AIFF 2017: Short Docs In Competition - Old Harbor, The Collection, Ten Meter Tower, Ghosts of the Arctic,He Who Dances On Wood, Family Rewritten, Perception, and Wildland

'Short Docs' are non-fiction films under 55 minutes. At least that was the rule in the past.  I mention that because one film in this category is 57 minutes.
'In Competition' means the programmers picked it to be in the running for an award.

The shorts (narrative and docs), because they're short, are grouped into programs.  To see all the short docs in competition you have to see three different programs, plus one more showing where the 15 minute short in competition plays with the 57 minute short doc.

To make it easier to find the times and locations of the films you want to see, I've grouped them and color coded them by program.

Short Docs 1: Stories of Redemption Mon, Dec 4, Ak Exp Theater Large, 3pm Fri Dec 8, Ak Exp Theater Small,  5pm	Short Docs 2:  Against The Grain Sat Dec 2, E Street Theater, 12:00pm Mon, Dec. 4, Ak Exp Theater Small  3pm Sat Dec 10, Ak Exp Theater Small, 12:30pm
Short Docs 3 Compelling Characters Tuesday Dec 5,  Ak Exp Theater Large 3:00pm Thursday Dec 7 Ak Exp Theater Small, 8:15pm	Unnamed Program (Old Harbor, New Hope)  Sat, Dec 9,  E Street Theater,  3pm

Short Docs in Competition	Director	Country	Length
Wildland	Daniel Steiner	USA	25 min
Perception: From Prison to Purpose	Garret Guinn	USA	40 min
Family Rewritten	Yasmin Mistry	USA	13 min
He Who Dances on Wood	Jessica Beshir	USA	6 min
Ghosts of The Arctic	Abraham Joffe	Australia	7 min
Ten Meter Tower	Maximilien V an Aertryck	Sweden	16 min
The Collection	Adam Roffman	USA	11 min
Old Harbor, New Hope	Joshua Branstetter	USA	15 min

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Short Docs 1: Stories of Redemption

Mon, Dec 4, Ak Exp TheaterLarge, 3pm

Fri Dec 8, Ak Exp Theater Small,  5pm

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Perceptions:  From Prison to Purpose
Garret Guinn
USA
40 min
Perception was selected as the Best Oregon Film at the Oregon Documentary Film Festival in November 2017.  Here's what their website says about the film:

"On April 14th, 2009, Noah Schultz was arrested for attempted murder in Portland, Oregon. This is the story of his transformation. During his seven years of incarceration, Noah took advantage of every program, workshop and educational service provided. He pushed himself not only to be better, but to challenge our perceptions of what it means to be an inmate."

Perception: From Prison To Purpose | Trailer from Perception Doc on Vimeo.

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Wildland
Daniel Steiner
USA
25 min

This is the kind of film Americans need to see regularly to better understand who the people behind bars are.  This film shows inmates at a juvenile work camp program that give them fire fighting skills and experience to make it outside the prison.

Here's a brief bio from Daniel Steiner's website:

"Dan Steiner has worked on impactful documentary programming around the globe for VICE, the National Geographic Channel, and Current TV (RIP). In addition, he has held numerous post-production positions at ad agencies like Wieden + Kennedy, JWT, and Venables Bell & Partners.
He received a Master’s degree in Journalism from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism in 2016."

I couldn't find a trailer for this film, so here's the whole film, from his website:

WIldland from Daniel Steiner on Vimeo.


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Short Docs 2:  Against The Grain

Sat Dec 2,  E Street Theater, , 12:00pm

Mon, Dec. 4, Ak Exp Theater  Small  3pm

Sat Dec 10, Ak Exp Theater Small  12:30pm

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Family Rewritten
Yasmin Mistry
USA
13 min

A film about one person's experience with foster care.




“Family Rewritten” Trailer from Foster Care Film on Vimeo.



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He Who Dances On Wood
Jessica Beshir
USA
6 min,

This is an exquisite film.  The camera writes poetry in light and patterns.  Fred Nelson modestly but confidently voices wisdom.

"When the right thing comes along, something happens inside of us. . . There's a need to speak to God, but I think that everybody has their way of doing it. . .  I know I found my joy in, not Jesus, not Allah, it's a piece of wood."

He Who Dances on Wood (TRAILER) from BRIC TV on Vimeo.

The whole six minute film is here.


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Short Docs 3 Compelling Characters

Tuesday Dec 5,  Ak Exp Theater. Large 3:00pm

Thursday Dec 7 Ak Exp Theater Small, 8:15pm

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Ghosts of the Arctic
Abraham Joffe
Australia
7 min,

The photography, the landscapes, the caribou and polar bear shots are all incredibly beautiful.  But this film is more about how brave the film makers were under harsh conditions than it is about polar bears - the presumed title characters of this film.  I checked the amount of time that the filmmaker is in the image.  I got 3 minutes and 21 seconds out of a six minute movie.  There's also landscape.  And a small amount of time with caribou and bears.  Just read their own description of the movie at Untitled Film Works:

"Ghosts of the Arctic is the result of a passion project gone wild. Our goal was to venture out into the beautiful frozen expanse of Svalbard, in winter, to search and document polar bears. During the shoot we experienced temperatures that were never warmer than -20ºC and frequently plummeted down as low as -30ºC + wind chill factor.
Most days involved two hundred kilometres on snow mobile in very difficult terrain and conditions. We experienced three cases of first and second degree frostbite during the filming as well as several equipment failures as a result of the extreme cold. Each day involved 14-16 hours in the field.
The film was released with great reviews and write-ups on notable film blogs. The piece also received a converted [did yet mean coveted?] Video Staff pick of the Month."

In a movie about polar bears, the word 'bear' appears once in the description.  It's mostly about how they braved the elements under terrible  conditions.  As an Alaskan, I'd say that -30˚C (-22˚F) is cold, but not terrible, if you're dressed right.

It would be fine to make a film about how hard it is to film polar bears in the wild, but that's not what they say their goal is and it's not what the title suggests.

But the footage is spectacular.  You can judge for yourself.  I could only find the whole video online, not a trailer.







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Ten Meter Tower
Maximilien Van Aertryck
Sweden
16 min,
**Also Plays In Martini Matinee, Fri. Dec 8, Bear Tooth, 2pm

From the film makers in a NYTimes piece:

"Our objective in making this film was something of a psychology experiment: We sought to capture people facing a difficult situation, to make a portrait of humans in doubt. We’ve all seen actors playing doubt in fiction films, but we have few true images of the feeling in documentaries. To make them, we decided to put people in a situation powerful enough not to need any classic narrative framework. A high dive seemed like the perfect scenario."

After my comments about the previous film, I appreciated this comment very much:

"In our films, which we often call studies, we want to portray human behavior, rather than tell our own stories about it." (emphasis added)

Here's the trailer:

Trailer: TEN METER TOWER by Axel Danielson & Maximilien Van Aertryck from Plattform Produktion on Vimeo.

Here's a link to the whole film.

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The Collection
Adam Roffman
USA
11 min

From Adam Roffman's The Collection website:

"The Collection is a short documentary about two friends, DJ Ginsberg and Marilyn Wagner, and their discovery of an astonishing and unique collection of movie memorabilia, comprised of over 40,000 printer blocks and 20,000 printer plates used to create the original newspaper advertisements for virtually every movie released in the United States from the silent period through 1984, when newspapers stopped using the letterpress format." 

This film should be shown before the full length documentary, Saving Brinton (it's the last movie in this post on the docs in competition.)

Here's the trailer:



THE COLLECTION - Official Trailer from Adam Roffman on Vimeo.
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Sat, Dec 9,  E Street Theater, *, 3pm 

(Note: There's a 57 minute film (Journeys to Adaka) before it)

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Old Harbor, New Hope
Joshua Branstetter
USA/Alaska
15 Min

The pre-opeining night showing is about preserving a language that is only spoken fluently by about thirty people.  This film is about resurrecting native dances among the Alutiiq people in the village of Old Harbor.  I'd note the Old Harbor Village Corporation was contracted by Shell  Shell to assist with its rescue operations in nearby Kiliuda Baywhen the oil drill  Kulluk broke loose from the tug in 2013.




If you can't wait, you can see the whole film here.

Anchorage Jury Sides With Firefighter Against Municipality of Anchorage

Thursday afternoon, August 12, 2017 an Anchorage jury found that the Municipality of Anchorage caused harm to firefighter Jeff Graham by violating the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.  They also found that the MOA caused harm to Jeff Graham by violating the implied promise of good faith and fair dealing in the Collective Bargaining Agreement.   The case stems from AFD promotional exams that Graham complained were biased and unfair.

The plaintiff’s economics expert had put the damages at $1.7 million.  The MOA’s expert had put the damages at $200,000.  The jury’s award was closer to the latter - a little over three times the MOA estimate and about one-third of the plaintiff’s estimate.  

The trial began on July 17 and the jury began deliberations on Tuesday August 10.  

Trying To Catch The Rain

A brush fire was growing last Wednesday and folks living on the southern edge of town were starting to pack things as they cleared the brush around their homes and made other preparations to protect their homes.

Thursday morning we could smell the smoke in midtown Anchorage.  But it also rained some.  It rained again on Friday and Saturday.  But there wasn't a lot of rain.  Enough to give fire fighters the edge.  Today it rained on and off all day, some of the time hard.

And I tried to catch some of that hard rain with my camera.  Not very well.  Mostly after it hit the table on the deck.   But here's the evidence and one day I hope to show that I can look back with satisfaction when I've learned to do this better.  It gets a little  sharper if you click on it.

Fire Moves From Book To Here And Now

I took a couple of hours this evening after dinner to read The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America.

I'd gone through the preparations - the creation of the National Forests and the role of Gifford Pinchot and the recruitment of rangers - and now the fire was on.  Here's a typical passage.  Pulaski is one of the older rangers whose wife and daughter live in town and he's up on the hill trying to set back fires to prevent the fire from advancing.  But this fire has now morphed into a super fire and he and his men are looking for shelter.

"He stumbled around the steep, smoking ravine, looking for his mine.  The ground burned nearly as much as the trees overhead.  The forest was smothering them, its gases, its heat, its searing convection winds fanning the flames upward.  Next to the desiccated creaked, Pulaski ran his hands over the timbers of an open hole - the mine he was looking for.  He draped a wet gunnysack over his head and went inside, sniffing at the air, probing the ceiling, trying to determine if it was large enough to hold them all. . . 

Other options were foreclosed by the fire.  The path where the men had trod a minute earlier was now covered by flames.  With this last nudge of fire, men shoved and leaned to gt to the mine.  Inside the tunnel, voices clashed, men pushed and struggled, tears poured forth.  Two horses made it inside with them.  Stockton had dismounted and found a little pocket of darkness near the horse that had carried him, Pulaski's mount.  The air had been cold, but it quickly warmed, and the just as quickly went stale and hot.  The outside heat was sucking all the cold air from the tunnel.  How long till the oxygen was gone?"

I went through about 80 pages of men trying to fight the fires in Idaho in August 1910.  Then things change when it became one huge inferno hopping from ridge top to ridge top, incinerating every tree and shrub.  Now the men fighting the fire are trying to find creek beds, caves, and mine shafts where they might be able to survive the walls of fire.

After I came in from reading on the deck,  I found this tweet and this fire I'd been living in the book became a real life fire not many miles away:

We live in Bear Valley. My family is packing for evacuation. If the fire jumps the ridge Anchorage hillside is trouble. #McHughCreekFire

— Don Rearden (@donrearden) July 20, 2016

The people in the book knew about the fires in the mountains around them.  They were waiting for August to end and the rains to come.  Like them,  I knew about the McHugh Creek fire.  It was on the news two days ago.  A small brush fire they were attacking with retardant and the Seward Highway was blocked.  I didn't think much about it.  They'd have it out shortly.  I was thinking how this was minor compared to the book.  We wondered what damage the retardant might do to area.  There was a picture in the newspaper the next day.  I was surprised it was still burning today - I heard the highway was down to one lane and backed up for hours.

And then the tweet.  Someone I know - the author of Raven's Gift who joined us at our bookclub June 20 - now facing the sort of evacuations I was reading about in Taft and Avery and Wallace over 100 years ago.  And I'm reading this book for next Monday's book club meeting which is scheduled to be on . . . the hillside.  If the fire doesn't jump the ridge.

Don's the one man facing us on the right.  McHugh Creek and Bear Valley are off in the distance behind the green ridge on the right half.

I'm hoping this fire ends soon.  That Don gets to stay home and that my reaction is coming from reading the book.  But life is constantly changing and the unexpected - even if it should be expected - can happen any time.