Something For Alaska And US Majority Leaders To Think About

 This comes from the movie Confucius. (孔子 (Kong Zi) Director: Mei Hu).

Confucius consents to an audience with the royal consort of Wei against the wishes of his disciples.  She has a reputation as a beautiful woman with a sketchy past and she clearly is intent on seducing the great scholar.

She starts off by asking about the Book of Odes, and the love poetry in it.

Screen shot from Confucius. (孔子 (Kong Zi) Director: Mei Hu)

He politely rejects her request to become his student and to meet again.  She then asks about his theories of government. 

Screen shots from Confucius. (孔子 (Kong Zi) Director: Mei Hu)

Screen shots from Confucius. (孔子 (Kong Zi) Director: Mei Hu)

Screen shots from Confucius. (孔子 (Kong Zi) Director: Mei Hu)

While there is much about Confucian teaching that is problematic today - particularly his rigid hierarchical power structure and his low regard for women - there is also much of use to our political leaders today.

I'd note that Thomas Jefferson, one of the inspirations of the Tea Party,  was something of a China scholar.  From a scholarly paper "Thomas Jefferson's Incorporating Positive Elements From Chinese Civilization" by Dave Wan.
(Note that the poem Jefferson clips out in the passage below, is the one referred to by the Royal Consort of Wei in the film - "The Book of Odes."  The poem is a tribute to the Prince of Wei - several hundred years prior to Confucius.)

"Founding Inspiration from the Confucius’ Classics

       In the nineteenth century intellectuals in the United States often enjoyed creating personal scrapbooks, in which they would cut out their “favorite newspaper articles and poems” and past “them onto the backs of old letters to create a sort of personal literary anthology.”  None of us will feel surprised to know that Thomas Jefferson, “an Enlightenment intellectual,” created a scrapbook in his own way. Some time from 1801-1809 Jefferson included in the section of his scrapbook titled Poems of the Nations an ancient Chinese poem from The Book of Odes. His love of the poem provides us with a window through which we can look into his efforts to learn from Chinese culture. What he wanted to learn from the poem?

       Below is Jefferson’s clipping of the poem:

                                           A Very Ancient Chinese Ode
Translated by John Collegins seq
Quoted in the To Hio of Confuciues
(….from a manuscript presented in the Bodlein Library )

SEE! how the silvery river glides,
And leaves' the fields bespangled sides !
Hear how the whispering breeze proceeds!
Harmonious through the verdant reeds!
Observe our prince thus lovely shine!
In him the meek-ey'd virtues join!
Just as a patient carver will, Hard ivory model by his skill,
So his example has impress'd Benevolence in every b[re]ast;
Nice hands to the rich gems, behold,
Impart the gloss of burnish'd gold:
Thus he, in manners, goodly great,
Refines the people of his state. True lenity,
how heavenly fair !
We see it while it threatens,—spare!
What beauties in its open face!
In its deportment—what a grace!
Observe our prince thus lovely shine!
In him the meek-ey'd virtues join!
His mern'ry of eternal prime,
Like truth, defies the power of time!

       The poem pays tribute to Prince Wei from the State of Wei, who was loved, respected and remembered by the people of his state. Confucius (551-479 BC) highly praised Prince Wei, described in the poem, when he quoted this poem in his famous book, The Great Learning, to provide a standard to inspire other princes and leaders of various states to follow. Confucius said,

In the Book of Ode, ‘Ah! The former kings are not forgotten’ Future princes deem worthy what they deemed worthy, and love what they loved. The common people delighted in what they delighted them, and are benefited by their beneficial arrangements. It is on this account that the former kings, after they have quitted the world, are not forgotten."

Important themes that we should remember from Confucius is his emphasis on ethics, on education, on harmony and treating people with respect and taking care of the poor and less fortunate. 

Just something to think about on a cloudy Saturday.


____________________________
I don't particularly recommend this film as a film.  But as an easy (and visually beautiful) overview of the life of Confucius it will do.   It tends to give us a series of vignettes of his life,  with very little character development.   The two actors in these screenshots are (from Wikipedia):

• Chow Yun-fat as Confucius or Kong Qui, also known by the honorary title Zhong Ni.
• Zhou Xun as Nanzi, the royal consort of Wei.

Zhou Xun was in Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (2002) a film very much worth seeing.  She was also in Cloud Atlas. 

Blogger Ethics: Leave Comment From Kidney Trader?

One of  my 2013 Anchorage Film Festival posts included a short overview of the film "Tales from the Organ Trade."  A documentary about selling and buying kidneys and the people involved - on various sides, sellers, buyers, and doctors.  

Today someone left a comment - basically, it's an ad for a hospital that buys and sells kidneys in India. 

So, what should I do with it?  Delete it?  Leave it as a comment on the movie?  When I went to get the link for that old post, I saw that there was already another similar type of comment.  I can't remember if I saw it and decided to leave it, or I never saw it.  It was posted a few months after the original post.  

The film itself was not a clear cut condemnation.  While it showed how poor folks risked their lives for pitifully small amounts of money and rich folks spent huge amounts to get a kidney, it did show some strong arguments for letting people who need a kidney pay for one.  

Thoughts? 

Apollo Hospital Friday, March 27, 2015 at 6:11:00 AM AKDT

Hi friends greeting from Apollo Hospital India (Dr. Leo Gomez).
Specialist hospital that buy human kidney.
If you are Interested in Selling or buying Kidney
Please do not hesitate to contact us.

Phone number : +9191678XXXX
Email : apollohospitalkidneydep@gmail.com
Dr. Leo Gomez

SteveSaturday, March 28, 2015 at 1:49:00 PM AKDT
I don't know. Normally I'd delete that message, but it's an eerie reminder of what the movie was about. Readers, what should I do with it? Leave it? Delete it?

The Imitation Game Versus American Sniper

We just saw The Imitation Game.   And I haven't seen American Sniper, so I'm taking a bit of a leap, but play along a bit. 

The Movie

The Imitation Game  is about a mathematical genius, Alan Turing, whose mind brilliantly unravels codes, but misses human non-verbal, even verbal, cues.  He's also sexually attracted to men.

The movie, while telling the story of the secret British team led by Turing that cracked the German Enigma machine, also shows us, in the background, bits of Turing's life.  Being bullied as a school kid, because of his differences from the other students, his total lack of empathy for the other decoders working with him during the war, and to how the British courts treated him (prison or take hormonal treatments to stop his homosexuality.)


Thought One:  Abstract Ideas vs. Concrete Action

The movie portrays Turing's superiors as constantly trying to shut down his program.  He had lots of qualities that made him  unpleasant to others.  Mostly a total lack of any empathy for other people - he didn't listen to them, he didn't hear them, he had no regard for their feelings.  My sense was he just was physiologically deaf to all that.

Was he just some crank who was spending lots of money and time on some impossible dream or was he a genius who had to be nurtured and tolerated for what he could do?  It's easy to see in hindsight, but I'm sure at the time it was not.

The point I'm coming to is this:  His weapon, if you will, to win the war, was an idea, a concept.  Something that could not be proven until it was completed, and even then it was difficult to explain, though eventually, the results - the ability to decode the German messages - would be very tangible.  But even then, the fact that they could decode the messages, had to be kept secret so the Germans wouldn't simply find a new way to encode their messages.

Turing's contribution, as depicted in the movie, was to end the war two years faster and to save million lives.  But he had an even more profound contribution to our lives:  the computer.

Jack Copeland, the author Turing:  Pioneer of the Information Age in a videotaped lecture  at Stanford , tells us:

In 1936, in his very early twenties, he completely unexpectedly invented the fundamental principle of the modern computer.  Turing was working on an abstract problem in the foundation of mathematics - the Hilbert decision problem.  No one could have guessed   such abstruse arcane work could have led to anything of of any practical value whatsoever, let alone to a machine that would change all our lives, but it did.  [link added.]

Which leads to

Thought Two: The Importance and Productivity of Pure Science

We don't know how knowledge will accumulate and result in great contributions to human kind.  Politicians like to cite titles of obscure research projects funded by government money, to ridicule scientists and government spending.  Much research by scientists will not lead directly to world altering discoveries.  Yet the published articles of scientists are available to all, and we never really understand all the ways that one idea sets off another idea.  But I'm convinced that the many so called unproductive ideas are more than repaid for by the fewer highly productive ideas.  And many of the unproductive ideas actually close off dead ends so that the others need not wander down them.

Of course this film is also an example of how people work to fulfill their own internal inspiration.  No one could get an idea out of a person like Turing simply by paying him lots of money or threatening to punish.  Rather, you have to find the right people and just give them an environment where they can just do their thing.


Thought Three:  Our Cultural Divide Encapsulated In Two Films

I haven't seen American Sniper, but it's clear that it's about someone who shoots individual enemy targets.  Something really tangible and easy to understand.  We hear all this rhetoric about the sniper being a great hero.  (And my understanding is that the film does raise issues that make him a more complex human being.)

I think these two films represent much of the cultural conflict in the US today - the intellectual, possibly a peculiar and awkward person who works with ideas that have powerful effects versus the simplistic good guy/bad guy hero who uses violence to win.

Thought Four:  How Humans Attack Those Who Are Different

The film also raises the issue of how human groups treat people who are different, in odd ways, from others.  We tend not to be very accepting of them.   Turing was persecuted for his oddness as a kid by his peers, disliked and disdained as an employee by his colleagues and bosses, and persecuted agains, as a citizen, by his government.  I would add that it isn't a trait of all human beings, but enough to make it a serious human problem.

Thought Five:  Our Strange Combinations of Gifts And Gaps

Finally, it raises the issue, not unrelated to Thought Four above,  of how humans who have great gifts in one area may also be lacking in talents that average people have.  And how they get judged on what they don't have rather than on their amazing gift.

NOW, ON THE POSITIVE SIDE

Of the eight academy award nominated films for best picture, TWO were about intellectual geniuses - people whose ideas are way beyond what most people are capable of.  The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything.   A third nominated film - Selma - was about yet another genius whose power was built on an abstract idea - overcoming oppression through non-violence.

This illustrates, in my mind, progress of a sort.  Yet even the movies that focus on intellectual heroes use emotion and distort the facts to tell the story.  And this too may be an important lesson about how humans learn lessons through good stories.

Here's a  review of the movie   by a self-proclaimed Turing expert on what's accurate (not much apparently) and what's inaccurate in the movie. His conclusion is that while the facts might not be accurate, it is, nevertheless, a good movie.  And while many of the specific incidents in the movie may have been fabricated to make the film more dramatic, the lessons are no less valid. 

Selma's Garbage Bag Problem

We thought it would be a good idea to finally see Selma on MLK Day.  And it was.  I'm hoping to get a post up on why before long.  But there was one scene that jarred me and I've done a little checking.

MLK and his wife are in the kitchen.  He takes a full garbage bag out from under the sink.  It's a clear plastic bag.  He empties it and then she unrolls a new bag which puts bag under the sink for the rest of the garbage.

What's wrong with that scene?  My problem has nothing to do with division of household labor.  My immediate thought when I saw that was:  No one used plastic garbage bags then.  Especially not clear plastic bags.

In Los Angeles, people used incinerators to burn garbage until they were banned in 1957 in an attempt to reduce smog.  (There's still an old one in my mom's backyard.)

I checked online and here's what I found:

1. Plastic garbage bags weren't invented until 1950 (by a Canadian) and the first ones  were sold to businesses, not households.  The bags were green.
2. The first green plastic garbage bags for the home were sold by Union Carbide - Glad Bags - in the late 1960s.  (The movie takes place in 1965.)
3. Plastic bags weren't introduced to grocery stores until 1977!

I recall putting garbage into paper shopping bags until plastic bags were available.  And paper bags don't really hold  garbage well when they get wet.  

Here are some sources:

http://www.packagingknowledge.com/waste_bags_sacks.asp#history_of_waste_bags

The familiar green plastic garbage bag (made from polyethylene) was invented by Harry Wasylyk in 1950.Harry Wasylyk was a Canadian inventor from Winnipeg, Manitoba, who together with Larry Hansen of Lindsay, Ontario, invented the disposable green polyethylene garbage bag. 

Garbage bags were first intended for commercial use rather than home use - the bags were first sold to the Winnipeg General Hospital. However, Hansen worked for the Union Carbide Company in Lindsay, who bought the invention from Wasylyk and Hansen. Union Carbide manufactured the first green garbage bags under the name Glad Garbage bags for home use in the late 1960s.

Reference: http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blGarbageBag.htm

http://www.bagmonster.com/2011/05/history-of-the-plastic-bag.html

1977
“PAPER OR PLASTIC” WARS BEGIN: The plastic grocery bag is introduced to the supermarket industry as an alternative to paper sacks.[iv] At this point, plastic produce bags had long overtaken paper bags in the produce aisle. The grocery sack market was later, in 1986, described as “paper’s last stronghold” by Mobil Chemical’s marketing manager. [v]
 

Film makers:  If you're doing a film that takes place before you were old enough to remember, but not so long ago that there are still people alive who do remember, show the geezers the film and let them spot the anachronisms.

With technology changing so much faster today, future film makers will have an even harder time.
Is it a biggie? No.  But for people my age,  it's like seeing a film that takes place in 2000 with people using iPhones.

Mugged By LA Parking Authority

[UPDATE Jan 28:  There are two followup posts:
January 2, 2015 and January 28, 2015]




I felt like I'd been mugged.  I was happily minding my own business, when the LA Parking Authority snatched $58 from me.

"The best way to make money is not to spend it."  That's a basic tenet I picked up along the way.  It doesn't mean you have to be a miser, but just don't spend money you don't need to spend.  And parking tickets are a good example of money you shouldn't have to spend.

So, I'm reasonably careful about parking.  Biking helps a lot, but I do use a car too.

People who knowingly park without putting money in the meter or who take up two parking places or park in a handicapped zone when their ego handicap hasn't been diagnosed, all should pay for parking tickets.

But this one feels more like entrapment.



We went to see the movie Wild.  After I got past the silliness of the early scene where she struggles to pick up her heavy pack, but then manages to walk with it for 5 miles, it got good.

We checked out some sale items in the mall, then got the car from the mall parking lot (there are three free hours) and decided to find street parking while we ate dinner.


Here's the scene of the crime:

1 (the numbers match the numbers in the satellite view above) - far right of the picture, is where we came out of the mall parking lot.












The view from the parking lot exit of the block we're going to park on.





You can (almost) see that there are 6 parking spaces.  It's a really short block.  We turned left out of the parking lot and stopped in the red space on the right of the Starbucks (2 on the map) so we could read the parking sign.  Basically, we wanted to know if we had to put money in the meter or not.



2.  Here's where we stopped when we got out of the parking lot to check the parking sign (2a) to see if you still had to feed the meters or not.

The sign (2a) says:  No Parking from 4-7pm on top.  It was just after 7pm
Below it says 2 hour parking from 8am - 4pm.







(I took this picture that night after we found the ticket and drove back to the scene.  The others I took the next afternoon when I biked back to see if there was a white curb where I parked or any other warning.)




So, it said that we didn't have to pay for the meter because it was after 4pm and we could park there because it was after 7pm.  We pulled out of this space and looked for an empty space.  There was one.  It was the sixth and last parking space on the block.  All the others were full.




3.   We were parked where that gray car is - the last spot.  As you can see, the curb is just cement and it has a parking meter like all the other spots.






















Just to emphasize that the two spaces on the end look exactly like the other four on the block, this picture is from the middle of the block.  There are the three cars you can see in front and three behind.  There's also a truck parked on the corner beyond the metered spaces.

This picture is from 3 where we were parked.  You can see that in front of us it is painted red.  And there's enough room for about two cars and that truck.


We got out of the restaurant and as we walked back to the car, I noticed the car behind us had a note or something under the windshield wiper.  We got in the car and drove off.  But then I noticed there was something under our windshield wiper.  Some ad I assumed and we stopped the car to get rid of it.  It was an envelope with the ticket inside.

What the hell did we do wrong?  J read it - "Passenger loading only 7pm-2am"  Huh?

So we went back and looked.   The car behind us still had the ticket on the windshield.  There was also a car parked in the space we'd been in.   So they didn't see the sign either.   (By the way, did you notice the sign in the picture above by the truck?  This picture is during the day and we were there at night.)

This sign was behind the car behind us.  When we walked from the car we saw the back of this sign.  You can see this also two pictures above that says "Kitche" on it.  You probably didn't notice.

There's also a sign at the corner, next to the tree in the picture with the truck.  Its arrow points in the other direction.

So two spaces with meters and no white paint on the curbs are reserved in the evening for passenger loading.  We didn't see this sign.  We'd checked the sign at the other end of the block which had a convenient place to pull over and look at the sign without blocking traffic.  And there are only six parking spaces with meters on the whole block.


But even if we did see the sign at the corner - about the distance of three or four parking spaces away as you can see in the picture with the truck - I don't know that I would have realized that it meant my space.  First, the sign is very far from where I was parked.  Second, the arrow points to a long area of red pained curb.  There's room for three or four cars to stop and let off passengers.  Why would they  take two more metered parking spaces in addition?

Could I have figured this out before getting a parking ticket?  Well, if I had walked to the end of the block and checked the sign and then checked the sign behind where I parked, I might have figured it out.  Or at least been concerned and considered moving to another spot.  I like to walk so it wouldn't have mattered.  But I've never seen a no parking sign like this that took metered parking spaces away at night.  Passenger loading spaces I know about are painted red or white or yellow.  I'd looked at the sign to see when you had to use the meter.  It told me I didn't need to use it after 4pm and the sign also told me I could park there after 7pm.

This feels like entrapment.  The signs are so complicated and unexpected that an ordinary person wouldn't know he couldn't park there.  Even a reasonably careful person trying to obey the law and avoid a ticket.   The car behind us didn't know either.  Nor did the car that pulled into our space as soon as we left.

Am I whining or is this legitimate?  I checked on line and found  an October 2014 article that says parking signage is such an issue in LA that the  city council is trying to make the signs more consistent and less confusing.

Los Angeles officials pushed forward Wednesday with two programs that target one of the city's most ubiquitous problems: finding a place to park.

During a downtown committee meeting, City Council members asked transportation officials to test a simplified street parking sign that could replace the classic red, white and green placards, saying that the current, sometimes towering stacks of notices can confuse drivers and unintentionally result in parking tickets.

And there are a number of online stories about confusing parking signs in LA.  Here are a few:

• 13 Of Los Angeles' Most Ridiculous Parking Signs

 
• L.A.'s signs of madness
  Confusing and contradictory signage almost seems designed to result in parking tickets — not to mention extreme frustration. There's got to be a better way.
• There Is Now An App To Decode LA's Insane Parking Signage

Does this mean I won't have to pay the ticket?  I doubt it.  After all, they're still ticketing people at this tricky no parking spot.  And my ticket was at 7:32pm which means they are checking it right after it stops becoming a "no parking from 4-7pm" zone.


My son turned me onto a book long ago called  "Turn Signals Are The Facial Expressions of Automobiles" by Donald A. Norman.  A Kirkusreivew of the book notes:

"It's coping with the technology of quotidian life that wears us down, of course. Norman (Cognitive Psychology/UC San Diego) reassures us that it's not our fault: It's design flaws. If it's broke, Norman knows how to fix it."

The book gives lots of examples of bad design, where the message and the use conflict.  I remember particularly the example of a door with a handle to pull, but the sign says push.

I doubt the sign designers and the people who place them on the street are trying to entrap us. They are simply making signs that reflect laws or regulations that someone has passed and now the sign folks are required to implement the rules with signs.  And because they are so immersed in the making of the signs, they think it's all obvious and people should understand.  We all, generally know what we intend and it's clear to us, even though it may not be clear to others.  But part of me wonders whether this is the parking equivalent to a speed trap.  A way for LA to get needed revenue.  At $58 a pop (and that seems to be the minimum level ticket) they can ring up a lot of money.  100 tickets would be $5800.  And they got two tickets right there in a couple of minutes.  And I saw two parking enforcement vehicles when I biked over there to take the pictures.

The "Turn Signals" book points out numerous situations where this sort of rote filling out of orders results in bad design and poor instructions.

[UPDATE Jan 28:  There are two followup posts:  January 2, 2015 and January 28, 2015]

AIFF 2014: Questions (and Answers) People Should Be Asking About The Festival

A lot of people don't even know what questions they should be asking.  So I'm listing them out here (with the answers) to help you find out what's happening at the Anchorage International Film Festival and how to take advantage of all the great films that will be in town Dec. 5-14, 2014.

Below are links to posts with general information about the Anchorage International Film Festival.  This is a revision and update of a post I first put up about five years ago and updated again last year.  I've been checking the links to be sure they too are current for 2014.  But it's still a work in progress.


Q: Where's the official Anchorage International Film Festival website?  Click the AIFF2014  link here.


Q: What do all the categories mean? ("official selection;" "films in competition," etc.) This post defines key festival jargon you'll see in the program or on here..  It also covers the process for how films get selected for the Festival and how the winners get chosen.

Q: What  films are the best films this year (2014)?
Films in Competition are the ones chosen  to compete for the Golden Oosiker awards.  I'm working on lists of the films in competition for each category - something about each film and when and where they will play.  [For the film categories I have up for 2014, you can find the films in competition posts listed at my  AIFF 2014 tab.  Films in competition are marked with a check (√) on the Official AIFF website.]

Films in Competition  - Features 2014
Films in Competition -  Documentaries 2014
Films in Competition -  Shorts 2014
Films in Competition -  Animation 2013  (2014 never made it to a list)
Films in Competition -  Super Shorts 2013  (2014 never made it to a list)

But often there are other films that I thought were as good or better than the films in competition.  And there are some films, which for various reasons, are not eligible for prizes, so they aren't 'in competition, but they're good.

Q: Who won in each category?  None yet this year, but here are the previous winners.
2014 Winners - Official Winner list compared to my list (with my comments on the Features)
2013 Winners -  Official Winner list
2012 Winners - My 2012 winners Official compared to AIFF 2012 Winners Page
2011 Winners -  My 2011 winners (none) - Official AIFF 2011 Winners Page
2010 Winners -  My 2010 winners post -  Official AIFF 2010 Winners Page
2009 Winners -  My 2009 winners post -  Official AIFF 2009 Winners Page
2008 Winners - My 2008 winners post  -  Official AIFF 2008 Winners Page
[Note:  'My winners' are films I liked best.  Sometimes I've only discussed one category, sometimes more than one.  Sometimes my comments on a particular film  are buried in posts even I can't find.]


Q:  Short films are grouped together into 'programs.'  How do I find which short films are playing together in the same of program?
Animation Programs  2014 [There's only one program for 2014. There's also an animation in the Mexican Consulate's films- Eskimal.]
Made In Alaska  2014 (I guess this replaces what used to be called Snow Dance.  There are eight programs)
Short Docs 2014
Super Short Narrative 2014  (There are four programs, including one of Mexican films)
Family Program 2014


Q:  What is FG?  
The short answer:  Festival Genius.
The longer answer:  It's a film festival software program that AIFF has acquired that makes it much easier to find out when and where the films will be shown.  It takes a little bit of time to figure out how it works.


Step 1:   You click on the blue FG icon  on the AIFF website, or  you can click here.
Step 2:  Then you can choose films.  That opens up four more choices.  For starters look under category, then click the blue box (see green arrow) and a drop down window will give you a long list of choices.  Or you can pick countries.  If you leave three of the boxes at their starting setting ("all ...) then you'll see all the choices.  You can combine settings in boxes - say animation category and Mexico for country and that should pull up just one film.  If you know the name of the film you want, you can put it into the Film Search window on the right.

Step 3:  If, instead of films, you pick schedule, you can see what will show for that day or that week.

click to enlarge 

If you click on schedule, you'll get screening choices (red box) by week, by day, or grid.   Week and Day give you a list of films for the time period.  Grid will give you a table.

You don't have to sign in (I don't because they want too much personal information for me), but if you do, you can make your own schedule and review films, etc.



Q:  I'm not interested in the festival, but if there are any films on my favorite place, food, sport, etc.,  I'd go.  Are there any?

Festival Genius - see above -  allows you to look at a list of countries  and then see what films are being shown from that country.  Click on the blue spot for the country window and it will open a list of countries.  Then pick a country, and wait until it loads the films from that country.  Make sure you have "all events" and "all films" in the event and film windows.

Also note the red box in the lower left.  The film festival (2014) spans two calendar weeks and so you have to check for each week.  Just click on the week and it changes.

To find out about films of special topics, you need to look through the films themselves. I'll try to make some lists of topics if I see any patterns and I'll link here.  There are family films,  Alaska films, Mexican films sponsored by the Mexican Consul, Chinese films sponsored by the Confucius Institute at UAA, and the Gayla films.

How do I find your blog posts on specific films or film makers?  In the AIFF 2014 Page - It's a tab under the orange heading at the top of my blog - I'll have an index of posts by category and an index of posts in reverse chronological order.  Here's a link to that tab.   You can see them in the archive on the right side.  They'll mostly be in December, with some in November and I try to start them with AIFF2014.


Do you have videos of the Festival? - I'll add the video posts as I get a chance to make and edit them.   I'll list the posts with video in the AIFF2014 Page.  I already have some video of Attila Szasz, the director of The Ambassador to Bern,  which I got in a Skype interview with him in Budapest.   It's not edited yet.



Where will the films be shown?
Locations:

 Bear Tooth, is the main venue.

1230 West 27th Avenue (West of Spenard Road) - 907.276.4200

Alaska Experience Theater
333 W 4th Ave #207, Anchorage, AK 99501 (907) 272-9076
There is a large and a small theater there

Anchorage Community Works** This was a new venue last year

 349 E Ship Creek Ave

Anchorage Museum
625 C Street

Marston Theater (Loussac Library) Family Programming on Saturday Dec. 14
3600 Denali St.

There are special events at other venues.  You can check all the venues next to window where you check the countries (see screenshot above).

Q:  What workshops are there?
There are five workshops with film makers.  These are chances to interact with film makers and learn some aspect of the movie craft and industry.

Q:  What are your criteria for a good movie? When I made my picks for the 2008 best films, at the end of the post I outlined my criteria. The link takes you to that post, scroll down to second part.  I also did a post in 2012 on what I thought makes a good documentary.


Q:  Should I buy a pass or just buy tickets as I go?  

Tickets are still only $8 per film.  "All films passes" are only $100.  So, if you go to twelve films, the pass is cheaper. But there are other benefits to the pass.   You also get priority seating with your pass.    That means you go into the theater first at the Bear Tooth.  You do have to get a ticket (free when you show your pass) for each film at the door and only a certain number of seats are held for pass holders.

And if you have a pass, you'll go see more films because you'll think "I've paid for them. I should go and get my money's worth."
All Films passes get you into Workshops, and discounts for a few extra events, like the opening night film (which is actually $30 a ticket) and the awards. These extra events also have food.

Another option is to volunteer and get a pass to a movie.

You can buy tickets at the venues.  You can also get advanced tickets at the venues.
You can also buy them online.  Tickets are already available.

Q:  What about family films? 
Saturday, December 6, at 11am at Loussac Library - in the Marston Auditorium..  This is a free event.  You can see the family program here.  (As I'm posting this, there is no list of films yet at this link, just the time and place.)

Q:  Any free events?
Yes, there are.  Besides the family films (right above), Made in Alaska, and two of the workshops.  You can see them all here.

Q:  Who Are You Anyways? - who's paying you to do this? does your brother have a film in competition? What is your connection to the festival? From an earlier post here's my  Disclosure:

 I sort of accidentally blogged about the  2007 festival  and the AIFF people liked what I did and asked if I would be the official blogger in 2008. They promised me I could say what I wanted, but I decided it was better to blog on my own and then if I write something that upsets one of the film makers, the Festival isn't responsible.  The Festival has a link to my site.  They also threw in a free pass for me in each year since 2008.

I probably won't say anything terrible about a film, but I did rant about one film in the past that I thought was exploiting its subject as well as boorishly demeaning a whole country. I mentioned in an earlier post that if I sound a little promotional at times, it's only because I like films and I like the kinds of quirky films that show up at festivals, so I want as many people to know about the festival as  possible so the festival will continue. Will I fudge on what I write to get people out? No way. There are plenty of people in Anchorage who like films. They're my main target - to get them out of the house in the dark December chill when inertia tugs heavily if they even think about leaving the house. But if others who normally don't go out to films hear about a movie on a topic they're into, that's good too.

I did a post a couple of years ago for Film Festival Skeptics who might be sitting on the fence and need to be given reasons to go and strategies to make it work.

Q:  How Does One Keep Track of What's Happening at the Festival?
I'll be blogging the film festival every day.  The link below will be my festival posts only, starting with the most recent.  There should also be printed programs in the Anchorage Press you can pick up around town as well and go to the Festival Webpage.

My blog will update every day.  My Anchorage International Film Festival (AIFF 2014)  tab on top will have an overview of what's happening each day.


Q:  Are there other Alaskan Film Festivals?  
There are some events called 'festival' that I know of in Anchorage, but they aren't major film events like this one.  There is another organization,  that puts Alaska in its name and used to rent a postal box in Alaska, but has no other connection that we can find to Alaska.  You can read about that at  Comparing the ANCHORAGE and ALASKA International Film Festivals - Real Festival? Scam?

Anyone who knows of other legitimate film festivals in Alaska, let me know.  I've heard stuff about Sitka Film Festival  in February. And there's also an Indigenous Film Festival in February and  there's been an Alaska Native Film Festival.  And there's the Farthest North Jewish Film Festival in Fairbanks.

AIFF 2014: Deciphering Film Festival Jargon: Feature, In Competition, Official Selection, And More

This is an updated version of a 2008 post, modified for 2014 Anchorage International Film Festival

[UPDATED November 25:  I've got some clarifications from Jim Parker, AIFF  2014 Director of Film Programming about the film classifications and film selection process.  The changes are marked with strikethrough and [brackets]]

If you look at the program guide for the Anchorage International Film Festival coming out soon in the Anchorage Press, the films are divided into different categories.  I figure out:

• Features - 'fiction' films over about 55 [to 140] minutes [Except Animation Features are 55-120 minutes]

• Documentaries" "non-fiction" films over about 55 [to 120] minutes

• Shorts - 'fiction' films under [10 to] 55 minutes

• Short Documentaries - 'nonfiction' films under  [10 to] 55 minutes

• Animation - Animated films - these can be feature length or short, and while most are 'fiction' I guess you could have an animated documentary - a biography of Mickey Mouse maybe? No, this would be a interesting challenge.

• [Super Shorts (Animated or Fiction) 1 minute to 10 minutes.]

But there are other distinctions I didn't quite understand, so back in 2008 I emailed and talked to several of the people running the Festival (Rand and Tony and a one of the documentary coordinators from last year) to find out what these terms mean exactly and how it all works. All the highlighted terms will be explained, though some show up before the explanation. Patience.

Pre-screening Committees [Programmers]- Committees [Programmers] are selected early on to view all the movies submitted to the Festival in the specific film categories. So, there is a committee for documentaries, for features, for shorts, and for animations. These committees select the films that will become official selections. There are five to ten people on a pre-screening committee. They've completed their work some time ago.

[Clarification from Jim Parker, Director of Film Programming: These are people who volunteer to screen the films that are submitted, and at times they solicit films that they think would be a good fit for our festival.  They will make the ultimate decision about which submitted films are films  selected. This year there are five different sets of programmers:  

• A. Documentaries, includes short and super short documentaries  

• B. Features- They screen and make decisions about which feature narrative (55 to 140 minutes in length) will be included. 

• C. Animation- They screen and make decisions about super-short, short, and feature animated films.  However, this year we have a film (Rocks In My Pockets) that is animated but was entered as a feature and was considered by the feature programmers. 

• D. Shorts and Super-Shorts programmers. 

• E.  Made In Alaska.  This used to be called Snowdance, it encompasses a film of any genre or length that is made in Alaska.] 

• Official Selections - An official selection is any film that was submitted to the festival, was accepted by the appropriate pre-screening committee, and paid the entry fee.

• Special Selections - Special selections are films that the festival invites or solicits after the submission process has ended to round out the program, usually they have to pay a screening fee for these films and often times these films are already in theatrical release and this category applies to classic films as well, such as Wildlike that will be shown opening night this year. 

[Clarification from Jim Parker:  Official Selection- We've made it easier this year.  An official selection is any film that the programmers screened and chose as part of their program.  This year a special selection is a film that I or the AIFF board chose early in the process before the Programming teams started receiving and screening films.  This year the special selections are the Opening night film Wildlike, The Lookalike, and No More Road Trips?   This year we abolished the requirement that a film that received a fee waiver be considered a "special selection" and thus ineligible for jury prizes.  So almost all films are official selections and eligible for jury recognition.]

• Films in Competition - The pre-screening committees are given a rough guide about how many films they can accept as official selections. Of those, they pick what they consider the best. These are then the films in competition and get sent to the jury panels. These films are the contenders for the Golden Oosik Awards. Now, there is some negotiation between the coordinators of the pre-screening committees and director of the film festival to insure that ultimately there is a good balance of genres (they'd rather not have every feature be a comedy for example) and national representation, etc. They have to narrow it down so that the jury panels have time to watch the films and make their choices.

• Jury Panels - Once the Films in Competition are selected the pre-screening committees are done and the films are given to jury panels. The jury panels get together as a group in a theater and watch them all together. I think these also tend to be five to ten people who haven't been involved the selection process before this. They choose the best films for each category. I think they're supposed to have this done by the middle of the next week. These best films win the Golden Oosik awards at the Saturday night awards ceremony. 

[Clarification from Jim Parker: Jury selections.   When each of the Programming teams select their programs they also select their top 5 to 7 films.  These films are "in competition" and will be shown to a jury of volunteers who will determine the top three award winning films. There are juries for shorts, super-shorts, documentaries, features narrative films, Animation, and Made in Alaska. The juries watch all the films, but not usually together.  DVDs are passed around between them.  They almost always have one meeting together where they "deliberate" and choose the best films. ]

• Audience Awards - [None this year - see below]  All feature length films (over 55 minutes) are eligible for the audience award which is voted on by . . . well, you know who. This was new in 2008. The best audience award feature film and documentary will be screened on the last day of the festival, they will be announced at the awards party on Sun, Dec 14, 6:00 PM at the Organic Oasis.  For all feature length films, audience members are little forms with which to rate film.  

[Clarification from Jim Parker:  This year the AIFF dispensed with the Audience Choice Award to lessen the demands placed on volunteers, but it may be brought back in future years. 

Best of the Fest - The jury award winners will not be screened on the last day of the festival, but rather at the Alaska Experience Theater on the Tuesday and Wednesday folllowing the festival.]

When I first blogged the festival  I didn't understand any of this. When I was picking my own favorites, I didn't take into consideration the category of films in competition. I'm pointing this all out here so others can understand it. Now, before the Festival begins I first focus on making it easier for people to know what the Films in Competition are for each category and what the schedules are so you have a chance to see as many as possible. [For 2014 I've already posted about the Feature Films in Competition and the Documentaries in Competition.]

But other people will be more interested in films of specific genres - comedy, drama, etc. Other people will just want to see shorts or animation. And some will be interested in films from certain countries or about specific topics. They won't care if the films are in competition or not. And there are the special presentations which have been invited and may prove to be better than the films in competition. But I tend to start with the films in competition, then, if I have time left over, I'll go onto some other focus. Once the festival starts, I'll report on what I go to.

Check the tab on top - Alaska International Film Festival 2014 - for an overview of how make the most out of the festival and for an index of posts I do on the festival this year.  The 2013 tab is also still up if you want to check on last year's festival.

"If a Martian came down and met us they'd think we were all involved in gunplay, most of us had met a serial killer, and many of us are engaging in some sort of espionage . . .

And what he's saying is that life doesn't have to be hyperbolized.  What we actually experiences is good enough."

That comes from an interview with Ethan Hawke in the LA Times today, talking about the character Rick, the stepfather, in the movie Boyhood.  Hawke is responding to critics who say the movie is too mundane.

This is a theme I've been thinking about a lot since I actually see tv news when I visit my mom.  Just this morning I was dismayed watching the local news with  the car crash pictures repeated over and over and the 30-70 mile Santa Ana winds hyped as a serious danger complete with video of a tree knocked over onto two cars.

It's clear that 'the news' has changed over the years.  Excerpted from a piece in Psychology Today article by Graham C.L. Davey, Ph.D.

". .. there is good reason to believe that the negative sensationalism in news has been gradually increasing over the past 20-30 years. So first, we’ll have a look at what negative news is, we’ll then examine the reasons why the broadcasting of negative news has become so prevalent. Then finally, we’ll look at some of the ways in which viewing perpetual negative news might affect your mood, and particularly your tendency to worry about your own specific problems.

. . . News bulletins also have to compete with entertainment programs for their audience and for their prime-time TV slot, and seem to do this by emphasizing emotionally relevant material such as crime, war, famine, etc. at the expense of more positive material.

He writes about his study that showed that watching negative news caused people to "catastrophize."

Catastrophizing is when you think about a worry so persistently that you begin to make it seem much worse than it was at the outset and much worse than it is in reality – a tendency to make ‘mountains out of molehills’!

This is just one study.  But there are others.  From a piece by Jesse Singal New York Magazine, The Science of Us.  He writes that people who watch a lot of negative news coverage aren't necessarily clinically depressed:

“But if you ask how they feel about the world, what they end up with is this malaise: ‘Everything’s kinda bad’ and ‘Why should I vote? It’s not gonna help’ and ‘I could donate money, but there’s just gonna be another kid who’s starving next week.’ 

Is this a contributor to the low voter turnout last week?

”The consequences of this are one thing if you live in an age in which, once or twice an evening, you’ll see a short, bloody dispatch from a war going on across the world. They’re quite another today, when you can have news of every civilian death in Gaza or every Islamic State military advance streamed to you in real time. People could be forgiven for adopting a hell-in-a-handbasket stance toward the rest of the world. 

And what about when the images are repeated over and over again, relentlessly?

That’s a problem, because when people are led to believe things are falling apart, it affects their decision-making and their politics — whether or not their pessimism is warranted. We already know from political-psychological research that the more threatened people feel, the more likely they will be to support right-wing policies. And people who believe in the concept of unmitigated evil appear more likely to support torture and other violent policies.

McLuhan said 'The medium is the message" back in the mid 60's.   The medium still bears as much attention as the message.

Now, let's not be guilty of sensationalizing the dangers either.  Singal also writes:

"Before getting into the effects of all this, it’s important to state what a steady diet of bad news won’t do. It won’t give you PTSD, anxiety, or depression if you weren’t predisposed toward those conditions, McNaughton-Cassill said. Causation is tricky here: It may simply be that depressed or anxious people are more likely to seek out bad news, and bad news could in turn worsen the effects of these conditions in certain ways."

This was the preface, though, to the paragraph above on malaise.

He also writes that people still tend to be positive about their immediate setting - their neighbors are ok, their local schools are ok.  But when you look beyond their personal experiences, their perception of danger 'out there' is definitely biased by the news.

I think about the people who have asked me over the years about dangers I face when traveling.  I was headed to India when there was news about a Dengue fever breakout.  40 people out of 10 million people who live in Delhi were affected.  The odds of hitting a moose driving in Anchorage were much higher.

Rick Steves makes this point strongly:

Q: Is it safe to travel overseas right now?
A: Travelers should understand the risk of terrorism in a cold, logical, statistical way. Your odds of being killed by a terrorist overseas or in the air are 1 in 2,200,000. Your odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 600,000. Your odds of being killed by gunfire in the United States are 1 in 18,900.

He also has a new book called Travel as a Political Act.  His Facebook page hypes the release of the second edition of Travel as a Political Act:

To make travel a political act, sightsee with an edge. Seek out political street art...and find out what it means. Read local culture magazines and attend arts and political events. Take alternative tours to learn about heroin maintenance clinics in Switzerland, Copenhagen's Christiania commune, and maquiladora labor in Tijuana. Walk with a local guide through a slum in a developing country. Meeting desperately poor villagers living with a spirit of abundance, ponder how so many rich people live with a mindset of scarcity. All this week, I’m celebrating the release of the second edition of my book, TRAVEL AS A POLITICAL ACT. I’m sharing my top tips on how to pry open your hometown blinders, bring home a broader perspective, and implement that worldview as citizens of our great nation. Find more tips at http://rickstev.es/E8CXh and find the book at http://rickstev.es/E8D10.

AIFF 2014: Features In Competition - My voice rocks 6 unicorns in my pockets; I come, Ambassador, to Bern in hell I believe: in-appropriate behavior.

Trying to make a sentence using all the words from the titles of the feature films in competition taught me that verbs and conjunctions are scarce in the titles. I had to change some nouns to verbs. Left on the table:  'bullets' and 'the'. 

But if you remember this sentence - My voice rocks 6 unicorns in my pockets; I come, Ambassador, to Bern in hell I believe: in-appropriate behavior. - you should be able to remember all the features in competition.  Now go find the titles this came from.

Features are films that are fiction (even if based on a true story) and over 55 minutes long.  

In Competition means that after the initial screeners "selected" the films to be in the festival, the juries picked what they thought were the best of those selected.  Those films are 'in competition" for festival awards.

I'm sure there are other outstanding features - there always are - that don't make it into competition.  If I learn about any I'll let you know.

Fourteen Features were selected and six  are in competition.  They represent eleven different countries. 

• Australia/USA 
• Canada 
• France/Germany/Turkey  
• Hungary
• USA
• Spain/USA
• United Kingdom/Poland
• USA/Latvia 

One more film, Kurmanjan Datka [Queen of the Mountains] from Kyrgyzstan was selected and in competition when the Features were first announced, but it's no longer listed.  In that past that has meant a more prestigious festival won't take it if it's been shown elsewhere or some such situation.

  Our loss according to someone who saw the film.

6 Bullets To Hell
Tanner Beard
Spain/USA √
80 m
10:00 PM    Tue, Dec 9  Bear Tooth
10:00 PM     Sat, Dec 13  AK Exp Small

An excerpt from the Planet Spaghetti-Western:

"Opening with the sturm-und-twang of Ennio Morricone’s ‘Seconda caccia’, from The Big Gundown, and the killing of a cowering priest, 6 Bullets to Hell signals its intentions even before the rotoscope-style credits gambol across the screen. Assembled on a miserly budget by a coterie of genre aficionados and shot entirely in Almería and its environs, this US-Spanish co-production is an unabashed love letter to the overheated vendetta westerns that rolled in this region in the Sixties.”

The Ambassador to Bern (A Berne Követ)
Attila Szász
Hungary ✓ 
77m

5:30 PM Tue, Dec 9 Bear Tooth
5:30 PM Wed, Dec 10 AK Exp Small

The English poster for this film reflects the USA's obsession with guns.  The violence in the Hungarian poster is much more subtle.  I hope this means that violence in the trailer is all the violence in the film and the rest will be more drama.  I'm leaving the trailer off here because the quality of the youtube video is much poorer than the video on the movie's website.




The video quality on the Ambassador to Bern website is much better.  By the way, I found a copy of an Hungarian language trailer.  It's similar to the English language one, but shorter and no subtitles.  Apparently it showed on Hungarian television earlier this year.


It's taken from a true story about Hungarian immigrants in Switzerland, after the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956, who take over the Hungarian embassy in Bern.


The film won the Bronze Zenith for the First Fiction Feature Film at the Montreal Film Festival in September this year.  












Appropriate Behavior
Desiree Akhavan
USA √
90m
5:30 PM Mon, Dec. 8 Bear Tooth
8:00 PM Sat, Dec 13 Alaska Exp Small


Anchorage is Appropriate Behavior's 13th film festival this year - including Sundance - according to the film's website. 

From a New York Times piece on Desiree Arkhavan:

"For her part, Ms. Akhavan is quick to play down any suggestion that she is pursuing an agenda in her work as writer, director or performer. “I see where the funny lies and where the story is, and I chase the story wherever it leads me,” she says. “And it usually leads to a very personal place and my life just happens to involve all these hugely political things — being bisexual, being Iranian, and now being a woman is inherently political, too. But I don’t consider those things at all while I’m doing it.”

The underwear shopping clip at the web site will definitely get most people's attention.

Variety's review sees a good, but imperfect film, with lots of promise for its director:''

"It would probably be horribly reductive to describe Desiree Akhavan’s “Appropriate Behavior” as a lesbian Persian-American “Girls” knockoff, but it wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate, either. A debut feature from the writer-director-star, this tart, sexually frank portrait of a disintegrating relationship — and its long, bitter aftermath — packs plenty of punch in its best scenes, but it also frequently tests audience patience with its relentless deadpan affectlessness and insistence on leaving no Brooklyn cliche unmined. Pic should be a natural for future festival play all the same, and its auteur ought to be well worth watching once she starts to find her own voice."

Come to My Voice [Were Dengê Min][Sesime Gel]
Hüseyin Karabey
France, Germany, Turkey √
90m
8:00 PM Thu, Dec. 11 Bear Tooth
11 AM Sun, Dec 14 Alaska Exp Large


From the Hollywood Reporter:

"Raiding a Kurdish village after a tip-off, a Turkish military unit fails to find the weapons suggested by the informer; enraged, the captain (Nazmi Sinan Milici) orders all male villagers to be taken away for detention and questioning at the barracks, and told the remaining folk - elderly and children mostly - they would have to hand over 15 rifles and 20 guns within a week in exchange for the release of the men."

According to the review, this is just the starting point; the film shows the wider ripples of the Turkish military's action, but it appears that the main characters are a Kurdish grandmother and granddaughter.  

The review says it won the audience award at the Istanbul International Film Festival this year. 










I Believe In Unicorns

Leah Meyerhoff
USA √
80m
5:30 PM Sat, Dec 6 Alaska Exp Small
8:00 PM Tue, Dec 9 Bear Tooth


I can't tell much about this one.  The website has too many balloons and unicorns for me, but the reviewers see promise in filmmaker Meyerhoff. Dear Lemon Lima had cutesy teen stuff too, but turned out to be a very good film, if you could suspend reality enough for kids to wear shorts and go swimming in Fairbanks in December.  But it did win the audience award, so people here looked past those things.

 Ryan Lattanzio at Indiewire wrote:

". . . While the film gets kudos for carefully unpeeling the psychology of its young (anti-)heroine, "Unicorns" also contains a few fairly graphic sexual encounters between 16-year-old Davina, played with startling grace by Dyer, and Sterling, seething with the handsome Vack's silent menace. Nothing like being bent over a bail of hay and fucked doggie-style to cap off an affair to remember.

"Unicorns" is so narratively thin, it could be a short, and Meyerhoff's scrapbook style will irritate some, and enrapture others. But in a world of increasingly stentorian female filmmakers, she's one to watch."

Rob Dickie at Sound on Sight at the Edinburgh International Film Festival wrote:

. . . Even the live action sequences are scattered with moments of sublime and wistful beauty, notably when Davina and Sterling come across a group of circus performers in the dark. This scene is imagined, as are others in which Davina walks through a forest with a pair of wings, but they’re revealing nevertheless. The film becomes totally immersed in Davina’s way of thinking, using her own myths and metaphors to elucidate her deepest feelings.

As the title suggests, I Believe in Unicorns is a film about using fantasy as a means to escape the world. For Davina, this leads to excitement and new experiences but her belief in her visions blinds her to what’s really going on. Despite taking its structure and aesthetic from the American road movie, the film avoids all the usual pitfalls and clichés of that gnere. Instead, it uses nostalgia and familiar imagery to highlight just how far from that kind of situation this really is. These are ordinary teenagers in a dysfunctional relationship, grabbing half-heartedly at the chance for another life.

Both these are much longer reviews.

From Rocks In My Pocket website

Rocks In My Pockets
Signe Baumane
USA/Latvia √
88m
3:00 PM Sat, Dec. 6 Museum
5:00 PM Sun, Dec  7 Alaska Experience Large


Can you tell this story might involve mental health?  Peter Dunlap-Shohl is a local cartoonist (and AIFF film maker) whose blog on Parkinson's uses animation to help others understand what it's like to have Parkinsons.  And to remind others with Parkinsons that they are not alone.  I'm hoping this film will prove as enlightening and as funny as Peter's work.  Here's a short interview with filmmaker Signe Baumane from Rooftop Films, back in February 2013, before the film was complete:

Usually people want to make and see films about fantasy.  They want to have these romantic comedies, scenarios of which could never take place in real life. Since early age I was always wondering how come the things that I read in books about and the things I see in movies never take place in real life. And why is no one trying to depict or tell how it feels from inside. I wanted to focus on how the living process feels inside.

. . . As to depression.  You know, I get depressed sometimes, like twice, three times a year.  It hits me unexpectedly and  I have to deal with with. I don’t know why does it happen, theres no reason. You go through this cloud of foggy thoughts, slow expression, slow speech, you feel fatigued and have pain inside.  I was wondering how would I describe that pain to other people. Not only describe but also visually depict it.

For me, a very honest take on depression is also very funny.  The absurdity of it: here is life and it is wonderful – why would you want to die? Still, every 12 seconds of my day I think of killing myself.

. . . Depression has a stigma attached to it.  You’re not supposed to be depressed, you’re supposed to be dealing with everything.  And you should be dealing with everything but, except, sometimes you cant.  I wanted to communicate that moment of truth when you can’t deal.

The whole interview, which also discusses how the movie was made (by hand) is here.

I need to check on how this made it as a feature in competition without even being selected into the animated category.  I've had disagreements with some of the animated selections and winners in past years.  This looks to be a dark film, but one with lots of imagination.  But no judgments until I see the animated films.   And why doesn't this show at the Bear Tooth at all?  Are they afraid people don't want to see films about depression?  In December in Anchorage?  They would sell a lot of beer.  But I'm just speculating with no actual evidence.  I usually find out that things that seem strange often have a good explanation. 

Here's the official trailer: