France's Most Celebrated Immigrant

Apropos the earlier discussion of the Museum of Immigration in Paris as well as the current immigration issues in Europe, I thought I'd add these pictures of Napoleon's Tomb.

There are three main levels at Napoleon's Tomb - street level, down one where the tomb is, and up one to the chapel under the large church dome.

The bottom picture of the tomb was taken from the street level.

The Dome From Outside

The middle picture is from the bottom level.  It shows the tomb from below and up to the chapel, which has orange glass windows that color the setting sun's light an orange glow.

The top picture looks up to the dome.

Napoleon was buried in 1815 on the island of St. Helena where he was exiled.  His ashes were exhumed and brought to Paris in 1840.  But it wasn't until 1861 that the tomb was completed and ready for his ashes.


And here's a map to put some of the Paris posts into perspective.

A = the Eiffel Tower
B =  Napoleon's Tomb
C =  Rodin Museum and Garden
D = Pont Alexander III
E = Quai Branley Museum (coming)

All of these are close enough to walk if you're reasonably fit.

[History and map from Historvius]

[Some might legitimately question whether Napoleon was an immigrant.  See #1 at History.com for more on this.]

The Uncanny Valley, The Museum of Immigration History, and The Quai Branley Museum Part 1

[Dear Reader, have patience with me.  I'm trying to pull together a number of thoughts and experiences in an attempt to make sense of all this.  I've done a couple of posts that mention The Flâneur, Edmund White's book on the Parisian pastime of wandering around exploring Paris in a relatively haphazard way.  I'm drawn to this idea - though I admit to also wanting to find greater meaning in my wanderings.  I'm toying with the idea of a fláneur, not necessarily wandering physically through Paris, but mentally discovering random ideas in no fixed location.  This particular wandering is triggered by a museum in Paris on the History of Immigration.]

As I looked through our Paris museum pass, I found the Museum of the History of Immigration on the list.  My sense, even before leaving Anchorage, was that beyond the obvious tourist sights of Paris, I ought to be exploring some of the immigrant areas that were more Arab or African than French.  It just seemed to me that was a significant part of what is Paris today.*  But I wasn't sure how. And the police officer (with the shades) patrolling the tourist area of Sacre Couer, with a great view of Paris, had pointed past Gare du Nord and said that was dangerous, and where we were was safe.  So I really hadn't figured that adventure out.  And now I saw there was a museum on immigration.   When I googled to figure out where the museum was,  my hopes were dimmed when I read two reviews of the museum.  The first was in the NY Times right after the repurposed museum opened in 2007.   It was pretty scathing.

"Sparsely devised with charts, graphs, interactive gadgets and odds and ends of memorabilia meant to humanize what is a fairly dry, lifeless display, the museum is a well-meaning dud. Its obvious reluctance to dwell on touchy subjects like the occupation of Algeria is predictable, this being a government enterprise."

The CBC, about eight years, later isn't much better.

It's a pretty harsh and honest account, but still incomplete. If there was anything said of the massacre of Algerians by Paris police in 1961, for instance, it wasn't presented to draw my attention, and I missed it. Nor was there much emphasis on why France should actually be proud to have immigrants settle here. Marie Curie, who was born in Poland and became a French citizen, gets some attention. So does the German-born French composer Jacques Offenbach. But the overall impression from the museum is one of "objectification, stereotyping and silencing," in the words of Sophia Labadi, a scholar of cultural heritage. She quotes the writer Ian McEwan to explain why it matters that a museum help us to understand the experiences of other people: "Imagining what it's like to be someone other than yourself is the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and the beginning of morality."

Really, after such reviews, was there any need to actually go see it?  Can it really be that bad?

It was the longest Metro ride we'd taken and we came out in a somewhat different Paris - one that had  the patisseries and other Parisian delights, but was almost entirely devoid of tourists.

It turned out that the reviews were actually kind.

As the NY Times pointed out, the museum is in an art deco building that was put up for a 1931 world's fair to celebrate the French empire and the elaborate relief on the exterior walls shows colonized people working to exploit their natural resources for the benefit of the colonial power.  This is perhaps the most honest and straightforward part of the museum.

It was hot outside - in the 90s F (30s C) - and this was the only museum I recall being in that didn't have air conditioning. (The Cluny didn't have it in all spaces, but did in some.) In fact the temperature and feel inside reminded me a lot of buildings in Thailand in the 1960s.







The second floor displays were primitive - not the topic, but the way things were displayed.   Posters.  Other museums have small poster like explanations, but they are explanations of some object like a painting.  Here, it seems, the object was the building itself.







This floor basically was a history of the building, not of immigration.  The posters and pictures in this room tell the story of the evolution of the purpose and contents of the building.

Another poster tells us that in 2003 the collection of the Museum of African and Oceania Art museum moved  to the Museum of Quai Branley (where we went in the afternoon.)


The third floor technology got into the 1980s - there was even some video.

And the topic did get into immigrants to France.  There weren't many people at this museum but there was a black French teenager and a man I assumed to be his father.  I asked him what he thought of the museum.  His dad watched in what seemed to be proud expectation as the young man pulled out his school English to respond.  "It's all stuff I know already from school."

I couldn't understand the French in the videos, so I can only go by the English translations on some of the posters.

What was there was an idealized notion of immigration - how everyone was becoming French and contributing to the betterment of France.

The kind of thing that makes the people who support multiculturalism cringe and the people who oppose it cry out "political correctness."  Its focus on an idealized fraternity of humankind falls flat.  I'm not sure when the language was put up here, but given today's immigration and terrorist realities, it seems like a bad joke.  A sort of Disney narration that tidies everything up.

OK, so I'm saying this is a lame museum.  The medium is the message.  This is almost an orphan museum.  Relatively little money is spent on it compared to the other museums.  This unairconditioned (it was a very hot day) display using outdated technology and rhetoric in a building, far from the center of Paris, created to celebrate empire  is the message.  

I'd also note that the comments on the CBC article quoted above were largely defensive, and attacked the author and CBC for blaming the bombing, that had just occurred before the article was published, on colonialism.  Typical was this comment, which should also be part of the story:

"Palaan
Another pathetic attempt by the CBC to manipulate the reader and somehow link the bombing to French oppression.

Translation - if the French do not surrender their identity through mass immigration and multiculturalism then they are bigots worthy of justified political violence. This is what Boag and the CBC are saying. And the only through continued mass immigration and multiculturalism in the West, can our previous past 'sins' be appeased."

But what could be done differently in such a museum?  

It could be more honest and dare to take on the debate raised by Palaan's comment.  There are legitimate issues to raise.  While the US is a nation of immigrants, whose official language comes from England, France is the home of the French language and has a distinct culture that many see as threatened by Islamic immigration.  A great immigration museum would be a place to examine that argument and the realities of the immigrants, their lives, and that perceived threat.  It would examine the extent to which France's wealth came from the natural resources of its colonies and their people's labor and the moral obligations to the people of the former colonies.     

I'm not sure there are many such museums.  Close to home though, in Paris, is the Museum of Jewish History, which we had visited the previous day.  It does a much better job of portraying the culture and stories of Jews in France. Its focus is on the Jewish culture and immigration. 

The Anchorage museum also does a much better job of displaying the cultural history as well as the lives of individual people of the various cultures that were in Alaska prior to Europeans.  

One of the better museums in this vein is the  Peranakan Museum in Singapore.  It richly presents the lives and culture of people of mixed race in that area.  It pushes the issues further, but not too far.  

It seems to me that the point of a museum on immigration is to tell the story of the people who have come, in this case, to France.  Why did they leave their homelands?  What was their journey like?  What happened when they arrived in France?  Frenchmen should be able to see, in such a museum, the common humanity of individuals of Arab, African, Asian, and non-French European descent. The Ian McEwan quote in the CBC article says it well:  

"Imagining what it's like to be someone other than yourself is the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and the beginning of morality."

From this museum we went to the Quai Branly Museum  (that's the name of the street it's on.)  This is where the African and Oceania art originally housed in the now immigration museum went.  I was hoping that museum would do some of what this one didn't.  I'll discuss what we found there in a separate post, including The Uncanny Valley, which explores the relationship between humans and robots, but may also be a useful way to think about the relationship between humans of different cultures.    

____________________

*That idea of getting out of the historic and touristy parts of Paris was later reinforced when I got to chapter 2 of The Flâneur:

"Perhaps the flâneur should turn away from matronly, pearl-grey Paris, the city built by Napoleon III and his henchman Baron Haussmann, and inhabited today by foreign millionaires, five-star hotels, three-star restaurants and embassies:  a phantom city.  For the real vitality of Paris today lies elsewhere - in Belleville and Barbés, the teaming quartiers where Arabs and Asians and black live and blend their respective cultures into new blends.  This book is dedicated to the random wanderings of the flâneur, but his wanderings will take him more often to the strange corners of Paris than to its historic centre, to the strongholds of multiculturalism rather than to the classic headquarters of the Gallic tradition."

This is a Paris I would have liked to have seen, but didn't.  In this ISIS era, the message I got from the police officer above, and others,  was to stay away from that area.  I know that areas with such reputations in the US are visited daily by 'outsiders' and there is no problem at all.  The news media only tell us when there is a problem.   With all there was to do in Paris, we just didn't get there.  And the night we'd wanted to try out a North African restaurant in Belleville, we ended up crashed from jet lag.  Next time.

"The scum of creation has been dumped on us,"

From Timothy Egan's, The Big Burn:

"What passed for law and constitutional protections in Morenci, [company owned mining town in Arizona, 1910] were thugs hired by Phelps Dodge.  They maintained a three tier wage system:  one for trouble-free whites, one for Mexicans, one for Italians.  Such attitudes are typical in a decade when nine million immigrants came to the United States, and one-third of the population was either foreign-born or a child of someone born abroad.  The Italian surge in particular angered those who felt the nation was no longer recognizable, had lost its sense of identity.  And they hated all these strange languages spoken in shops, schools, and churches.  The Immigration Restriction League, founded by Boston blue bloods with family ties to the old Tories of England, campaigned to keep "undesirable classes" from entering the country.  They meant Italians, Greeks, Jews, and people from eastern Europe. 

"The scum of creation has been dumped on us,"  said the native politician Thomas Watson.  "The most dangerous and corrupting hordes of the Old World have invaded us."  It was not just pelicans [auto-correct changed my version of politicians to pelicans] who attacked Mediterranean immigrants as a threat to the American way of life.  Francis A. Walker, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, called Italian and Greek immigrants "beaten men from beaten towns, representing the worst failures in the struggles for existence."  Another educated expert cautioned Americans against "absorbing the equitable blood from Southern Europe." (pp. 131-2)

I'd note that Fredrick Trump, Donald's grandfather arrived in New York on October 19, 1885  (a year before the Statue of Liberty was unveiled) from Germany at age 16.  Twenty-six years prior to the mining and timber rush described in the book in the summer of 1910 (see below), Trump

"moved to the mining town of Monte Cristo, Washington in Snohomish County.[7] Monte Cristo was expected to produce a fortune of gold and silver because evidence of mineral deposits were discovered in 1889. This led to many prospectors moving to the area in hopes of becoming rich, with the financial investment of billionaire John D. Rockefeller in the entire Everett area creating an exaggerated expectation of the area's potential."

He returned to Germany in 1901, found a wife, and returned with her to the US in 1902.  The Trumps, coming from northern Europe, while part of this huge surge of immigrants, came from a more privileged group of immigrants, they weren't Italians or Greeks or Jews.  Though by 1917 the US was at war with their country of origin.

Mike Pence's grandfather didn't get to the US from Ireland until much later - April 11, 1923.

From what I can tell, Hillary Clinton's paternal grandfather immigrated from England and her paternal grandmother was born in the US to Welsh immigrant parents.

I would also note, that when people claim that their ancestors were legal immigrants, as the passage above suggests, the laws were much, much easier back then for European immigrants.  

Actually, immigration is but a small part of the book.  The main focus is the boom towns of Idaho and Montana as the railroads opened access to the forests just after Teddy Roosevelt, with the guidance of Gifford Pinchot, created millions of acres of national forests and parks in the West.  But they had to fight Eastern corporations that were ravaging the new public land with their rapacious taking of minerals and timber.  This included a huge scandal over Alaska coal.  Roosevelt's second term was up and he chose not to run again.  (He'd come in to office from the vice presidency when president McKinley was shot and had only served seven years.)  While he was off on safari in Africa,  Taft, who had promised Roosevelt to protect the forests and the new concept of conservation, had instead appointed pro-development  Richard Ballinger as secretary of the interior.

"The interior secretary, whose duty was to oversee an empire of public land on behalf of the American people, had once backed a syndicate as it tried to take control of coal in a part of Alaska that was later added to the Chugach National Forest. .  ."  

"Beyond the Alaska coal deal, Ballinger was now showing his true colors - as a traitor to the progressives, Pinchot believed.  "You chaps who are in favor of this conservation program are all wrong,"  Ballinger said in a speech.  "You are hindering the development of the West.  In my opinion, the proper course is to divide it up among the big corporations and let the people who know how to make money out of it get the benefits of the circulation of money."  (pp. 94-5)

That's all backdrop to the story of a band of well-trained and highly motivated new rangers  whose job was to oversee huge tracts of land newly designated as national forests and parks. ("Supervisor Koch . . . felt protective about his five million or so acres . . .")  Land that was being exploited by mining and timber companies and hordes of folks taking the new railroad into the tiny boom towns hoping to get rich.

As the title of the book suggests, the book is about fires, as the rangers struggle on meagre salaries to protect the towns and even more, the newly created national forests from the ravages of fire in the bone dry summer of 1910.  There was no rain, but lots of  thunder and lightening, which started thousands of fires that summer.

I'm not through with the book yet, but I thought the sections on immigration give some historical perspective to today's political debates.  And overall, the book shows that the fights between the corporations looking to exploit natural resources and the government fighting to preserve some of the natural space of the continent, wasn't much different then, though time allows us more facts about what was happening back then.

In a book Pinchot wrote at the time - The Fight for Conservation - 

"He predicted that America might one day, within this century, be a nation of two or three hundred million people.  And what would his generation leave them?  Their duty was to the future.  To ensure that people in 2010 would have a country of clean water, healthy forests, and open land would require battle with certain groups, namely 'the alliance between business and politics.'  It was, he said, 'the snake that we must kill.'"(p. 158)

Given that today corporations once again have great influence over Congress - enough to prevent or pervert what they most oppose - and the importance of money in politics is major issue, I'd say his view of things was pretty prescient.

Republican Platform To Restore America To The Good Old Days (TIC warning)

Let's see, so far:

No abortions. Ever.

Climate change is a hoax.  Coal will be a clean energy source again.

Bible in the schools, except for the pornographic parts. Since porn is a 'public menace.'

Gay marriage,  bad again.  The anti-regulation wing stopped the call for extra closets in all housing so gays can return.

Even unmarried hetero partnerships will be bad again.

They aren't finished yet.  Look out for:

Free guns to all white new-borns.

Repeal of the 19th Amendment.  And other laws giving women rights over their personal and financial affairs.

Reopening of WW II Japanese internment camps for undocumented immigrants and their terrorist friends.

Return of segregation (I don't think the pro-slavery folks will have enough votes, but who knows?)

Constitutional amendment to exclude human beings from the 'person' category.

Oh yeah, watch out minimum wage.  And maybe businesses can even get child labor back.


Apparently Trump is being hands-off here.  According to the NY Times article,

"That allowed conservative activists like Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, to exert greater influence. Mr. Perkins’s hand could be seen in dozens of amendments on issues like gun control, religious expression and bathroom use."

I'm beginning to think that Perkins' sharing the name of the actor who played Norman Bates is no coincidence.  Can you say Psycho?

He's giving Clinton a great Republican platform to run against.



TIC- tongue-in-cheek

Rep. Gattis Wants Poor Seniors To Leave Alaska

Following the mythical ancient tradition of putting elders on ice floes when they can no longer contribute to the survival of the village,  KTVA reports Rep. Gattis (R -Wasilla) said

". . . people with families here should be able to stay in Alaska, only if they can afford it on their own." 

 Actually,  The Full Wiki tells us that,

"Senicide among the Inuit people was rare, except during famines."

Famine is when there is no food and people are starving to death.  Short of famine and imminent death of the whole community, Inuit share with all their community members.

Alaska is not facing starvation.  We have almost ten years worth of budget money in the Permanent Fund and other reserve funds.  We aren't at the point where sending people off on ice floes makes sense, morally or practically.  Besides, because of global warming, we have fewer ice floes.

And since we have plenty of wealth, if we use Inuit logic, we'd take care of all the people in our community.

But that's besides the point.  Let's look at a little more of the quote from KTVA:

"She said in tight budget times, the state has to pick and choose where to put its money, and shouldn’t “subsidize” people to stay. “Here’s our challenge — when you lose two-thirds of your budget, where do you put the money?” Gattis asked. “Do you put it in road plowing? Do you put it in safe roads? Do you put it in police? Do you put it in fire departments? Do you put it in corrections? Do you put it in subsidizing people to stay here because that’s what they thought they wanted to do?” Gattis said before asking her constituents to pay taxes, she wants to make sure programs in the budget are ones they’re willing to pay for."

[Let's not even mention that Republicans have been responsible for the Alaska budget for the past ten years or so and they've been repeatedly warned that it wasn't sustainable.]

If people can't afford to live in Alaska, how could they afford to pick up and leave Alaska and get to and survive anywhere else?  Those who have some support from family and friends, would lose that help if they left,  making survival even harder.

I'm guessing this is Rep. Gattis' logic:

The state is spending more than it is getting in revenue.
Therefore we must cut the state budget.
Therefore we must cut things that are not essential.
Among those things that are not essential is aid for poor seniors - like the Pioneers Home I guess.

Her logic for the state is also applied to people.
If people are spending more than they are taking in, then they should leave the state.

Lookout Lower 48, Alaska is sending you its old and poor.  

Now, if all states took that approach, where would they go?  Do we make some holes in Mr. Trump's wall and send them off to Mexico?  Maybe Alaskans can take them to the Canadian border.   And what about Alaska Natives whose families have been in Alaska for millennia?  Where should we send them?

But there are two parts of balancing the budget and she's only addressing spending, but why not just raise the state revenue?   Why not have those who are benefiting from living in Alaska help support those who are old and not doing so well?  Maybe the company they worked for has reneged on its promises to pay a pension.  Maybe there was an illness and the health care used up their retirement savings.  None of that matters to Gattis, cause she's a tough fiscal conservative.

Let's get rid of the riffraff who don't contribute.

But these seniors probably do contribute in ways that Gattis isn't considering.  Maybe they are providing care for their grandchildren - teaching them family history, preparing their meals, getting them ready for school by reading books to them.  Maybe their care of those kids allows the mother to work and contribute to Alaska's economy.

Splitting up families seems inconsistent with the party that claims to be for family values.

There's a point where Gattis' logic makes sense.  But Gattis takes this concept and applies it in such a mean and narrow-minded way that she violates many other important values, particularly the value of family.    But like many literal, concrete thinkers, she fails to see all the intangible benefits of having seniors among us.

Gattis' Reelection website says:

Lynn believes our government’s role is to provide 

• Reasonable and stable tax policy 

• Reasonable regulation 

• Educated, trained and energetic work force 

• Low cost energy 

• Supportive infrastructure 

• Strong public safety 

• Strong support of quality community livability 

So, does 'strong support of quality community livability' mean, sending your grandparents out of state?  And does 'Reasonable and stable tax policy" mean no taxes?


Voters of Wasilla - thanks again for putting people like Gattis into the state legislature.  The news media appreciate you giving them things to write about.

What?  You live in Wasilla and didn't vote for her?  Actually, most of you didn't vote at all.  Only 49% of District 9 voters voted in the November 2014 election.  Only 33% of registered voters voted for Gattis. You don't think voting matters?   Wait till your grandmother gets deported. 

[Sorry, more feedburner problems]

"They stomp on our neck, , ,"

This is the kind of rhetoric that gets conservatives telling black protestors to stop whining.

Except this wasn't black lives matter folks who said this.  No, this was my former governor when she endorsed Donald Trump the other day.

From New York Times (Palin's Trump endorsement speech):

“They stomp on our neck, and then they tell us, ‘Just chill, O.K., just relax.’ Well, look, we are mad, and we’ve been had. They need to get used to it.”

It's amazing how people can feel their own pain and get outraged about it, but have no patience for the pain of others.  And that goes for liberals who can't get into the heads of poor white males who see their position in the world declining rapidly.  I'm not saying these folks are right, but at least I can imagine why they're mad.


And here's another Palin bit I picked up at Immoral Minority that he got from ABC.

"My family is no different than other families that are dealing with some of the ramifications of war. And just really appreciate people who will support our troops and make sure that they are treated better than illegal immigrants for one."

Let's look at that second sentence.

"support our troops and make sure they are treated better than illegal immigrants for one."

First, let's look at the term 'illegal immigrants.'   What makes an immigrant 'illegal'? I think what people actually mean by this term is something like 'immigrant who broke the law coming into the US"?   Cause if that's the case, shouldn't we call US citizens who break the law while living here "illegal citizens."?  Like people who drive over the speed limit?  Or drive while legally drunk?  Or who punch out their girlfriends?

Second, what about our troops who ARE illegal immigrants?  What do you do then?  Distinguish between our troops who are fully documented US citizens or residents and those troops who are not?  We could come up with a catchy slogan, "Support our troops, but only if they are legal US residents."

Yes, for those scratching their heads about 'illegal' troops, the military has a program to take in undocumented immigrants.  A couple of 2014 bills, for example, to expand this practice were sponsored by Republicans: Reps. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., and Jeff Denham, R-Calif.

Why, you might ask, do I even bother looking at what Palin says?  Mostly I don't, but these quotes were in my face online (another good reason to be online less) and I like to have tidbits like this ready in case I run into a Palin/Trump believer.  Unfortunately, most of them seem to be so busy being righteously indignant about their loss of privilege with the erosion of racial and gender discrimination that facts and rational arguments don't make an impact.

AIFF 2015: Audience Likes Iranian Film The Descendants

A film festival volunteer  told us before the film, that the filmmaker really wanted to audience to send feedback.  The film is about an Iranian student who's moved to Sweden to study.  His mother gets upset because after two months they have heard nothing from their son.  Finally the dad goes to Sweden to find their son.  He discovers a world where foreign students of low means are living a different life from the one they write home about.

The volunteer herself is Iranian who went to Sweden as a student before coming to the US, so she found the film very poignant.

In response to the filmmaker's request, I offered my camera to audience members after the film and you can hear their comments below.

Thank you for sending this film to our festival!







The Descendants plays again Wednesday night, December 9 at 8 pm at the AK Exper Large theater.

AIFF 2015: Saturday Afternoon Report

It's been a hard day.  I started out at the Bear Tooth watching The Incredible Adventure of JoJo,  which wasn't bad.  Basically, it was a Little Red Riding Hood story of two very young kids - seven and maybe 18 months - finding their way back to grandma's house after mom drives off the road and doesn't wake up.  It started off with some snarky humor for the parents, but that faded away pretty fast and I got impatient.  I wondered whether it was a movie I'd take my three year old granddaughter too, and I think not.  Probably seven year old boy is perfect. 

Then downtown to watch the best film of the day, for me, The Descendants, an Iranian film that tells the story of less affluent students studying in the west from any country.  When his son has not contacted the family back in Iran, the father travels to Sweden to find his son and discovers a number of students whose lives are much less successful than the stories they are sending home.  Scholarships  don't exist, they are working many hours to support their studies, and living precariously from day to day.  The father was a strong character as were the students he meets in Upsala.  But I think of the much richer presentation of the same basic story that are in books like The Americanah and this film is pretty superficial in comparison.  We get told that things are hard, but but didn't get much detail of why.

I do have audience reaction on video for the filmmakers who couldn't be here, but did, through an intro before the film, ask for such feedback.  Look for that later - both in English and Farsi.

The last film I saw was Madina's Dream.  This is the sort of documentary that everyone who lives comfortably in a nation that sells arms to the rest of the world should see.  It's just video of kids and their mom's in the Yiba refugee camp in South Sudan and the men fighting against the Sudan national army to keep their land in the Nuba Mountains.  I don't recall any narrative, just subtitles to translate for us.  This film didn't create a story to package this for us, like many docs do, and that was refreshing.  But it was pretty depressing.  And this sort of thing is repeated here and there all over the world.

OK, my last show is about to begin - Midori in Japan.  I hope this is a little lighter.

[Reposting for Feedburner issues.]

AIFF 2015: Features In Competition From Turkey, UK, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand and Iran

"In competition" means these films were selected by the screeners to be eligible for awards at the festival.  "Features" are 'stories' that are full length. While there are always other features which different folks like better than those in competition, it's a good bet these are among the best features at the festival.  This year's picks are all from outside the US.

The point of this post isn't to tell you what each of the features in competition are about, but rather to just give you a glimpse of something about the film I found interesting.

I don't have the times and locations yet.  I'll add them later and I might make other changes as things come to my attention.  

Here's the whole list and below I look at each one. 

Film (all are in competition)	Director	Country	Length
And The Circus Leaves Town	Mete Sozer	Turkey	99 min
Creditors	Ben Cura	United Kingdom	81 min
Jasmine	Dax Phelan	Hong Kong	80 min
Magic Utopia	Shoji Toyama, Shuichi Tan	Japan	88 min
Orphans & Kingdoms	Paolo Rotondo	New Zealand	74 min
The Descendants	Yaser Talebi	Islamic Republic of Iran	80 min

And The Circus Leaves Town  
Mete Sozer 
Turkey √
99 min
l

And the Circus Leaves Town is the story of a village caught in between life and death. This is the story of the moment when the paths of the village which wants to forget its past and the “Stranger” who wants to grasp his past converge. The “Stranger” gets off the train with an old, wooden, red suitcase. His destination is a village where only a handful of people are left, where the young have left and the babies cease to be born, where each moment repeats a previous moment. The arrival of the “Stranger” is met with curiosity first, and suspicion later. The dark, covered memories of a bloodied wedding night are revived. Is the “Stranger” someone from the past, or a brand new hope... (From the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts iFKA)

Won for International Feature Film at the 5th Underground Film Festival in Cork City, Ireland this past August.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




Creditors
Ben Cura   
United Kingdom √
81 min


Much of what I know about Ben Cura comes from a recent in-depth interview with Film Courage.    Cura wrote the screen play,  directed the film and acts in it.   But it also has some strong, established actors, like Christian McKay, Simon Callow, and Andrea Deck.

"At times disturbingly funny and cruelly bleak, "Creditors" deals with the most private aspects of human relationships. From questioning our concepts of marriage and fidelity, to trying to establish the role of the modern woman in a world still trapping her within the confines of old fashioned canons, the film's story stirs, moves and sometimes even angrily rebuts our very own personal definitions of each."

The interview covers a wide range of topics from Cura's background (his father is a major opera singer which meant as a child Cura traveled the world); adapting the film from August Strindberg's 1888 play; the challenges of being a first time director and of black and white;  budgeting, and more.

 The film's world premiere is October 31, 2015 in New York's Nordic International Film Festival.  Then, it appears, to Anchorage.  Those who seriously want to prepare for the festival can read the original Strindberg play here.  




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Jasmine  
Dax Phelan  
Hong Kong √ 
80 min

UPDATE Dec. 10:  Just opened an email from Dax Phelan who said the second review quoted here was of an unfinished version of the film.  So take it with a grain of salt.

TwitchFilm liked it:

"Dax Phelan, veteran screenwriter and producer based in Los Angeles got the Hong Kong bug on a writing research trip to the city in 2005. By his own tongue-in-cheek admission, it had become somewhat tedious being handsomely paid for writing screenplays that rarely if ever get made. Citing inspiration by such auteurs as Lodge Kerrigan (The Killing TV series, Keane) and the Dardenne brothers (Two Days, One Night) Phelan sensed that Hong Kong could be fertile ground for a psychological thriller that would be his directorial debut. He penned Jasmine based on a story that he had co-written with Jason Tobin. . .

For the first time ever, Hong Kong plays a characterful, if inhospitable backdrop to an english language film with artistic sensibilities, a restrained, rhythmical build, and a chilling and thought-provoking climax. It explores themes of loneliness amongst the masses, fear of postponed regret, and most poignantly our ability to invest everything in our own flawed narratives."

Screen Daily wasn't as kind:

"Writer-director Dax Phelan uses the trope of the unreliable narrator to mixed effect in Jasmine, a classically-executed slow-moving descent into paranoia set on the streets of Hong Kong. Working from an idea by Phelan and Tobin, Jasmine’s script is too thinly fleshed-out to be fully successful, and the production tends to drag through its final frames. This moody noir will find a slim audience locally, and works best as a calling card for its director and lead actor, who are clearly capable."

Guess we'll have to see for ourselves who's right.   As of Oct 26, Anchorage isn't mentioned on either the director's Twitter or Facebook pages. 



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From Keiko Shiga's Tumblr page

Magic Utopia
Shoji Toyama 
Japan √
88 min


Finding out about this film isn't easy.  There this from

"A young girl who lost her mother suddenly begins to float in midair when she meets a man trapped in a past of painful memories. At the same time, an old man receives a message on his answering machine from his long dead daughter."

 And this from what seems to be the film's website:

1. 思い出せない秘密
2. 抑えられない衝動
3. 真実しかない孤独

ひとりの少女の体が宙に浮いたことによって動き出す
３人の男女の《マジックユートピア》へと向かう魂の物語。

 But this picture on their website suggests this could be good. 

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Image from Orphansandkingdoms website gallery

Orphans & Kingdoms
Paolo Rotondo 
New Zealand √
74 min



From an interview with Director Paolo Rotondo in the New Zealand site Flicks:

How did you discover the three young leads?

They all auditioned. Calae who plays Kenae was the only kid who could really stand up to an adult actor in the audition and hold his own. Hanelle (Tibs) had auditioned for me when I was helping to cast a US TV film, she was so strong I wanted her for Orphans. Jesse auditioned and proceeded to teach me about the real world of the characters I was exploring, he didn’t need a script – he knew the story.

Director bio from a story generator workshop he ran:

I am a passionate and accomplished Artist who has worked in New Zealand’s Film, Theatre and Television industries for twenty years. My need to tell stories began as an Actor and inspired me to develop my skills as a Playwright and consequently Filmmaker. I offer a depth of experience in Film and Theatre, ranging from acting, to producing, to writing and directing.
The short films I have written have won awards and garnered international acclaim. This year I will be releasing my first full-length feature film ‘Orphans & Kingdoms’ which I wrote and directed, funded by The New Zealand Film Commission.
As a Playwright my works have been published and have toured nationally and internationally to universal critical and audience acclaim. “In 2014 my Play “Strange Resting Places” was invited in the New Zealand showcase at Edinburgh Festival.

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The Descendants

Yaser Talebi 
Islamic Republic of Iran √
80 min



From the Youtube description:

"Jacob's family worries about Farrokh, the son of the family. Farrokh left Iran to continue his studies but he has not been in touch with them for a long time. Jacob travels to Sweden to look for his son..."

Watching The Pieces On The Chess Board: Climate Change, Ukraine, Oil Prices, Putin Support of Asad, Greek Debt, Refugee Crisis

Let's start with this LA Times headline Tuesday:

"A crisis of unity exposed in EU" 

In the last couple of weeks I've been thinking about how Europe's influx of refugees is causing great disruption in Europe not to mention the horrors that are causing the refugees to leave their homes.  But there's one clear winner - Russia, of course.  A united Europe is not good for Putin's ambitions.

As I see this, we get news about the world in fragments, and often that's how they stay in our brain - fragmented.  But everything is related to everything.  So this post is a way for me to try to connect in my own head a lot of these fragments.    And I'm sure I'm missing a lot, but let's look at some of the moves on the chess board.


1.  Russia's march into the Crimea made for daily headlines such as this back in spring 2014.

2.  Western reaction was strong and included sanctions.   

3.  Sanctions against Russia caused Putin to retaliate including threats to Europe's natural gas supply.

4.   EU stands firm on sanctions.

5.  And don't forget Russia's offer to help Greece with its debt to the rest of the EU.

6.  Meanwhile, the Syrian civil war expands as ISIS comes in.  And Russia continues its support of Syria's Asad.


7.  The Saudis, unhappy with Russia's support of Asad,  have increased oil production, which led to lower oil prices.  Since oil is critical to Russia's economy, the Saudis were hoping the economic impact would lead Russia to drop support of Asad, according to the New York Times.









 8. Back to the  Los Angeles Times headline  that I began with:

A crisis of unity exposed in EU

Some of the 28-nation bloc’s key initiatives are in jeopardy amid deep discord over the influx of refugees.

BY HENRY CHU

   LONDON — Just three years ago, the European Union basked in the glory of a Nobel Peace Prize and boasted of being a tight-knit community bound by “European values” of democracy, diversity and dignity.    By its own measure, the 28-nation club is now looking decidedly less European and even less a union these days as it grapples with the continent’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II.. .

So, if millions of Syrian (and other) refugees flood into Europe, critical parts of the European unity get tested.  Schengen - the agreement that eliminated stops at border crossings between most European countries - has been one of the most important symbols of the EU's unity.  And now Hungary's building of a border wall to block the refugees, raises question about Schengen.  Croatia has only applied to be a Schengen member so it isn't a breach of Schengen yet. But now Austria is talking about closing its borders with Hungary, which would be a breach. 

Another symbol of that unity is the Euro which came into crisis with the Greek debt showdown.  And the Russians offered to support Greece against the rest of Europe.

If, in fact, the refugees help break down the European Union, then Russia's European opposition is much weaker economically and militarily and Putin would have much more freedom to treat his people and neighbors as he pleases.   


Abdul Jalil Al-Marhoun  argues that Russia's key goal in Syria is access to the Mediterranean Sea.  While a port in Syria would be a useful base, he argues, it's not essential.  A weaker Europe would make securing this route much easier.  Especially through the narrow strait by Istanbul.

Click to enlarge and focus - map from Wikipedia

The map shows the Black Sea geography.  Russia has a major naval base in Sevastopol which it leased from the Ukraine for, according to a state sponsored  Russia Today article: 

"$526.5 million for the base, as well as writing off $97.75 million of Kiev’s debt."  

After the takeover, that agreement was voided by the Duma.  That's over half a billion savings for Russia and loss for Ukraine.  A Center for Strategic and International Studies article describes the strategic benefits to Russia of this naval base.


Life is much simpler when the news anchors just say "the good guys" and "the bad guys" and that's all you have to know.   And when news is made up of discrete unrelated incidents of video violence.  News is merely entertainment - real life examples of action movies.  But it doesn't help us understand how and why things are happening.  For that you have to think like a chess player - each move is about the position of all the pieces and where they will be three or four or five moves hence.   Certainly Putin, head of a nation of chess players, has in mind strategy such as this offered by the United States Chess Federation:

"When you are considering a move, ask yourself these questions:

• Will the piece I'm moving go to a better square than the one it's on now? 
• Can I improve my position even more by increasing the effectiveness of a different piece? 
• Will the piece I move be safe on its new square?  
• If it's a pawn, consider: Can I keep it protected from attack? 
• If it's another piece, consider: Can the enemy drive it away, thus making me lose valuable time?

Even if your intended move has good points, it may not be the best move at that moment. Emanuel Lasker, a former world champion, said: "When you see a good move, wait---look for a better one!" Following this advice is bound to improve your chess." 

Maybe American schools should start teaching chess so American students can learn to think about the long term implications of their actions.


Oh yes, climate change.  How does that fit in here?  From Scientific American:

"Drying and drought in Syria from 2006 to 2011—the worst on record there—destroyed agriculture, causing many farm families to migrate to cities. The influx added to social stresses already created by refugees pouring in from the war in Iraq, explains Richard Seager, a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who co-authored the study. The drought also pushed up food prices, aggravating poverty. “We’re not saying the drought caused the war,” Seager said. 'We’re saying that added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict. And a drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region.'”

How to Shake Hands and Other Pictures and Notes From The Republican Senate Debate

The Wendy Williamson auditorium stage was converted to a television studio.  The media panel is seated waiting for the candidates to take their spots.  I sat at this angle because there were tv cameras on stage blocking  closer views of the candidates.

It was a pretty empty auditorium. People were scattered all around.   This photo was just before the debate began.












Joe Miller supporters were the most visible and vocal part of the audience.

I'd brought my notebook, but I took a smaller backpack that didn't have any pens or pencils.  So my notes are all in my head, and unaided memory is tricky.  So double check what I write.  I did look to see if KTVA or ADN has the whole debate up [If either does, I couldn't find it] and I checked on what others wrote to confirm my memory. And make corrections.
[Wrong again - I found it linked at the #akdebate Twitter feed - you can see it all here.  I don't have 90 minutes right now.  But I may do updates or a follow up post later if I have time.  Updates done after I post - unless they're minor typos or style cleaning without changing the meaning - are identified with "UPDATE" and the date.]

NOTE:  I strive to be as objective as I can.  Usually that means describing what I see.    This post will also describe how I felt, which gets a little squishier, but I'm still trying to give description rather than judgment.  Others (Mudflats and ADN for example)  have written about what was said last night.  I'm going to try to add to that my sense of the non-verbal communication.  And my collective gut reactions that seemed to come together at the debate.


Sullivan's Handshakes - Not Much Eye Contact

Looking at the photos afterward, I was struck by the initial handshaking among the candidates.  These are just photos, not video, so it may be a fluke of the moments I shot the pictures, but look at Dan Sullivan's eyes as he's shaking hands with his opponents. [I did check the video on this before posting.  It cuts to the audience when Miller and Sullivan shake, and in the brief part they got of Sullivan and Treadwell shaking hands Sullivan does look at him.]

Miller and Sullivan shaking hands

Sullivan and Treadwell shaking hands

What I learned about shaking hands long ago is consistent with this advice from About.com:

Make eye contact and offer a sincere smile to show that you are happy to be where you are.
Be still and face the other person to prevent giving the impression that you are in a hurry to get away. If you are walking, try to stop, turn, and face the other person, unless it creates an awkward situation.

As I proof this post, it's clear that it was body language like this and how he talked  that shaped my impressions of Sullivan.  He didn't show he was 'happy to be where [he was].'  He didn't prevent 'giving the impression that [he was] in a hurry to get away.'   These photos are the only tangible evidence I have of this, but I kept getting the message throughout the debate.

Treadwell and Miller seem to have learned the proper handshake protocol.  

Miller and Treadwell shaking hands

Miller - Had the Most Fun


Miller seemed to be having the most fun.  He got easy questions from his opponents, he had his crowd in the audience, and when you have a black and white view of the world, it's easy to give firm, definitive answers.  He wanted,  for example,  a total freeze on all new regulation and absolutely no amnesty.  But life isn't black and white.  He said something like, "I believe in family and the children on the border should be sent back home to their families."  What if their  parents are living legally in the US?  Or one is?   [KTVA's coverage has this:

“The most humanitarian thing, in my view, is to reunite them with their families in their countries,” Sullivan said.

So I probably have Miller and Sullivan mixed up on this one.  Or maybe both said something similar.] 

Photo from Histor-C

Watching Miller, I couldn't help thinking of Richard Nixon.  I think it was the hair, the bags under his eyes, the five o'clock shadow and the finger pointing.  He also conveys the same belief in his possession of the truth. 




Miller:  Some of My Best Relatives are . . .

Those weren't his exact words, when challenged by panelist Dermot Cole about the tattooed hoodlums on his mailer that said "Begich wants them to vote . . . and if 20 million illegals vote you can kiss the Second Amendment goodbye."  At least he's being honest about his opposition to amnesty - he doesn't want these folks to become US voters.
He followed this up by telling the audience he has a Mexican son-in-law and an Indonesian brother-in-law.  There was another brother-in-law but I forgot where he was from. [Joeforliberty says the other one is from India.]  Is that supposed to make his racist* mailer ok? The other two took somewhat more nuanced positions, though all three were against federal regulations and Obama's handling of immigration.



Sullivan:  The Perfect Resume in the Wrong State?

Sullivan seemed the most out of place.   There's something about the way he talks.  While he spoke articulately and without hesitation (most of the time) I felt he was a bit defensive and he sounded like he was trying to figure out what the best answer would be for this audience.  When asked in the lightening round if he had written in Lisa Murkowski in the last election, there was a long pause.  His team hadn't prepared him for this one.  Finally he said 'no.'

So, did he vote for his current opponent Joe Miller?  Jeanne Devon, at the Mudflats, raises the possibility that he was still technically a resident of Maryland and so didn't vote here at all.  But he was the Alaska Attorney General.

He also hesitated when asked if he'd ever been arrested. He said no.  Was he weighing whether it had been expunged from the record or not?    I think his comments on tribal governance and the lawsuits he worked on for the state bear some scrutiny.

His body language was like the handshake - it all said he didn't want to be here, he'd rather be somewhere else.

When I first encountered Sullivan at his confirmation hearing for Attorney General in 2010, I felt he had the perfect resume and wrote at that time:

"And I wouldnʻt be surprised to see Mr. Sullivan running for Governor or Senator sometime.  How about a Republican primary with Mayor Dan Sullivan running against AG Dan Sullivan?"

Now both Dan Sullivans are running for statewide office, just not the same one.

In the military, there is almost a checklist for the things you have to do if you want to keep getting promoted.  Sullivan's resume looks like he was following a checklist for higher office.  It's really impressive.  And then he lucked out by marrying a woman from a state with a very low population where the odds were better than in his home state of Ohio.  This is the United States and people can travel from state to state and become residents of other states.  Ted Stevens grew up in California and became "Mr. Alaska."  But Sullivan's opponents have been hitting hard on this point - he's not really an Alaskan yet.  Usually people run for lower level offices before tackling US Senator, so that rubs people the wrong way too.


Watching Sullivan last night I got the feeling that he isn't quite comfortable here - he has crashed the party so to speak.  Were my gut reactions after sleeping on this just based on what I brought to the debate last night or does what I already knew merely help explain what I saw?  I can't tell.

Treadwell - The Real Alaskan Who's Peeved These Others Are Blocking His Rightful Place?

That's the sense I got from Treadwell last night.  He suggested several times that he'd been

working on projects others raised - sustainable energy in rural Alaska, Alaska's role as an arctic state - and with people they mentioned - Wally Hickle mainly - before they were even in Alaska.  I got the sense from what he said, that he was thinking, "Look, I'm the sensible one in the room, the real Alaskan.  I don't simplify complex issues like immigration or global warming. You guys shouldn't even be on this stage with me."

If I had had a pen and taken notes, I could flesh this out better.  When Sullivan talked about natural gas as the salvation for rural Alaska energy costs, Treadwell said he'd been doing alternative, sustainable energy projects in rural Alaska since the 1990s.  In response to a question from one of the panelists - I think Cole again - on whether they would keep coverage for pre-existing conditions now in Obamacare, he rebuffed Miller's "I don't think the government should tell people what they have to do.  They should choose what they want." (Huh?  Did he mean the insurance companies?  Or did he mean people with pre-existing conditions should be able to choose coverage that no one is offering?)  Treadwell referenced his wife's cancer and how pre-existing conditions shouldn't prevent one from getting health care.  [Is this just one more example of how people only 'get it' when they have personal experience with an issue?]  He also was more nuanced about regulation - though he said he's changed his mind about approving the Law of the Sea treaty.  I believe he conditioned it on the US not being controlled by outside interests. 




This Was A TV News/Entertainment Show

We had a bit of dramatic music leading in to each segment with the appropriately serious deep voice telling us what was about to happen.

Candidates and panelists got make-up touch-ups during breaks.  Now, that's a manly Alaskan image.  But since Nixon's poor performance in his debate with Kennedy, everyone gets makeup now.

ADN's Nathaniel Herz - Dermot Cole fuzzy on right

The media panelists stood their ground in attempts to get the candidates to answer the questions and not change the subject.  ADN's Nathaniel Herz jumped in several times to interrupt a candidate who'd veered off track.  And you could hear both voices playing chicken before one or the other gave up.  Nat won most of those rounds.  Sometimes with the help of the moderator.

Moderator Joe Vigil - KTVA 11 News - was ruthless when it came to time limits.  I realize that one has to do that to be fair to all the candidates, and that television news is often more about advertising, and thus entertainment, than news.  So time is of the essence. But letting the candidates talk longer when things get heated either leads to them explaining better or saying what they really think instead of their prepared scripts.

KTVA's Rhonda McBride during break

Rhonda McBride asked hard questions about conflicts between what candidates said (say about not bringing home earmarks) and Alaska needs (like the severe infrastructure problems in rural Alaska.)  Miller seemed to dismiss the lack of running water and toilets as a choice, citing his use of an outhouse when he was a magistrate in Tok.  

This gets to my problem with not giving the candidates more time.  With Vigil cutting them off, they could say something glib and not having to really address the issue.

When it was all over, I didn't think anything had really been resolved.   Should you take my gut reactions as worth anything?  Probably not.  But, my gut did tell me the first time I saw Sullivan live, that he would be running for higher office.  And I saw a lot of other folks being confirmed that legislative session and didn't make that prediction of anyone else. 


Joe Miller's website quotes a twitter comment he made at #akdebate:  

Joe Miller wins the KTVA/Alaska Dispatch Debate http://t.co/siDUFvpFKJ #akdebate
— Joe Miller (@JoeWMiller) August 11, 2014

I'm not sure anyone won or lost, but Joe definitely had the audience - small as it was in the auditorium - on his side.

Debates are trickier for candidates these days.  It used to be that you could say one thing to one interest group and another to a different interest group.  But with everyone carrying at video camera in their phones and with Youtube available to post the video, candidates have to be more careful.  While the live audience at this debate appeared to be mostly Republicans - and Miller Republicans at that - this was also being carried live on television and on the web.  So candidates had to have answers that worked for all audiences.  Only Joe Miller didn't seem to care about sanitizing his message for the tv viewers.  Maybe that's why it seemed he was having the most fun.

*racist - applying characteristics of a few to a whole group of racial group.  In this case Miller is using the same sort of fear mongering the Republicans used to get Southern Democrats to move to the Republican party.  Another similarity to Nixon.