation.  But everything else in the program is good too. 

World Animation

6:00 pm

Out North

Today - Saturday Dec. 10

All the animated films in competition are in the second half of the show, so you can get there late and still see enough to be worth while.  Year Zero is almost at the end.

Travis Betz did the first one.  I have lots of video on my sound card, but there's no way I can edit it before I leave for more festival.  We saw various examples of work he's done and discussions of how it was made and how YouTube was helpful in getting an audience and making contacts.  The movie tonight is The Dead Inside.

Today (Saturday Dec. 10)

The Dead Inside

8pm

Bear Tooth

[Portrait from Travis' business card.  
You can compare that to what he looks 
like on the video.]


It's a zombie musical.  We saw the trailer.  This is real film festival stuff - a young, hungry, passionate film maker who's made a low budget film and one day you'll be able to say, Yeah, I saw The Dead Inside when he was unknown in 2011. 

AIFF 2011: Corridor and Amigo

 The Corridor

I'm not a horror movie fan.  I look away before the blood flows.  But I stayed in the Bear Tooth Thursday night to see the beginning of The Corridor.  I don't want to say anything about the story in case you see it - it's playing again Sunday Dec. 11 at the Alaska Experience Theater at 2pm.

But I did want to say I thought it was a good film.  The characters - four young men who had been friends a long time and were starting to go off in different directions - were interesting and real.  The story had a very satisfying ironic twist to it.  The special effects in this low budget Canadian film worked well.  And Alaskans will appreciate the familiar look of  a remote cabin in the snow.  I found the movie genuinely scary and I stayed most of the way through until one nasty bout with a big knife.  But even as I walked out, I really wanted to know what was going to happen.


Amigo

Tonight we saw John Sayles' Amigo, which takes place in a small Filipino village after the Americans win the Spanish-American War and are finishing up their takeover of the Philippines.  This film was brought in at the last minute to fill the hole for a film that would have been a North American premier.  But at the last minute the film got accepted in a much more prestigious festival where it would get much more attention, but only on the condition that it was the North American premier.  So, we lost it.  But Amigo was a good substitution and it was nice to see members of the Anchorage Filipino community there to see Joel Torre, who, I was told, is a major Filipino film star.

The film focused on a prosperous village whose head man followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and who owned most of the land which others farmed.  Then the painfully young American troops come in, and despite the local American commander's decency, things do not go well.  The characters in the movie speak their own languages - English, Spanish, a Filipino language (not sure which one), and a Chinese dialect that had a Cantonese ring to it.

I couldn't  help but think about the young American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I was also struck by how much the technology of war has changed since those days of horses, swords, and simple guns.  I'm glad I got to see it.

AIFF 2011: Break Back Skiing, Learn Again - The Movement, Sat in Anchorage, Sundance Later

How much can I get into one title?  I left out the rest of the title (One Man Joins An Uprising).  I talked briefly with film maker Greg Hamilton who was particularly excited about being notified last week that the film was accepted at Sundance.

I don't know much more than what he told me in the video below.  It plays tomorrow (Saturday) at the Wild Berry Theater (down the road from the Peanut Farm on Old Seward and International Airport Road).  This is a great little theater.  I've seen live plays there, but never a movie.  2pm.  The film is about a skier who has to relearn to ski - in a skichair - after breaking his back.  I think this is the third festival it's shown been shown in.  They submitted a rough copy but tomorrow the final cut will be shown.

But get it straight from Greg:

AIFF 2011: How Do Actors Deal With Sex Scenes? Garrett Swan Explains After The Casserole Club

I talked to co-producer and actor in The Casserole Club after the showing last night.  The was about five couples who had casserole dinners together in the late 1960s, that included a lot of alcohol, which led to clothes coming off and various couplings.  Not everyone in the movie did this voluntarily and there were regrets among many.  I asked Garrett, since the characters had problems with this, how did the actors handle it?




The movie wasn't very satisfying for me and after a night's sleep, I think it's because I simply didn't get to know any of the characters well enough to understand their underlying malaise or why they participated in something they didn't really want to do. I may have gotten more insight into why they participated from the movie I saw before Casserole - Lesson Plan - which looked at peer and other pressures on high school students to join an exclusionary club.  It was a lesson to help them understand why people joined the Nazi party. 

You can judge for yourself. The Casserole Club plays again today at Out North at 7pm.  


Other good movies to choose from today include:

Amigo - This is a special selection (not here for competition) directed by well known director John Sayles.  It's about the American presence in the Philippines after the Spanish American War.  It will make the third movie I've seen this week that takes place in the Philippines.   8pm at the Bear Tooth.

The Flood - An Israeli movie about a family whose mentally disabled son is coming home when the institution he's in shuts down and how the family copes.  A strong film. 
8:30 at Alaska Experience Theater

Animation World Wide- This collection of animated films includes all those in competition.  This is, in my mind, the strongest category of films.  Every one has something original in it.  And near the end you get to see Year Zero which I found to stand out.  But others like Something Left Something Taken are also special.  I've got interviews with several of the film makers up (see my overview of videos of film makers here and my overview of animated films in competition here) and I believe that the creator of Year Zero, Richard Cunningham, will be there tonight. 
7:20 at Out North

Kinyarwanda - A solidly good movie about Rwanda that focuses on the healing. Out North at 10pm


Click here for today's whole schedule

AIFF 2011: Lesson Plan Worked For The Audience

I was pulled right into this documentary about a high school teacher who set up an experiential learning situation in his Palo Alto classroom in 1967.  The intent was to show the students how normal people can be pulled into a rabid group mentality like what happened in Nazi Germany.  It was very compelling cinema.  I caught a few folks as they left the theater:



This definitely would get my vote as best documentary (of the ones I saw.)

As a teacher who likes to use experiential learning, it was interesting to think this sort of thing would be very hard to put on today because of the need for informed consent and concerns for an unstable student to flip out.  These are valid concerns.  But they ought to be weighed against the fact that 40 years later at a class reunion, the students said it was the most important lesson they learned in school and it continued to affect their lives. 

It is also similar to an elementary school experiment that was captured in a movie called "A Class Divided."  The teacher divided the class into two groups - the blue eyed students and the brown eyed students.  The blue-eyed students were praised as being good and smart and the brown-eyed students were chastised for being slow and lazy.  Within a day, the blue-eyed kids began lording it over the brown-eyed kids and the brown-eyed kids were feeling oppressed.  You can see the Front Line report on this experiment here.

I would add that the film suggested that the teacher, Ron Jones, was not that much of a planner and this whole exercise was pretty off the cuff. Enough so that one might question how apt the title is. Did he even have a lesson plan?

Both film show how easy it is for people to move into the in group if the conditions are right and to exclude the outsiders.  It seems that most people are susceptible, though one in particular actively protested. 

This is powerful stuff and important for as many people to see as possible - to see how easily this happens.  Of course, the point of the movie is that actually going through the experiment is considerably more effective. 

This is a film festival and a key criterion ought to be how well the movie was made as well as the content of the film.  I don't think there was any particular magic in the film making, except that the story flowed without me really even noticing the technical processes at all.  That's a sign of a good movie.