The Battle Of Algiers Offers Insights Into Israel-Gaza War

 I haven't posted about the Israel-Gaza* war for a variety of reasons, the key ones being the unreliability of the many accusations flung back and forth, the very complication of the issues including all the action going on behind the scenes that we don't know anything about.  

I've come up with a list of about a dozen issues that I see as important for anyone trying to understand what is happening and why.  Surely there are more.  And they all have threads that wind into the other issues. 

Guerilla Warfare 

One of the issues is the nature of guerrilla warfare.  Having been alive as the Vietnam War (or the American War as the Vietnamese call it), Afghanistan - first Russia and then US - I've learned a little bit about guerrilla warfare.  We see it when a militarily weak group of people feel badly mistreated and take on their overwhelmingly powerful perceived oppressors.   

Here's Wikipedia's summary:

"The main strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare tend to involve the use of a small attacking, mobile force against a large, unwieldy force. The guerrilla force is largely or entirely organized in small units that are dependent on the support of the local population. Tactically, the guerrilla army makes the repetitive attacks far from the opponent's center of gravity with a view to keeping its own casualties to a minimum and imposing a constant debilitating strain on the enemy. This may provoke the enemy into a brutal, excessively destructive response which will both anger their own supporters and increase support for the guerrillas, ultimately compelling the enemy to withdraw. One of the most famous examples of this was during the Irish War of Independence. Michael Collins, a leader of the Irish Republican Army, often used this tactic to take out squads of British soldiers, mainly in Munster, especially Cork."

In this case, Hamas are clearly the guerrillas against the overwhelming military strength of Israel.   

Wikipedia in a separate article offers a history of guerrilla warfare back to 6th Century BC China.

For me, the nature of guerrilla warfare got much clearer when I saw the movie The Battle Of Algiers, sometime in the 1970s.  

I'd strongly recommend watching this film for anyone who wants to understand what is happening now in Israel and Gaza.  

The Internet Archive has posted the film and has links to embed it in blogs and other websites.  I have never before posted a full movie like this and it feels a bit wrong.  You can also watch it at the Internet Archive.  

Aside from showing guerrilla warfare from the point of view of the guerrillas, it's a classic example of cinéma vérité.  It's just a really well made movie.  

Without understanding the underlying reasons a group uses guerrilla warfare tactics, it's hard to understand a war in which guerrilla forces fight against a much more dominant culture.  

History shows us many examples where overpowering military advantage eventually loses to an organized, but much, much weaker resistance movement.  But there are also examples of that weaker unit being crushed.  My sense here, though, is that the ruthlessness of Israel's response will create millions of more resisters among the Palestinians. 

Astute readers will have figured out that I've once again avoided the topic of Israel and Gaza.  Yes, and no.  It's much to complex a topic to deal with in one post.  I'll refine my list of key issues and then post the list.  Then I'll cover as many of the issues as I have the stomach for in other posts - some on just one issue, others may combine a few.  

In the meantime, I'd challenge readers to come up with their own lists of the key issues.  Then you'll be able to compare your lists with mine and, I hope, improve my list in the comments.  

Make some popcorn and enjoy the movie.  

*I've labeled this Israeli-Gaza war, but one could also say Israeli-Palestinian war.  

AIFF2022: The Film Makers Went To Chena While It Snows Big In Anchorage - Thursday Schedule

There are fewer films being shown overall this year.  I asked whether this was in part due to the pandemic - there aren't as many films getting made.  John Gamache, the festival co-director wasn't sure how much the pandemic affecting things, but the quality wasn't as high.  But they'd also mentioned the other night that a number of big name festivals hadn't survived the pandemic.  But Anchorage keeps chugging along.  They also decided in this first year getting everyone back together in person it would be better to keep the audience together so the films got more eyeballs and the audience could reconnect for some and just meet new folks for others.  And that's been happening.  Though there are some overlapping films coming up starting Thursday.  Some at the Anchorage Museum and some at the E Street theater.  

So they also scheduled Tuesday and Wednesday film free and instead are taking the film makers to Chena Hot Springs. (The schedule for Thursday is below.)  They hadn't counted on the heavy snow we've gotten.  Aside from hot tubbing in Chena, they're going to have plenty of time to get to know each other on the looooong bus ride, which has gotten longer with all the snow.  It will be one of those adventures that will become more and more fun the longer it is in the past.  It was also mentioned that the Anchorage International Film Festival was name among the best for new film makers.  I've heard that from film makers over the years - how welcoming Anchorage folks are and how they get a chance to meet lots of other film makers.  And how it is a much lower pressure festival - more cooperative than competitive.  So this adventure fits in.  

Meanwhile I got my workout shoveling the driveway.  There's a bit over a foot of snow.  Not that much for some places, but a good amount for Anchorage.  Enough to cancel school today.  Here was my first pathway down to the mailbox.  

Then I decided to make a maze since I was only able to get one shovel full at a time because it was so deep.  (Usually I can push the snow down the hill or across the driveway before tossing it.)  Not particularly efficient, but more fun.  Then the second round it was much easier to get the driveway clear.  

This is a big file so you can click it to enlarge it and read it easier.

AIFF 2022: Anchorage International Film Festival Begins Friday With Turkish Entry At The Bear Tooth

I once was totally on top of the Anchorage International Film Festival each year.  I've fallen behind this year, but this should get you into the mood.  

You can get tickets for individual films or passes for the whole festival at the AIFF website.  $100 passes for all films is a good deal if you have time to see more than eight or nine films.  I checked a couple and they were $12 each.  

Venues will be mostly Bear Tooth and the Museum.  

Also, check on the AIFF Facebook Page.

Feature Films

NARRATIVE FEATURES  - Note:  Three of these are by women film makers.  

“Dealing With Dad” by Tom Huang • USA

Interview with Director Tom Huang from Oxford Eagle

“The Last Birds of Passage” by Iffet Eren Danisman Boz • Turkey

OPENING NIGHT FILM, FRIDAY DEC. 2, 2022 

From an article on this film from Business Mirror.  It seems pretty relevant to issues faced by Alaska's ancient peoples.

"In one scene in the film, the nomads are invited to a kind of cultural festival in the city. They are declared as the real Yoruks, an identity important for them. Their presence is applauded and people take their photographs as if they are museum specimens. In real life, the director admits to a prejudice these people experience. It is a discrimination that is more subtle and implicit, and which comes out only in conflicts that arise because of the fact that there are people who move from one place to another, their incursion into lands not ably validated by license or ownership. Thus even on the way to the mountains, these people have to be careful not to tread on plantations owned by other people. Their supply of fresh and clean water is also endangered because mining and other human activities that allow humans to stay put have occupied lands and endangered the surroundings."

“Where Life Begins” by Stéphane Freiss • Italy, France 

From Home MCR:

"26-year-old Esther, the daughter of a rabbi from Aix-les-Bains, joins her ultra-Orthodox family on their annual trip to a farm in southern Italy, where they perform the sacred task of harvesting lemons. While Esther is expected to marry a man she does not yet know, her budding friendship with Elio, the farm owner, encourages her to follow her desire to leave religion and live life on her own terms. Set in the beautiful Italian countryside, Where Life Begins is a tender yet thought-provoking exploration of tradition, family and self-realisation."

 

The Wind & The Reckoning” by David L Cunningham • USA

From Cinema Clock:

"1893. The Hawaiian Kingdom has been overthrown by a Western power just as an outbreak of leprosy engulfs the tropical paradise. The new government orders all Native Hawaiians suspected of having the foreign disease banished permanently to a remote colony on the island of Moloka'i that is known as 'the island of the living grave'. When a local cowboy named Ko'olau and his young son Kalei contract the dreaded disease, they refuse to allow their family to be separated, sparking an armed clash with brutal white island authorities that will make Ko'olau and his wife, Pi'ilani heroes for the ages."

“You Resemble Me” by Dina Amer • USA

From the Press Kit (download at bottom of this page):  

SYNOPSIS

Cultural and intergenerational trauma erupt in this story about two sisters

on the outskirts of Paris. After the siblings are torn apart, the eldest, Hasna, struggles to find her identity, leading to a choice that shocks the world. Director Dina Amer takes on one of the darkest issues of our time and deconstructs it in an intimate story about family, love, sisterhood, and belonging.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

As a Muslim Egyptian woman living in the West, I’ve struggled to reconcile pieces of my identity that feel contradictory. I am a woman who has spent the majority of my life praying discreetly in public spaces (airports are the hardest). And yet I don’t look like what most of society envisions as a Muslim woman. I don’t wear a hijab and I love Cardi B. Throughout my life I’ve lived through the shadow of how the failure to reconcile a Muslim Western identity with such clear contradictions can result in a haunting headline. [This is just a short excerpt]

I couldn't get an embed code, but here's a link to the trailer.  I'd recommend watching it.

From the AIFF Facebook page, here's some other films at the Bear Tooth

Run Raven Run - Roma Musicians Open AIFF2021

 Lots of firsts lately.  First plane ride in almost two years and tonight we were at the Bear Tooth for the first time in two years at the Anchorage International Film Festival Opening.  The Festival is both live and online.  

Masks are required except while eating and drinking and two spaces are left open between your party and the next.  We decided to try it because when I went online to buy your ticket I could see there were mostly empty seats.  

And a pass to the online festival doesn't get you into the theater free, so I'm guessing lots of people are staying home.  But if you're fully vaccinated I'd encourage you to come.  The big screen was a great change.  And while everything seems new and different, it quickly seems like normal again.  The biggest shock was that the Bear Tooth orange cones are a thing of the past.  With reserved seats, the wait staff doesn't have to go looking for your cone.  They have your seat number.  

And there are lots of films that are scheduled live.  And they have printed programs at the Bear Tooth.  Here's a couple of pages so you can see there are live films all week.  Some at the Bear Tooth, the museum, and the E Street Theater.  

The Festival directors and some board members were on stage to greet folks.


Run Raven Run took place mostly in Romania as film maker Michael Rainin takes us into the lives of different Gypsy musical traditions.  We skip around from one family to another with bits of history and geography thrown in.  That probably sounds a bit tedious, but the people in the movie pulled us into their lives and their world view.  Credit has to go to the film maker, but even more so, I'm guessing, to the people who took him into their homes and shared their lives with him.  We went from traditional oriental Gypsy music to violins to rap.  We saw beautiful rural villages and horrible Bucharest slums.  We traveled to Europe from Rajasthan, India.  We encountered Nazi concentration camps, and see Ceaușescu's trip to North Korea and his overthrow.  We even see some American jazz musicians and a great Louis Armstrong imitation.  

Ida Theresa Myklebost, Festival Co-Director
interviews Run Raven Run Director Michael Rainin

The director of the film, Michael Rainin, talked about the film and making it at the end.  Part of the discussion was about the acceptability of using the word Gypsy.  As you might assume by its use here that he felt the people in the film used it and didn't seem to have any objection to its use.  

Go online and check out the long list of films.  Tomorrow Lune plays at 1pm at the Bear Tooth, A family Shorts Program plays at 4pm at the Museum, and A Sexplantion plays at the Museum at 8pm.

Or just watch it all whenever you can online with a festival pass.  Or pay to watch individual films.  

But do try to go to at least one live event.  

Anchorage International Film Festival (AIFF2021) Dec 3-12 - Hybrid Live/Online

There are lots of details here that make it difficult to  report this clearly and painlessly.  And there are various loose ends that need to get mentioned somehow.  I've been working on this for close to a week now.  My approach is to do this on several levels of detail.  Sort of a USA Today synopsis, then maybe a Daily News type overview, and then a trip into the basement where you can see all the moving parts.  I'm hoping that will allow people with different attention spans and different levels of interest to get the gist, if not the grist, of what happened.

There's now an AIFF page where ticket holders and members can log in.  But it doesn't say how to get tickets or become a member. 

OK, I put in the email address I used last year and it got me to a page where I could buy passes. If you didn't get a pass last year, you might try clicking the forgot button and see if it will get you in. There's a household pass (which I bought) for $150 and what I guess is an individual pass for $100.  Both say for online viewing only, not for in person events.  

Then I was able to go back to that page (above) and sign in and get to the AIFF page 

And I've also gone to the Facebook page.  (Wear a mask there)  Just to wet your appetite, I found the list of the features.  Features are longer films (generally over 50-60 minutes).  Documentaries are non-fiction and Narrative are fiction.  

The FEATURE FILMS you can watch at the festival in December are:

DOCUMENTARY FEATURES

80.000 Schnitzel • Hannah Schweier • Germany

A Sexplanation • Alex Liu • USA

Captive • Mellissa Fung • Canada

From the Hood to the Holler • Pat McGee • USA

I'm Wanita • Matthew Walker • Australia

Newtok • Andrew Burton & Michael Kirby Smith • USA

Not About Me Documentary • Kelly Milner • Canada

On These Grounds • Garrett Zevgetis • USA

Out Loud • Gail Willumsen • USA

Run Raven Run • Michael Rainin • USA

Scrum • Thomas Morgan • USA

The Art of Sin • Ibrahim Mursal • Norway

The form • Filip Flatau • France

NARRATIVE FEATURES

18½ • Dan Mirvish • USA

Americanish Film • Iman Zawahry • USA

Atlas • Niccolò Castelli • Switzerland

Christmas Freak The Movie • Sean Brown • USA

Culpa • Ulrike Grote • Germany

Everything in The End • Mylissa Fitzsimmons• Iceland/USA

Landlocked • Tim Hall (Timothy Hall) • USA

Lune • Aviva Armour-Ostroff & @Arturo Perez Torres • Canada

Tall Tales • Attila Szász • Hungary

The Wanderers • Hwang Lee • Korea

We're All In This Together • Katie Boland • Canada

Just looking through the list I see two familiar names:

Dan Mirvish - 18 1/2 - had a film - Between Us - in the 2013 festival.  He didn't come to the festival but I interviewed him via Skype and ended up with a rather long (for me) 17 minute video which you can see below.  In 2017 he came to the festival and did a stimulating workshop.

 

 

Another film - Tall Tales - is by Attila Szász, who has had two gorgeous films in prior festivals.  The Ambassador to Bern in 2014 and Demimonde.   both won the top prize for Narrative Features.  Below is the Skype interview I did with Szász in 2014.  I'm looking forward to the new film.

 

This is much more fun and much easier than the Redistricting Board.  

Netflix Recs: Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz And Two Short Films

 Tip 1:  Prosecuting Evil:  The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz   

I'm doing this one first because it leaves Netflix on May 31 - so you need to watch it now if you want to see it there.  As portrayed in the film, Ben Ferencz is a truly remarkable person. (The link goes to his website which has a wealth of information.)   Born in Romania in 1920, he immigrated to the US before he was one.  A teacher alerted his mother that he was gifted - "We didn't know what gifted meant.  No one had ever given us gifts." - she encouraged him to go to college.  From City College of New York to Harvard law school where he was a research assistant for a professor who had written one of the only books on war crimes.  He was with the US army when they liberated some concentration camps and when he returned the US was called to DC - he assumes the professor had recommended him - to work on prosecuting Nazi war criminals.  

He ended up as the lead prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials (at 27!) and went on from there to be a pioneer in human rights law including a long battle to establish the International Criminal Court to prosecute leaders who commit human rights violations.  

While there is, necessarily, some disturbing Holocaust footage, I got inspiration from a man who took on impossible tasks and saw them through.  Who never gave up on his quest to make the world a better, more peaceful place.  A true role model.  

He was still alive in 2018 when the film was made and apparently - looking at his website - is still alive today.  In the film he was still working hard on peace issues at 98.  

It leaves Netflix May 31 - That's Monday.  But it's also available through Prime (though I don't like to encourage people to support Amazon.)

A key relevant issue for me in this film was his arguments that Nazi war criminals should NOT be just forgotten and that they should be prosecuted, not as retribution, but as a warning to future leaders, to let them know these things will not go unpunished.  

That is a key reason why the January 6 investigation needs to be undertaken.  To not investigate and prosecute at the highest levels, is to encourage another insurrection.  Republican legislators in a number of states are already setting up ways to overrule election officials and make themselves in charge of deciding who has won the election.  Germans did not take the Nazi threat seriously until it was too late.  We are in early 1930s Germany territory right now in the United States.  

I'd like my junior senator - Dan Sullivan - to see this movie.  He doesn't seem to understand the values I hold.  The cultural background and values that Ferencz represents - highly valuing peace and justice and fighting injustice (no I don't think that that is redundant) - mirror the cultural background and values I grew up with.  Valuing peace and fighting AGAINST war, is not un-American and it's very much part of being a human being.  I just wish I was one percent as effective as he is.  I'll work on it.  

That's why this is such an important film.

Tip 2:  If you search "short films" Netflix will give you a page of short films, maybe 5 minutes to an hour.  (Some are longer because they are collections of short films.)  This is a great option if you don't have time for a long movie or don't want to get hooked into a series at the moment.

The first one we picked was Two Distant Strangers.  It said "Academy Award Winner" so we figured it was worth watching.  It's part of their "Black Lives Matter Collection."  Basically it's a Ground Hog day type movie where the black protagonist keeps running into the same cop who mistreats him in different ways and his attempts to avoid and/or improve the interaction.  

The second one was The Trader, because it was short and was a Georgian movie.  Not Georgia - the state of Staci Abrams, but Georgia in Central Asia.  How many films have you seen from Georgia?  Probably none.  

The film follows a man with a truck who goes from village to village selling trinkets and cheap household goods and used clothing.  He'll take money, but mostly he's trading for potatoes which he takes to Tblisi and sells to traders in the market.

What always strikes me about films from places that are foreign to me (though by now it shouldn't anymore) is how much people are alike.  The architecture, the landscape, the dress, the language may be different, but humans are really all the same.  Particularly poignant here were a couple of scenes with little kids.  The Trader uses bubbles to attract kids and then tells them to bring their parents to buy them things.  

The actions and smiles of  little kids chasing the soap bubbles was no different all all from little kids in well off households in the US.  Another, older kids was asked what he wanted to do when he grew up and his facial expressions and body language was no different from an embarrassed 12 year old anywhere in the world.  

Overall, I recommend escaping from the Netflix recommendations and searching by countries to find a lot of interesting films that help us see how much the human condition is the same everywhere.  Get over your aversion to subtitles.  Just do it.  There are excellent films and series  from India, Korea, Turkey, Scandinavia, the Spanish speaking world.  

AIFF 2020: Best Narrative Feature - Festival Picks and Mine (Equan Choi's My Son)

It's late February.  This is long overdue, so let me get this done.  Here are the Festival winners in the best Narrative Feature category.  (Narrative Features are the films most seen in movie theaters - fictional stories over an hour or so long.) [Note:  My strong favorite film was Equan Choi's My Son. I mention this here, because as I wrote this, it comes up at the end.  And because this film was overlooked by both the Jurors and the Audience in their awards, I want to be sure it gets people's attention, even if they don't read the whole post.]

First, the Juror Awards.  Jurors are part of the film festival, people selected by the Festival director, who know something about film.  Because our festival director is a Norwegian film maker, she reached out to film makers she knows around the world.  These are not people from Anchorage.  That's neither good nor bad theoretically.  It depends on how well she chooses the jurors and the purpose of the awards and how much they should reflect Anchorage.  

Narrative Features

2nd Runner Up  - Last Days of Capitalism

Runner Up - The Woman In the Photographs

Winner - Dinner in America

Audience Awards.  One could argue that the audience awards add the Anchorage flavor to the awards.  

Narrative Feature - 

2nd Runner Up -  Paper Spiders

Runner Up -Foster Boy

Winner - Dinner in America

Category	Juror Award Winner	Audience Award Winner	Steve's Award Winner
2nd Runner Up	Last Days of Capitalism	Paper Spiders	see discussion
Runner Up	The Woman In the Photographs	Foster Boy	see discussion
Winner	Dinner in America	Dinner in America	My Son

First off, I'd say that Narrative Features was the richest category in the festival.  There were lots and lots of excellent films.  

Second, I think the Jurors picked better movies than the Audience.  But that they are all very good films.  

Third, I'm not really a fan of forced ranking.  Given a film that is technically sound - the video, the acting, the sound etc. are well done - it's the content and feel of the movie that matter.  And even films that are technically imperfect can have content that overcomes that.  So, this means that whether a film is good or not depends on how the content of the film resonates with the viewer.  And that usually depends on the viewer's life experiences and the emotional connection a viewer has with the characters and the issues in the film.  So different viewers will legitimately prefer different films.

I'm guessing that the Jurors were looking at the films as film as much as the content, while the Audience was more focused on the stories and characters.  Paper Spiders was about a daughter whose mother is losing her mind.  It was a very well told story.  Very moving.  Foster Boy was also well told - a trial movie about a young black man who was abused by the foster care system.  I'm guessing this didn't show up in the Juror Awards because it was a very Hollywood movie - including some well known actors.  If the Jurors are like me, they are looking more for 'film festival' movies.  Movies that break the mold, that take risks, that you would be less likely to see at a theater. (I realize some may be asking "What's a theater?" in this time of COVID.) 

The Last Days of Capitalism straddled between those two categories.  It was a perfect COVID film - just two actors in a hotel suite in Las Vegas.  It's a really good film.  I saw it early in the festival and it immediately became my film to beat.  You can see the Trailer here, but I'm not putting it up here because it really doesn't reflect the verbal (almost athletic) competition between the two characters that made this movie.  

The Woman in the Photographs was at the top after I saw it.  This Japanese movie about a photographer and his model is definitely in the film festival category. It explores the nature of reality - is it what the woman actually looks like or is it how the woman looks in the photograph. Especially current in this age of social media and online dating.  This was definitely one of my favorites.  

Dinner in America - This film with a seriously flawed main character who made terrible decisions was, nevertheless, a joy to watch.  Not quite mainstream, not quite festival, it was a real surprise and I understand it being the winner for both the Jurors and the Audience.  There are lots of videos out there with the film's crew, but I couldn't find a trailer.  

BUT, I think there were at least two more movies that fell through the cracks because there was so much good stuff.  

The Subject - This leans more into a festival type film.  A privileged white male film maker who sees himself as trying to give voice to black gang members in his 'cutting edge' films, finds out that he's really not gotten much beyond his own self.  There's another withering dialogue at the end of this film between the film maker and the angry mother of one his film subjects.  The film raises lots of questions about documentary film making and exploitation and doing harm while trying to do good.  For a while this was my favorite film.  

In the end, Equan Choi's My Son, one of the last features I watched, became my favorite.  I'd put it off as long as I could.  The story of a Korean father taking care of his severely disabled son.  It sounded like it was either going to be a sappy story of love and happiness or a terribly depressing movie.  Neither sounded appealing.

But I was so wrong.  This was absolutely the most intimate film of the festival.  Yes, there's a father with his teenaged paraplegic son.  The father's sister who helps look after the son.  There's the mentally disabled teen hired to help with the son.  And there's the father's secret married girlfriend that he visits weekly.  Each character becomes a full person with strengths and flaws and the relationships between the characters - both one on one and as a group - are developed.  This is truly a masterpiece and I'm sorry it got missed by both the Juror awards and the Audience awards.  And it forces the audience to recalibrate their definition of disabled, forces them to remember there is a real, human being inside every body, with a whole spectrum of hopes and feelings and opinions.  

There is so much in this film.  The boy's adolescent need to pull away from his father and become his own person against his father's belief he must look after the boy who can't take care of himself.  The teen caretaker who is physically and sexually adult, but has his own mental defects that cause him to make bad decisions, and how he helps the boy become himself, independent of his father.  The sister/aunt and her caring for the boy and her brother yet resentful of how much they take of her life.  The girlfriend (the father goes to his - I can't remember exactly what sport, maybe bowling - activity each week, but really he's going to visit his girlfriend whose husband is in the military and away most of the time) also becomes a full person when the father becomes ill and she comes to the house to find out what's wrong.  It is then when all the characters interact, when the boy becomes his father's caregiver.  There's so much in this film.  I'm sorry I waited to the end to watch it, when I didn't have time to watch it again.  In my mind, this was the very best feature film in a festival with excellent feature films.  

  [I couldn't find a trailer for My Son.]

If you have the chance to see any of the films mentioned in here, grab it.  They are all worth watching.  

The Amount Of Oppression And Hate In The World Is Overwhelming - Makes It Hard To Blog Because There Is Too Much To Protest

When I was a grad student I wrote, in my head, what I called at the time, a 'social science fiction' novel.  That was back in the mid 1970s.  I should have written it - it was prescient in a number of things.  A basic part of the social structure in the book was a set of television connections that allowed people to connect with others all around the world.  I was back in LA after three years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand.  Lots of ideas swirling in my head.  I was reading all sorts of social science and writing papers and substitute teaching elementary school to help pay for tuition.  There were a couple of days where I taught a Kindergarten class in the morning and a graduate class in the evening.  So my novel still only exists in my head. 

One of the key moments in the history of humanity in my book, was when a group of Tibetan monks, in an isolated monastery, through intensive years of meditation, discovered that forces far out in space were using earth as a 'farm.'  The product they were harvesting every 30 to 60 years, was 'goodness.' It turned out to be a rare commodity found in few places in the universe.  After such a harvest, people fought each other, more people became criminals, wars broke out.  It took 30 to 60 years for 'goodness' to gain a foothold among humanity again.  And then the aliens would return to harvest their crop.  The monks in my story teamed with scientist to block the space powers from harvesting the earth's 'goodness.'  

I've been thinking about this metaphor a lot during the Trump administration.  It seems like there was a massive harvest of goodness prior to his administration.  And now we have to nurture a new crop.  

That's prelude to a couple of things I've been reading and/or watching.

Here's a Tweet video from Al Jazeera on Uighurs incarcerated in China (not far from that fictional Tibetan monastery.)

Last year, Merdan Ghappar posted video from inside one of China's internment camps, where over 1 million Uighur Muslims have been held. He was handcuffed to his bed.

China calls them "re-education" camps.pic.twitter.com/LnufUxFg1i

— AJ+ (@ajplus) February 23, 2021

I Care A Lot

We watched this Netflix film last night in mild horror.  Marla Grayson (character) is a Guardian for seniors who can't take care of their affairs.  She works with a doctor who refers patients to her, then goes to a friendly judge who, because it's an "emergency," gives her guardianship of the patients.  Then she goes to the patient's house - in this case Jennifer Peterson, who is wealthy and living a great independent life in an upscale neighborhood.  Grayson shows her the court order, and gets the incredulous victim to the Berkshire Oaks facility.  I haven't givien much away - because Jennifer Peterson in essentially imprisoned within the first 20 minutes of the movie.  How it happens is what's so scary.  Grayson is truly evil. 

"Writer/director J Blakeson was partially inspired by real-life news stories about shady guardians like Marla Grayson. In an interview for the film’s press notes, Blakeson said, “It started when I saw news stories about real-life predatory guardians who game the system and exploit their wards. And I was horrified. Imagine opening your door one day and there is a person standing there holding a piece of paper that gives them total legal power over you. That idea terrified me—and seemed very relevant right now. It plugged into themes that I am interested in exploring —themes about the power of authority, about people vs profit, control vs freedom, humanity vs bureaucracy. It reminded me of Kafka’s The Trial​. I knew I had to explore it.”

If you want to go down a similar rabbit hole that Blakeson did, check out New Yorker reporter Rachel Aviv’s excellent 2017 essay on the guardianship phenomenon, “How the Elderly Lose Their Rights.” It’s a great read, and no doubt inspired many elements of Blakeson’s script. "  (From  Decider.)

I'm so glad I was able to let my mom stay in her own house.  In hindsight hiring a full time caregiver wasn't necessarily more expensive than a nursing home would have been, and far less disruptive.  But Jennifer Peterson never even had a choice.  The legal work was done behind her back by a series of corrupt transactions.  

I also think about a similar phenomenon in Alaska - payees.  These are people hired to take care of the money of people who are mentally or otherwise deemed unfit to take care of their own finances.  I have a mentee who has been scammed by a couple of payees.  There's really almost no oversight for these people who manage the money of people seen as unfit.  How can they possibly keep their payee accountable?  

One last story - Police Violence, Race-Based Trauma, and Mental Health among Filipina/x/o Americans.  This one is all too familiar, but it's is about a Filipino-American, not an African-American. It's co-authored by University of Alaska Anchorage's faculty member Dr. EJR David.  Here's an excerpt:

. . . Mr. Quinto experienced what seems like a mental health-related episode. Not knowing how to handle the situation, his sister and mother called 911 for help.

Police officers and emergency medical technicians were dispatched to the scene, but police officers arrived first. His mother and sister reported that Mr. Quinto had already calmed down when the police arrived and that he laid on the floor in his mother’s embrace. Nevertheless, the police still grabbed him off his mother, pinned him face down to the floor, and handcuffed him. One of the officers kneeled on his neck and back, while another officer held down his legs. Mr. Quinto’s sister and mother said he was not resisting or fighting back, but instead twice uttered: “Please don’t kill me”. After several minutes, he spat up blood from his mouth and lost consciousness. A cell phone video taken by his sister captured his limp body being taken away. Mr. Quinto died 3 days later. . .

The article goes on to put this into a larger context of the lack of mental health treatment, race, and police in the United States.   

AIFF2020: The Subject Took Me By Surprise

I finally figured out the Q&A scheduling [it's tricky just seeing the times, so I've put up a schedule on the AIFF2020 page above] and Hometown Pride was going to have the Q&A Thursday at 6pm.

I watched Hometown Pride this afternoon.  This is a fun and easy to watch film about a very out and outgoing gay man who comes back to his tiny Ohio hometown to dance at their annual beauty pageant. Good, not remarkable.  We've seen other versions of this story at AIFF in past years.  

Then I went for Paper Spiders.  I'd been avoiding this one because I wasn't sure I wanted to deal with a mother's mental illness, but its Q&A was also coming up.  

We paused Paper Spiders in the middle so we could watch the Q&A for The Last Days of Capitalism.  This was my favorite feature film and I was looking forward to the session.  It's not quite the same on Zoom as it is live at the festival.  But it was a good discussion.  

The back to Paper Spiders which was surprisingly good, but the mom is definitely delusional and paranoid.  But the story was well told and well acted.  There are lots of very good narrative features at this festival.  The title is referred to visually only briefly in one shot.  It leaves a lot to the viewers imagination.  

Then on to another one I was avoiding, because it looked like it was going to be heavy - The Subject.

This film follows a documentary film maker doing a project on Black young men mostly in Harlem.  The difficulties filming his volatile subjects seems to be the focus.  There's also some tension at home which escalates when he hires an assistant.  But then at the end everything kicks up a bunch of notches and we have an amazing confrontation between the film maker and the mother of one of his subjects who has been killed by gang members.  

I feel a little like a fickle boyfriend, but I've abandoned The Last Days of Capitalism and now my favorite feature is The Subject.  I don't want to say too much about it - I think I've told you more than you need to know already.  Just see it.  The issues - the relationship between the filmmaker and his subjects, particularly if the filmmaker is a privileged white male and the subjects are black kids living in poverty and violence - themselves are powerful.  But the final scene is amazing and where the issues are served up like fireworks.  

There's an interview with the director of The Subject Laney Zipoy here.  The AIFF interview was last Saturday and I haven't figured out how, or if we even can, watch the ones we missed.  

AIFF2020: Opening, Crescendo, Mazel Tov Cocktail, and Green Screens Of The Future

This is the second day of the Anchorage International Film Festival.  Last night we saw the opening ceremony, the opening shorts program, and then we watched Crescendo - a German feature about putting together a peace concert with young Jewish and Palestinian musicians.  I definitely recommend it.  It's a well made movie and the story line is both optimistic and realistic.  This movie was sponsored by the Anchorage Jewish Museum.  

Another German film - Mazel Tov Cocktail - is in the narrative shorts category.  I thought it was great!  As white folks in the US are learning, seems like we've been working on this forever, that each person of color is a unique individual and shouldn't be assumed to behave in some characteristic way, Mazel Too Cocktail looks at the world through the eyes of a Russian Jewish immigrant high school student in Germany as he confronts the many different stereotypes the people around him have of him.  This includes, positive ones, negative ones, from classmates, teachers, people on the street, and even his own parents and grandfather.  But what makes this short stand out is, well, everything.  It's a snappy, irreverent, well acted, well filmed, funny movie with a kick.  I highly recommend it.  

For as much as I've gotten used to Zoom and Jitsi and Skype and Netflix, watching the film festival movies with my wife at home in the living room, just felt wrong.  None of the familiar AIFF faces walking the aisles and lobbies to greet and compare notes with.  None of the audience reactions to the movies. None of the passing exchanges of tips about good movies.  I even miss getting into the cold car and driving from one venue to the other.  (Well, not that much.)

And if people do see great movies, please leave recommendations in the comments.

On the other hand - all the movies are available all the time.  You can watch what you want when you want to.  As many times as you want.  I hope that means I don't miss those hidden gems I went to because there was nothing else in that time slot.  

And we're supposed to get lots of film maker interviews and Q&A's though I'm not quite sure how we're going to figure out when these will happen.  But figuring out new habits keeps us young (or drives us crazy.)

And I thought I'd add the YouTube video I accidentally found the other day on the future (demise) of green screens.  A little behind the scenes of movie making.  

Now that people are using Zoom, more people know about green screens - the green background that allows you to supply the people and objects in front, with a totally different background.  It's called "The Volume" and consists of a wrap around background.  Just watch the video.  It's cool.

AIFF2020 - Some World, North American, and US Premieres In Anchorage

 I got a list of films that had been tagged as premiering in Anchorage with the caveat that they may be shown somewhere recently.  So I've tried to check.  (There are so many films to try to highlight before the festival and so little time left - the Festival begins Friday - that this seems as good an angle as any.)

First I started with the world premieres.  Five were listed.  

Pink Violet

I'd recommend folks check out the Pink Violet website.  There's lots of information there and a chat box which I used to see if we really will be the world premiere.  The answer was:

"Hi Steve! Yes, this is the world premiere of Pink Violet. We did place at another festival (SER Film Festival), but because of COVID they were unable to screen the films. So, awards were announced on their website."

When I asked if they had anything to say to Anchorage film goers, they responded:

"Yes! We’re super excited to be part of AIFF 2020 as the film was made in Alaska by young Alaskan filmmakers. Pink Violet was made as part of UAF’s Department of Theatre and Film courses, Film Production I & Film Production II, where over the course of a semester, students take on key positions and crew roles to shoot a short film. We look forward to seeing all of the other selected films!"

This is an interview with the film makers: 

• Jade Chase, film director and Air Force Veteran  
• Nancy Napier.  Boise State professor and co-author of author of the book, The Bridge Generation of Vietnam: Spanning Wartime to Boomtime  on which the film is based
• Dau Thuy Ha (MBA, ’99) book's co-author.  She zooms in from Hanoi.  
• David di Donato (I think that's right) who filmed much of the movie and did the editing.   

This film was on my list of premieres and I was checking to confirm that we would have the world premier showing.  It turns out that's not the case.  It was shown Nov 17 at the Chi-Town Multi-Cultural Film Festival in Chicago.  

But we'll be among the first to see the film.  If you know any Vietnam vets (Jade, the director works with vets) or friends from Vietnam you might let them know that this film looks at the generation of Vietnamese who experienced the war and have since experienced how Vietnam has changed.  

The interviewer focuses on how the movie was put together - how they connected with the author, how they translated from the book, how they dealt with going to Vietnam and connecting with the subjects, filming and editing technical questions, etc.  

You can see the trailer on the AIFF website.  

I'm going to put this up with just two films.  Each one takes a while to research and two is probably a decent number for people to read about anyway.  

Tickets are on sale for the festival.  You can buy $10 single film tickets or you can buy $100 festival passes.  Since you can watch films at any time between Dec. 4 8pm and December 13 pm online this year, the passes are easier to take advantage of.  

So Many Good Movies On Line - This Is A Golden Age - My Favorites For 2018 On Netflix

We only have Netflix.  They have more good movies and shows than we could ever watch.  Truly this is a Golden Age of film.  Not everything is perfect, but there is so many films that offer something worth watching - whether it's great cinematography, great story telling, great acting, great writing, or ideas worth considering.

And there are lots of ways to find the good stuff, For instance someone tweeted a link to this list of art related documentaries.  Fortunately, only a few are on Netflix.

Various sites tell you what's new or what's best or what's leaving Netflix 'this month'.  Just google. I'm finding lots of great foreign films (an ethnocentric way of saying made by someone other than a US citizen).  Some show up in Netflix's lists for me, though Netflix seems to think that no one wants to watch non-English films so they never say in their descriptions "Danish language."  I'm sure I've missed shows I would have watched because I didn't realize it was not made in the US.

Here are some really stellar shows and movies I can think of off the top of my head:

Occupied - this is a truly gripping tv show from Norway.  The Norwegians have discovered an alternative source of energy and have told the European Union they are shutting down their oil production.  The Russians send troops in to occupy Norway and the EU, concerned about their energy source, doesn't object too seriously.  Tense!

Babylon Berlin - a German tv show that takes place in pre-Hitler Berlin.  Great characters, stories, and history.

Fauda - an Israeli tv show about a counter terror unit that doesn't glorify the Israelis and doesn't paint the Palestinians just negatively.  Though it's told from the Israeli perspective and I suspect most viewers will be rooting for them.  But they will see the cruelty and humanity on both sides.

The Good Place - A US show that features a lot of philosophy, humor, and thoughts about the meaning of heaven and hell and being a good person.  Very well done, very funny.

Mr. Sunshine - Not quite as high quality as some of the others, but this Korean series offers a look at a period of history I knew nothing about - as the Japanese and US spar over Korea.   A little more romantic, but interesting characters and a different world view.  And a very good story.

Atypical - The world as seen by a high school kid on the Autistic Spectrum.  Well worth watching this US show.  Funny and enlightening.

Hannah Gadsby - Nanette - This Australian comedian starts out telling jokes like any other stand-up and then somewhere along the way it all changes and becomes one of the most powerful standup act I've ever seen.  This is just a single show, won't take up that much of your time and it will suck you into something you didn't expect.

Sense8 - This show has about eight people living in different parts of the world - US, Mexico, Iceland, India, Germany, Korea, Kenya - who are all connected in a bizarre way.  This series follows how they discover each other and help each other.  Well made and worth watching because the concept is so unique and you connect with people in a variety of countries and sexual orientations.

13 Reasons Why -  I decided to try out the first episode because there were stories that Netflix was going to take it down.  I'd thought it was a documentary about teen suicide, but it isn't.  It's a fictional story about a high school girl who leaves a set of 13 tapes and instructions for who should listen to them in what order.  As I recall, each episode is a different tape as we find out what was happening in her life and the complex lives of the kids and parents in her world.  Gripping and original story telling.  And enlightening.

Dear White People - We see the world through the eyes of the black students at a predominantly white college.  Dear White People is a radio show one of he black students airs that talks about things that normally don't get talked about across races.

Gracie and Frankie - Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are friends only because their husbands Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston have been good friends.  In the first episode, the men take the women to dinner to tell them they want divorces because they are lovers and have been for 30 years and now they want to get married.  The two women, who never liked each other much, now have to learn to share the two families' joint beach house.  This is a funny show, with characters in their 70s, and was a great way to dispel the tension after watching an episode of Occupied or Babylon Berlin.  The characters are NOT poor people.

All but the Hannah Gadsby comedy special are series.  I suspect they stick in my mind more because I saw a lot of episodes over a period of time.  Enjoy this feast of great film.  This is just 2018.  A good year.  Not sure all of these are still available, but enough are.

Merry Christmas.

AIFF 2017: Saving Brinton Look At A Few Of Those Old Movies With John Zahs

Saving Brinton tied fort 3rd in the AIFF 2017 documentary category.(See all the winners here.) It won the audience award for docs.  Here's part of Mike Zahs' talk after it was shown in Anchorage with some of the recovered footage he discovered.  This is neat old (first decade of 1900) footage.  They were already using the medium to make things disappear and reappear.

But before we get to the video [you can skip to down below if you can't wait]  I've been thinking a lot about documentaries this week - how they're structured particularly. Most of the docs I've seen this week are narrated only by the characters in the movie.  There's no traditional omniscient voice telling us what's happening.   Saving Brinton had the benefit of a main character who is articulate, knowledgable, and infectious, and visually arresting.

John Zahs, AIFF 2017

There were other docs that weren't so lucky to have characters that could tell their stories so well, or to have stories that were easy to tell because they were pretty tangible.

And his story is tangible and compelling.  Zahs discovers all the old films - really old, first decade of 1900 - saved by the Brinton estate.  The Brintons owned movie theaters throughout the midwest.  The films were mostly very well preserved and amongst them are films thought to have been lost to the world.  The movie chronicles this.

After the showing of Saving Brinton, director Tommy Haines and  Mike Zahs did a Q&A in the dark.  But Zahs surprised the audience by showing some of the vintage films he found and restored.  Since there was something to see, I turned on my video camera.  I did ask for (and got) permission from John Zahs to put them up here.

Saving Brinton was only shown once and I'm hoping it will be available again in the Best of The Fest Sunday night. [It wasn't.]