AIFF2021: Award Winners

 This year I did not go to the Award Ceremony - I was busy watching movies and also getting ready to fly south.  But the Festival Facebook Page put up the winners.  Like always I agree on some, not on others, and some I didn't see so I have no opinion. 

Actually, I tend not to like the idea of awards, so at the bottom I'm just going to list my favorites because each film will connect with the viewer for reasons that have nothing to do with film.  

Jury Awards: 

Documentary Feature

1st place - 80.000 Schnitzels, Hannah Schweier

2nd place - The Form, Filip Flatau

3rd place - Not About Me, Kelly Milner

Narrative Feature

1st place - Tall Tales, Attila Szász 

2nd place - Americanish, Iman Zawahry

3rd place - Lune, Aviva Armour-Ostroff & Arturo Pérez Torres

Documentary Shorts

1st place -  Hunger Ward, Skye Fitzgerald

2nd place - Aguilucho - Dance of the Harpy Eagle, Daniel Byers

3rd place - Myrtle Simpsons - A Life On Ice, Leigh Anne Sides

Narrative Shorts 

1st place - Sinking Ships, Andreas Kessler

2nd place - Ala Kachuu - Take and Run, Maria Brendle

3rd place - Synthetic Love, Sarah Heitz de Chabaneix

Short Animated: 

1st - Eternal Igloo, Mostafa Keshvari

2nd place - Johnny Crow, Jesse Gouchey and Xstine Cook

3rd place - The Farmer and the Lightning Storm, Danielle Browne

Made in Alaska Feature

Newtok, Michael Kirby Smith & Andrew Burton

Made in Alaska Short

1st place - Pinguat, Joshua Albeza Branstetter

2nd place - The Kathryn Treder Story, Aalina Tabani

3rd place - Keepers of the Shy Place, Gianna Savoie

Screenplay: 

1st place - Racing the Wolf God: by Alessandra Bautze

2nd place - Uphill: by Adam D. Boyer

3rd place - Midday Black Midnight Blue: by Samantha Soule & Daniel Talbott

Audience Awards: 

Documentary Feature

1st place - From the Hood to the Holler by Pat McGee

2nd place - Not About Me by Kelly Milner

3rd place - On These Grounds by Garrett Zevgetis

Narrative Feature

1st place - Tall Tales by Atilla Szasz

2nd place - 18 ½ by Dan Mirvish

3rd place - Americanish by Iman Zawahry

Made in Alaska Feature

Granted: A Wish Story by Dan Redfield

Made in Alaska Short

1st place - Trailbound Alaska by Max Romey

2nd place - Pinguat by Joshua Albeza Branstetter

3rd place - Keepers of the Shy Place by Gianna Savoie

Short Animated: 

1st place - Pottero by Lindsey Martin

2nd place - Mni Wiconi - Water is Life by Jeremias Galante & Miguel Antonio Genz

3rd place - Goodnight Mr. Vincent Van Gogh by Lindsey Doolittle

Documentary Shorts: 

1st - 15 grains of sand by Rachel Handlin

2nd place - The Black Stonefly by Cody Lewis & Mark Rotse

3rd place - Why are you black? By Julie Skaufel

Narrative Shorts: 

1st place - Ala Kachuu - Take and Run by Maria Brendle

2nd place - Sinking Ships by Andreas Kessler

3rd place - Like the Ones I Used to Know by Annie St-Pierre

WHAT DO I KNOW? Favorites

Documentary Feature:

1st Place   - Captive

2nd Place - The Art of Sin

3rd Place - Not About Me and Sexplanation

[Didn't see Scrum, Newtok, On These Grounds, Underdog, Outloud, I'm Wannita]

Narrative Feature

1st Place - Tall Tales

2nd Place - Lune

3rd Place - Landlocked and Tiger Within

Documentary Shorts

1st Place - The Hunger Ward

2nd Place - Why Are You Black?

Narrative Shorts

First Place - Ala Kachuu 

2nd Place - The Manila Lover

3rd Place - Al Sit

[I didn't see many in this category]

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.  

AIFF2016: My Picks Alongside The Festival's Picks

I don't have any serious issues with the Festival winners this year as I have had in the past.  Maybe I'm just mellowing, but I think the quality the films in competition was generally higher this year than in recent years.

But there are some films which I thought got overlooked and I'd like to point them out.  There are others that I might have added to this list had I seen them.

The films in competition* in the various categories are listed below with the festival winners bolded.

[*These are films the programmers picked as the best of the selected films and 'in competition' for a prize.]

FEATURES
Demimonde (Hungary) Winner
Donald Cried (USA)
First Girl I Loved (USA) First Runner Up
Heredity (Columbia)
Planet Outtakring (Austria)
Youth in Oregon (USA) Honorable Mention

I could argue why any of these films should have won the top prize.  All had strengths that made them strong contenders.  I think Demimonde was a fine pick.  Youth in Oregon was also a good movie, though it was a Hollywood film with some well known actors - less of a film festival picture.

Here are my top three,   not in any particular order.

I would have put Donald Cried in the top three.  It had a very powerful and complicated lead character who was played amazingly by the actor Kris Avedisian.  This was a powerful film about going home, but also about making amends, as an adult, for treating people badly as a teen.  Here's a post I did after seeing Donald Cried.

And Planet Ottakring was an adult fairy tale of a movie set in Ottakring, a real working class neighborhood in Vienna.  This film has clear cut good guys and bad guys, with Frau Hahn as a Cruella Deville class female villain. The good guys a little more complicated.  The story was written as a vehicle to introduce the concept of a local community currency based on historical events in Wörkl, Austria in 1932.  The writer, Mike Majzen told me via email, that he then wanted to make a more interesting screenplay in which to package that idea.  He succeeded beautifully.  Of course the director and the cast had something to do with that too.  [See more on the Wörkl financial experiment in Planet Ottakring in my post on Features in Competition.  Actually, I have more about all the features in competition at the link.]

Demimonde is like the fanciest, most decadent cake in a Budapest bakery.  It's exquisite looking, it's rich, it's got a dark story to tell.  Attila Szász deserved his second top prize at AIFF in three years.  He and his crew do beautiful and meaningful work.

But Heredity still haunts my mind as well.  This Columbian film explored the long term effects of being abandoned by one's father and the dangers of trusting the mental health professionals.  Luckily for the main character, his wife believed in him.  I need to do some more research on whether this film was based on a true story and if there are examples of cases like this one.


SHORTS (SUPER)
20 Matches  Winner
Death$ in a $mall Town
How To Lose Weight in 4 Easy Steps
A Magician Honorable Mention
On Time First Runner Up

20 Matches was an excellent choice.  An original approach to telling a story that made palpable the grim story being told.   And yes, 20 matches were involved.  On Time was a powerful tale, well told,  with a punch in the gut ending.  A Magician had a good message wrapped in a quick and amusing story.  All good picks.  

​SHORTS​

Curmudgeons
Gorilla - First Runner Up
Il Campione (The Champion )
Like A Butterfly - Honorable Mention
My Mom and the Girl
Thunder Road  - Winner

I ended up seeing Thunder Road four times.  It was worth seeing once, maybe twice.  But I was waiting for the next film to start the third and fourth times.  A really good film should hold up longer.  I know people liked it because it was done in one long-shot and the actor showed a range of emotions.  But those things weren't enough for repeated viewings for me.  And his Karaoke ruined the song Thunder Road forever.  You can watch the whole movie here and decide for yourself.  It also won a major prize at Sundance, so I'm probably the odd man out here.

I only saw a part of Like a Butterfly so I don't have an opinion.  Gorilla  is a solid, satisfying film.  It might have been honorable mention in my choices.

My favorite short wasn't even in competition.  Sing For Your Supper was pulled me in from the beginning.  The basic concept - a land where you literally pay for things by singing and if you can't sing you end up begging - was brilliant, and the creation of a believable dystopian world in a short film was remarkable, as were the musical numbers and the acting.  A terrific short that, in my opinion, should have been the winner.

Another favorite was GlaswAsian Tales.  This film interwove the tales of several Asian-Scots in Glascow seamlessly connected a series of the people and stories with flashes of biting wit.  A look at the world from the view of the 'other' as signaled by the title's play on the usual word for people from Glascow.

Pay Day is a grim Hungarian short that shows the impact of a loan-shark in a small village.  Powerful.

And I want to mention Salt Man too.  A unique short about an artist living and working in a remote salt mine (collecting salt) in Iran, with his young daughter, talking about art and creativity and censorship.  He lives, emotionally, off the awards he wins from festivals around the world.  Another really strong and unique film.


DOCUMENTARY

Documentary Shorts
I’ll Wait Here (Austria)
Pickle (USA)  First Runner Up
Starring Austin Pendleton (USA) Winner  Winner
The BlindSide (India)  Honorable Mention

This seems to be the thinnest category. There were only four documentary shorts in competition. I didn't get to see The Blindside. [Until I was about to post this.  I found it online and you can watch it.  I think it's a more profound film than the other two and gets its message across in 3 minutes.]  I'm not sure why I'll Wait Here was in competition.  Someone shot a video of his grandparents at a Swiss spa.The editing makes it more than a family film.  One could argue that it causes us to pause and ponder what's important.  Some people see Jesus in strange places, so I guess some programmer saw something in this film that I missed. This is not an attempt to put down I'll Wait Here.  But I think there were other short docs that were probably better.  Pendleton was a film about an interesting person - a character actor who was sort of hidden in plain sight.  Pendleton's not unlike The Blindside, in subject matter.  A nice tribute, something you could show at Pendleton's funeral.  But it doesn't have the heart of the Indian film.

[After watching The Blindside online after the festival, and after the first draft of this post, I decided to see what I could find of the other short documentaries.  Mostly I could only see trailers.  I'll withhold further judgment until I can see the whole films.]

Feature-Length Documentaries
Best and Most Beautiful Things (USA) Honorable Mention  (tie)
Drokpa (China) First Runner Up
Goodbye Darling, I’m Off to Fight (Italy)
SHU-DE! (USA)
Happy Lucky Golden Tofu Panda Dragon Good Time Fun Fun Show (USA) Honorable Mention (tie)
The Cinema Travellers (India) Winner
The Slippers (USA)

These were all good films.  The choices were hard.   I loved The Cinema Travellers.  The other winners (I didn't get to see Dropka) were all worthy.  I did hear really good things about Walk With Me (not in competition) and it won an Audience Award.  I'm hoping to see it.


ANIMATION
Murderous Tales (Czech Republic)
Green Light (South Korea)
A Space in Time (France) Honorable Mention
Adija (USA)
Alike (Spain)   Winner
Arrival: A Short Film by Alex Myung (USA)  First Runner Up
Hum (USA)
Just Like it Used to Be (USA)
My Life I Don't Want (Myanmar)
Pearl (United Kingdom, USA)
Red (Iran)
Under the Apple Tree (Netherlands)

The winners were all fine.  I especially liked Arrival.  But I do want to mention My Life I Don't Want.   Using simple graphics Nyan Kyal Say encapsulates the basics of being a woman world wide.  A brilliant film.  So simple, so profound.


I'm afraid I never got to any of the Made In Alaska films so I have no comment on them.

I thought this year's festival had strong films in many categories and I don't have any serious beefs with the festival's winners.  They were all good and the choices boil down to something in the films that appealed to particular judges that were different from appealed to me in some cases.

AIFF2016: Film Festival Winners

[UPDATE Dec 11, 2016  10:45pm:  All the awards listed and related photos are up.]

This post was updated many times from when I put up the list of all the films in competition and as the winner were announced in each category, and as I put up pictures of winning film makers and some of the festival programmers.

Todd Salat  Aurora*

Jury Awards
Made in Alaska

Alaska's Mind-Blowing Aurora  Honorable Mention
Find Me
I am Yupik  Winner
Interior
Speaking from the HeART
Super Salmon  First Runner Up

Ryan Peterson - Super Salmon*

Really, I didn't know these two would win awards - I took these pictures less than ten minutes ago.
Ryan said his film would be available online next week.

Alex Myung Arrival**

Animation 
Murderous Tales (Czech Republic)                    
Green Light (South Korea)
A Space in Time (France) Honorable Mention
Adija (USA)
Alike (Spain) Winner
Arrival: A Short Film by Alex Myung (USA) First Runner Up
Hum (USA)
Just Like it Used to Be (USA)
My Life I Don't Want (Myanmar)
Pearl (United Kingdom, USA)
Red (Iran)
Under the Apple Tree (Netherlands)

[UPDATE:  I erroneously marked Adija as the winner - wishful thinking on my part.  I really liked Adija, the spray painting was magical.  But Alike was also good.  And they look almost the same.  Sorry to both film makers of both films if you saw this before the correction.]

Rich Curtner Shorts Programer center*

Super Shorts

How To Lose Weight in 4 Easy Steps (USA)
Death$ in a $mall Town (USA)
20 Matches (USA)  Winner
A Reasonable Request (USA)
A Magician (UK) Honorable Mention
On Time (USA) First Runner Up

Programmer George Pollock (Shorts) Juror Kelly Walters (Features)*

Shorts
Il Campione (The Champion) (Italy)                      
Like a Butterfly (USA)  Honorable Mention
Thunder Road (USA)  Winner
My Mom and The Girl (USA)
Gorilla (USA)  First Runner Up
Curmudgeons (USA)









Documentary Short

I’ll Wait Here (Austria)
Pickle (USA) First Runner Up
Starring Austin Pendleton (USA) Winner
The BlindSide (India) Honorable Mention

Best and Most Beautiful director Zevgetis**  

Documentary Feature Length
Best and Most Beautiful Things (USA) Honorable Mention
Drokpa (China) First Runner Up

Kate Rigg Happy Lucky...*

Goodbye Darling, I’m Off to Fight (Italy)
SHU-DE! (USA)
Happy Lucky Golden Tofu Panda Dragon Good Time Fun Fun Show (USA) Honorable Mention
The Cinema Travellers (India) Winner
The Slippers (USA)

Attila Szász director Demimonde***

Feature

Putnam and Hunter Producers First Girl I Loved**

Demimonde (Hungary)  Winner   AK Small
Donald Cried (USA)
First Girl I Loved (USA)  First Runner Up            

Heredity (Columbia)
Planet Outtakring (Austria)
Youth in Oregon (USA)  Honorable Mention






Audience Choice

John Serpe - Producer The Happys**

Feature - The Happys

Documentary - Walk With Me

Jesse Nesser, Walk With Me, With his Oosik*

* photos taken at Awards Ceremony
**photos taken earlier during the Festival
***screenshot from 2014 Skype interview

AIFF2016: Saturday Suggestions - Demimonde For Sure

My advice is to go to the Festival's Sched Page for Saturday.

It looks like this (for the morning):

Click on this image and it will take you to the whole Saturday Schedule with all the dropdown windows working

It's good and will help you plan.  But it doesn't show the overlaps very well.  Unfortunately they continued what they did last year - program films that end after the next films nearby begin.

My key recommendation for Saturday is Demimonde at 8:15pm at the Bear Tooth.  Attila Szász's The Ambassador To Bern was the AIFF best feature in 2014.  It was a fine movie.  He has the same crew for this film about a famous Hungarian courtesan who was murdered and shocked the whole city.  It's a period piece and the trailer is exquisite.

I had a skype interview with Szász in 2014 about The Ambassador To Bern. At the end we talked a little bit about the new production he was beginning - which turns out to be Demimonde.  You can see it below.




But there are other films in competition showing today as well:

Happy Lucky Golden Tofu Dragon Panda Fun Fun Good Time Show is a documentary about a comedy act  known as Slanty Eyed Mamas.
Dropka is doc about Tibetan nomads.
Both are discussed in the Docs in Competition post.

Planet Ottakring  is an Austrian feature that I've discussed in the Features in Competition post.  (Along with Demimonde).

There are also panels where you can participate in discussions with some of the filmmakers.

Lots of good stuff.

AIFF 2016: Features In Competition

Features are full length fictional films.  Films in competition are those chosen by the original screeners to be eligible for awards.

• a list of the super shorts in competition
• list of the programs where they appear and when
• description of each super short in competition in alphabetical order

I'd note that while these are the screeners picks, screeners don't always agree, so some would have chosen other super shorts as the best.  I often disagree with the screeners, but this is a good start.

Features in Competition	Director	Country	Length
Demimonde	Attila Szász	Hungary	1:25:00
Donald Cried	Kyle Martin	USA	1:25:00
First Girl I Loved	Karem Sanga	USA	1:26:00
Heredity	Carlos G Vergara	Columbia	1:40:10
Planet Outtakring	Michi Riebl	Austria	1:30:00
Youth in Oregon	Joel David Moore	USA	1:40:00

Demimonde
Attila Szász
Hungary
1:28:00

From Huniwood (Hungarian Film Festival Berlin):

"In January 1914, a horrific murder shocked the city of Budapest. Elza Mágnás, a famous courtesan, was strangled and her body thrown into the icy waters of the Danube. The film which is based on a true story chronicles the last four days of Elza’s life through the eyes of a naive maid, portraying Elza’s complex relationship with her housekeeper, her sugar daddy and her young lover. (HFM)"

 Director Szász's The Ambassador To Bern won the best feature at the 2014 AIFF.  It was an excellent film and I'm sure this one will be a contender this year.  I did a Skype interview with Szász then and part of it was about this film.  I'll try to edit it to focus on Demimonde.  But it's in sections with transcript so it is easy to find.

Here's what he said two years ago:

"Q: What's the new film about?
The assassination of a famous courtesan….Years ago that shook up the entire city of Budapest, everybody was talking about it because the courtesan was very famous, everyone knew about her and they were shocked because someone famous was getting murdered.
Q:  Was that before or after the Arch Duke got shot?
It’s before.  It takes place in January, so it’s maybe a couple of months before the assassination [of the Arch Duke].  It’s a style piece.  It’s the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy.  So it’s very difficult to recreate the era, because we have to start from scratch, the costumes, the props, set, everything.  And we have so little money again, but I just couldn’t refuse this chance because the script is again something I love very much.  I was warned, do you remember the first time you had to shoot in 17 days with so little money, you suffered and you were frustrated, and you want to do it again?  I said, yes, because it’s a good script and we have now, nineteen days so it’s two more days, - piece of cake - probably it's a bit longer,  the story. so it’s very difficult to shoot again, but hopefully next time we’ll have the backing of the film fund and we’ll have maybe three or four times the time and money, because it’s normal that Hungarian films are being shot in 35, 40, maybe 45 days and we had less than 20 both times."

Donald Cried
Kyle Martin
USA
1:25:00

From the Donald Cried website:

"Peter Latang (Jesse Wakeman) left working class Warwick, Rhode Island to reinvent himself as a slick, Wall Street mover and shaker. Fifteen years later, when he's forced to return home to bury his Grandmother he loses his wallet on the trip. Stranded, the only person he can think of to help him out is his next door neighbor and former childhood friend Donald Treebeck (Kris Avedisian). Donald hasn't changed a bit, and what starts as a simple favor turns into a long van ride into their past."

And interesting point from the director's notes from the same link:

"For me specifically it had a lot to do with the guilt of how I treated people in high school and the guilt I carried with me.  Jesse and Kyle  (co-writers) come from the same really small town in Northern California and brought elements of their experience going home. All the Rhode Island elements, the people the neighborhoods, were very specific to my experience growing up there in the 80's."

Donald Cried from Groove Garden on Vimeo.



First Girl I Loved
Karem Sanga
USA
1:26:00

From Variety:

"Anne (Dylan Gelula, from Netflix’s “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”) is a mildly quirky 17-year-old who lives with her single mom (Pamela Adlon) and exercises her arty side as photographer for the school yearbook. It’s in the latter capacity that she encounters softball-playing senior star athlete Sasha (Brianna Hildebrand), and is instantly smitten. "

Image also from Barranquilla

Heredity
Carlos G Vergara
Columbia
1:40:10

I was trying to find something on this film more than just the Bear Tooth blurb, but there isn't a lot out there.  I suspect this is pretty close to what the Bear Tooth says in English.  From Festival Internacionale de Cines Barranquilla

"Sinopsis:  Tati  y  Pedro  llevan  una  vida  rutinaria  hasta  que  él  amanece  convertido  psicológicamente en un niño. Buscando la cura Tati lleva a Pedro a donde él vivió su infancia,  allí Pedro se reencuentra con su familia y a ninguno reconoce, en cambio juega y es feliz como  cuando realmente era niño. Después de que su madre lo ve en una de sus crisis decide revelar  un secreto, esto hace que Tati lleve a Pedro a seguir las huellas de su padre. Encontrarlo para  que haga catarsis es la última esperanza."

Again, you can get this in English at the Bear Tooth link.

Screenshot from outtake on Planet Ottakring's website

Planet Ottakring

Michi Riebl

Austria

1:30:00

Bear with me on this one.  This some interesting background that will add depth to your understanding of the movie.  I couldn't find a good English description for this film, so I started with the German synopsis from the film's website:

"Eine Krise zieht ihre Kreise um den Planet Ottakring: Disko, der letzte Pate stirbt, Frau Jahn, Kredithai vor Ort, übernimmt die Macht. In dieser Situation gerät die Wirtschaft des Bezirks ins Strudeln. Sammy ein junger und nicht sehr überzeugter Kleinganove, aber Erbe Diskos, ist gezwungen zu handeln. Valerie – Wirtschaftsstudentin aus Deutschland – gerät im Zuge ihrer Masterarbeit ins Zentrum des Geschehens. Gemeinsam mit Sammy und seinen Freunden bilden sie eine Allianz gegen die heimtückische Vorgangsweise von Frau Jahn und finden dabei ein Wirtschaftssystem, von dem eigentlich alle profitieren können. Wären da nicht auch noch Gefühle mit im Spiel. David gegen Goliath in Wiens 16. Bezirk!"

Here's my translation with some help from internet dictionaries.  I was still a little uncertain, but checked with an Austrian friend, who confirmed I'd gotten the gist and then I was able to tweak it into more idiomatic English.

"A crisis erupts in the Viennese neighborhood of Ottakring.  Disko, the last godfather, dies.  Mrs. Jahn, a local loan shark, takes power.  The economy of this district then goes to hell.  A younger, and not very eager minor hoodlum, Sammy,  Disko's heir, is forced to act.  Valerie - a business student from Germany [it's an Austrian film] - while working on her masters thesis, finds herself in the center of the action.  She builds an alliance with Sammy and his friend against the malicious approach of Mrs. Jahn and through this finds an economic system in which all can profit. If only there weren't feelings coming into play.  David and Goliath in Vienna's 16th district."

Poking around with my sketchy German that is certainly no match for Viennese dialect, I did discover that the movie's ideas go back to an experiment in the 1930s in a place called Wörgl where they had a "money-experiment" to deal with the desperate economic situation.  This comes from a post about the film when it was shown in Wörgl.  

I did also find something on this in English at Lietaer.com:

"One of the best-known applications of the stamp scrip idea was applied in the small town of Wörgl in Austria in 1932 and 1933.  When Michael Unterguggenberger (1884-1936) was elected mayor of Wörgl, the city had 500 jobless people and another 1,000 in the immediate vicinity.   Furthermore, 200 families were absolutely penniless.   The mayor-with-the-long-name (as Professor Irving Fisher from Yale would call him) was familiar with Silvio Gesell‘s work and decided to put it to the test.

He had a long list of projects he wanted to accomplish (re-paving the streets, making the water distribution system available for the entire town, planting trees along the streets and other needed repairs.)  Many people were willing and able to do all of those things, but he had only 40,000 Austrian schillings in the bank, a pittance compared to what needed to be done.
Instead of spending the 40,000 schillings on starting the first of his long list of projects, he decided to put the money on deposit with a local savings bank as a guarantee for issuing Wörgl’s own 40,000 schilling’s worth of stamp scrip.   He then used the stamp scrip to pay for his first project.   Because a stamp needed to be applied each month (at 1% of face value), everybody who was paid with the stamp scrip made sure he or she was spending it quickly, automatically providing work for others.   When people had run out of ideas of what to spend their stamp scrip on, they even decided to pay their taxes, early."

The post goes on to say it was so successful that other Austrian towns wanted to copy it and the Central Bank clamped down.  They were sued, but the Austrian Supreme Court backed the bank and these schemes became criminal.

From the first post above, the writer also says that director Michi Riebl says that the Ottakring district no longer has the gangsterism in this form.

Image from Teaser-trailer.com

Youth in Oregon
Joel David Moore
USA
1:40:00

JDM**

There's something here for everyone.  Youth in Oregon is the directorial debut for Avatar actor (Dr.Norm Spelling), Joel David Moore.  It takes place in Oregon with acting greats like Frank Langella and Billy Crudup.  There's  Married... with Children's Christina Applegate and  Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman's Mary Kay Price.


From the YouTube description:

"When 82-year-old curmudgeon RAYMOND Ingersol tells his family that he has made arrangements to be euthanized in Oregon, his daughter KATE is determined to stop him. But when another family emergency arises, Kate’s husband BRIAN finds himself with the unlucky task of driving his father-in-law from New York to Oregon AND convincing the crotchety old man that he doesn’t want to die. The problem: Brian hates Raymond. And with Raymond’s wino wife ESTELLE tagging along for the journey, it’s just in-laws and the open road for the next 3000 miles."

Variety reviews don't pull punches.  But they aren't looking for film-festival flicks, as the last line of this quote suggests:

"Rarely has euthanasia seemed more desirable than it’s made to appear in “Youth in Oregon,” a torturous saga about a man dying of an incurable heart condition who sets out on a cross-country journey to Oregon, where killing oneself is legal. Maudlin and mannered, this contrived indie squanders another fine late-career performance from Frank Langella, dousing its treatment of the subject in affectations until it’s snuffed out any trace of genuine life. While it fits comfortably into the fragmented-family drama subgenre prized each year at the Tribeca Film Festival, its groan-worthiness is apt to get it buried at the box office."

But here's from a more sympathetic reviewer.   Mary Kay Place on her character from The Mary Sue   answering the question, "Did you feel their marriage had gone through a change before the film started that altered their dynamic?"

Mary Kay Place: I did, and I think that’s when she became a heavy drinker. Because he was withdrawing and becoming angrier and more isolated. And that was infuriating to her, because I image them being a solid couple and had been true partners. And that partnership started dissolving as he became more isolated and cranky. Well, I think he’s always been cranky, but now he’s become crankier than ever. And it’s been difficult on my character, because she felt as if she’d lost her partner before he died. He had already slipped away.

There's a note on this YouTube video - "This video is unlisted. Be considerate and think twice before sharing." - but this seems an appropriate place for it and I can't find any easy links where I could ask for permission. I can't find a website or FB page for this film.

**Screenshot from IMDB


Let me get this up so I can start on the Documentaries in Competition.  I don't usually get more than a few of these up each year as a preview.  Let's see how far I can get. I'll also try to add the times and locations for each of the film showings.   This one went pretty easily until I got to Planet Ottakring which took a while.  This looks like a solid group of films and there's still a bunch more other Features, many of which I'm sure are going to be well worth watching.

AIFF 2016: What's In A Name? Anchorage International Film Festival Films Selected - The First Look

[UPDATE Nov 27, 2016:  I've posted the films in competition on the AIFF2016 page.  I have detailed pages for the Shorts in Competition and the Super Shorts in competition and working on the others.]

Looking at the lists of films selected in the various categories for the first time each year is always exciting.  There's not much to go by - film titles, names of directors, countries.  It's like being in a big room with strangers many of whom you will soon get to know.  Some will become great friends, others nodding acquaintances, others you'll never connect with.

But for now all you've got are appearances and stereotypes.  Does a film title catch your fancy?  Intrigue you enough to want to know more?  Maybe you have a connection to particular country that's represented by a film or two.  And perhaps there are some interesting or even familiar names.

That's where we are now as the 2016 films selected for this year's festival have been posted on the AIFF2016 website.  At this point I'm just going to give a brief overview and comment briefly on some of the names and titles that caught my attention.

From the poster for Attila Szász' Demimonde

The background for the Features list isImage .  Szász is a Hungarian film maker whose The Ambassador To Bern won the Best Feature at AIFF in 2014.  You can see a Skype interview I did with Szász back then.  There's also transcript.  Part 8 talks about the film (Demimonde) he was starting to work on (which was why none of the film crew could make it to Anchorage that year).

Screenshot from the trailer of Karan Ananth's Indian film The Blind Side.

The background is a  

Here's some dialogue I created from three other titles from the documentary list.

A:  Goodbye Darling, I'm Off To Fight 

B:  I'll Wait Here 

A:  Walk With Me

As you can see, at this point, these are just words on a page that have whatever meaning you might invest in them.  But before long, as we learn more about the films and, hopefully, see them, they will show us who they really are.

 Image from the trailer of Richard Harper 's Evil's Evil Cousin.

Some of the shorts titles that seemed to have some superficial connection at this point:

Black Cat Gorilla Like a Butterfly	Row 1,	Sing For Your Supper No Touching Virgin Territory	Row 1,	This Path Thunder Road	Row 1,

Background is screenshot from A Reasonable Request 

You can't help but assume that a title like A Reasonable Request will be anything but reasonable.

Some other titles:

There were the titles with numbers:

• 20 Matches
• How To Lose Weight in 4 Easy Steps

But maybe the second one should have been paired with

• Fresh Chocolate Bar

And there are time related titles:

• On Time
• Late Night Drama

ANIMATION, which was a little thin last year, has a robust roster of films this year.

Image from  Elif Boyacioglu's The Teacup

And there's lots of mischief we can do grouping some of the titles

Food	Puns	Colors	Time
Notorious Corn	Pug of War	Red	Just Like It Used to Be
The Old Man and the Pear	No Touching	Green Light	A Space In Time
Under the Apple Tree	Virgin Territory		The Land Before Time Machines Time Chicken

Image screenshot from Daven Hafey's We Eat Fish

Some Intriguing Titles:

The Girl Who Spoke Cat

You bruise, You lose

GlaswAsian Tales

Welcome to the Last Bookstore

At this point I know next to nothing about these films, though finding pictures for this post gave me a bit more information.  We have titles (and you can see all the titles and names of directors and countries and lengths of most of the films at the AIFF2016 website.  Soon we'll know a little more, and eventually, we'll be able to see many of these films and meet some of the filmmakers.

Note:  Since the Alaska films didn't have countries listed (last year all but one was a US filmmaker), I've listed the titles.

Note 2:  HTML Table Generator has revamped its page and I'm having a bit of trouble making the tables work here in blogger.  I can't see the final table when I'm composing or in Preview which means I have to post it to see if I got it right.  So forgive the different kinds of tables.  I'll get this eventually.  

AIFF 2014: Anchorage Audience Liked The Ambassador To Bern

This film plays again tonight (Wednesday) at 5:30 downtown at the Alaska Experience theater.  Last night's audience at the Bear Tooth appeared to really like it  Here is a sampling of the audience as they walked out.  (And the two dark ones at the end were in the unlit theater still.)





This is everyone I talked to.  (I didn't cut out ones I didn't like.)

There was a short written explanation of the context at the beginning of the film, but it went too fast for most people to read.  AVO was the secret police in Hungary.

Actually there were two stories going on.  The breaking into the Hungary embassy is what we see on the screen, but the background (which relates to what's going on) was the Hungary freedom fighters in 1956 and the subsequent Soviet invasion to put them down.  Among the embassy staff there are people who were on different sides of the political upheaval  in Hungary.

You can see my Skype interview with the director, Attila Szász, here.

AIFF 2014: What's On Today (Wednesday)

  Here's the Wednesday schedule.

ACS Internet was down till just now.  Just a quickie here and I'll try to get a Wed post up shortly.

Ambassador to Bern was very good last night.  Two Hungarian immigrants to Switzerland in 1956 break into the Hungarian embassy in Switzerland after the Russians invade Hungary.  I asked a bunch of people, as they came out of the theater what they thought.  Intense was a word a number used.  It's one of the best films I've seen at the festival so far.   I've got a Skype interview I did with the director, Attila Szász up here.

[UPDATE:   I just posted video of audience reactions to The Ambassador to Bern.]

I saw the documentary  Mala Mala  Monday night.  It's a strong documentary that takes you into a world I knew nothing about - transexuals in Puerto Rico.  While the filmmakers take is sympathetic, it's not all a pretty picture.  When you seriously look into the world of transexuals, you have to question our culture's traditional black and white notions about gender.  What your genitals look like simply may not be consistent with what you head knows.  Is that a disorder?  To the extent that people's mental and physical identities are inconsistent and that causes them pain, sure.  But if society were not so freaked out about the idea, they would have a lot less pain.  Worth seeing - and it had the best final credits of any film I've seen so far - neon lights, music, and a dancer.

Both these are 'in competition' for awards in their category, and if I hadn't seen them both, I think I'd be headed for the Alaska Experience small theater to see them at 5:30 and 7:30.


The Mexican Consulate program at the Bear Tooth should be good too - they always bring up first rate films and there's a reception after The Zebra.   I suspect that's where I'll end up.

But the museum hosts two docs that have tempting subjects.  Thule Tuvalu is a documentary that apparently links glacial melting in Greenland to the flooding of the South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu.  Cold Love looks at arctic exploration.

Winter Project is a feature centering on snow machining in Alaska.

AIFF 2014 - Attila Szász Talks About His Film The Ambassador To Bern

The Ambassador To Bern looks to be a very good film.  Unfortunately, film maker Attila Szász can't make it to Anchorage for the festival - he's just starting filming of his next film.  But I got a chance to interview him via Skype recently.  I'm going to combine text and video here, because I think it will work best, particularly since there was some trouble with the Skype images for some of the video.  I'll give you enough video to get a sense of Mr. Szász.

The Ambassador to Bern plays

Today (Tuesday) at 5:30pm at the Bear Tooth and 

Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 5:30pm at the AK Experience small theater

There's nothing in this long interview with the director that should be a spoiler for anyone.

As I've worked with the video in preparing this post, I realize there are a couple of key themes of interest that are discussed:

• The poetic license of fictionalizing a historic event.  Szász speaks of how the facts aren't all known about what happened, so they decided to write their own story about it.  And even though the ambassador in question was still alive - in his 90s - they decided not to talk to him before making the film. 
• Using past events to get people to discuss current events.  Szász relates that while they wanted people to think about how people in government today have the same kind of complex relationships as people did in the past, he wasn't trying to make a point either for or against the current Hungarian government.  But people on different political sides saw statements for or against the current government. 
• The story I hear from all film makers - the perseverance required to make a film.  

We spoke first, well after comparing the weather in Anchorage and Budapest, about how he got onto this topic.  He had a friend who'd stumbled onto the story of two Hungarian immigrants in Switzerland who stormed the Hungarian embassy in Bern, not long after the Russians crushed the Hungarian revolution in 1956.

1.  How he found the story

"Our screen writer Norbert Köbli who wrote two movies before regarding this subject matter, spent time in the library searching for those other two movie and he kept bumping into interesting stories from this time - 1956 and the surrounding year - and he bumped into this story he’d never heard of, actually no one had ever heard of it in Hungary, this attack against this embassy in Bern and he liked the idea of something that happened outside of Hungary regarding the revolution, it was the aftermath of the revolution."

2.  Fictionalizing an historical event   (this is the text of the video clip above)

"He realized what they had in the library was just the confessions of those people in the embassy and he realized they were synchronized confessions, synchronized reports, probably just one side of the truth.  Then he decided, ok, he takes creative freedom  and writes a version that’s a possibility that might have happened inside because nobody knows what really happened inside.  That’s why he created this hostage situation that never really happened in the embassy.   Because what happened according to the reports, the two guys broke in and started shooting and they were surprised the people in the embassy started shooting back.  They found at least 70 something bullet holes in the walls. So it was like a scene from a Western movie and we realized it would be too much to consume for the audience, the whole shooting, so we decided to go with a more intellectual happening inside."

Since I haven't seen the movie - only the trailer - I asked about what the two were looking for in the safe in the embassy.

3.  What were they looking for in the safe?

"No body knows what they were after but there were two versions, one is to get the attention of the Western media, because the former prime minister was just executed two months before this happened, and these guys who were immigrants in Switzerland,  realized nobody pays attention to what is going on in Hungary any more so they decided to make a blast, come up with something violent and loud, that’s why they used their guns.  They got what they wanted because the western media covered the event for many months afterward and again they started paying attention to what was happening in Hungary.     

And the other version was they were after the agent list which they kept in the safe in the embassy, because they heard that a lot of agents filtering in among the immigrants, pretending they are immigrants and finding out what all the immigrants are about and there were even attacks happening against the immigrants in Switzerland, so that’s why the guys decided to find out who were the agents among the immigrants so that’s the other version, but we thought that the agent list, even if it might be true it’s a little bit used for these kinds of movies, so we started the code book"

Q:  First shown on Hungarian tv?

Yes it was on Hungarian tv and came out on dvd and had a limited theatrical run and now on the festival circuit

Q:   Did people come out and tell you more about that time?

People wanted to find out what was true and not true.  After the gala premiere in Budapest, in the movie theater.  One of the relatives of one of the guys who died in the embassy came up to us.  

4.  Relatives of the two men contacted us after seeing the film  (Part 4 is in the clip above)

"Two guys were shot during the incident and we kept (???).  His relative showed up and  said it was very shocking to see the movie and told us her version of what happened.  A few months later, relatives of the other guy showed up.  They still lived in Bern, they said they liked the movie, they like the performance, but didn’t come up with their own version.  

The Ambassador was still alive, fictionalizing names of characters 

Actually the guy who was the ambassador in the film was still alive when we shot the film, but we decided not to contact him because he was over 90 years old and because we have a very strong statement in the movie that never happened in reality.We decided to change his names, to change all the characters’ names in the film, because it was not about them any more.  It was a story inspired by a real incident.  I think one or two months after the premiere he died." 

He had a very brilliant career.  He  became ambassador in Moscow and Prague and I don't know where else and he retired as a deputy prime minister I think.  He went far after this incident.  Basically we didn’t want to use him as a model.  We created brand new characters and we just wanted to show that there was a lot of conflict inside the embassy between the workers, between the secret police, between the ambassador,  between the secretaries, so it's all about people agreeing or not agreeing about how the system works and fighting for how things work.  The same thing that is happening today.  We wanted to reflect that as well, And of course we wanted to create a very tense and suspenseful thriller with all the twists. We realized whenever it was shown in a film festival outside Hungary, would have difficulty to understand the political and historical context because we used a lot of names that they don’t know who they are, but they enjoyed it anyway - 

Q:  but they’re all fake anyway -  

The Real Historical Figures in the Film

No the real names, because we're using the name of János Kádár  new prime minister at the time  of the incident who executed the former minister [Imre Nagy], so these were real historical figures, but outside of Hungary very few people know who they are, [but they kept hearing their names again and again. . .]

5.  Parallels to today 

Q:  You say the same thing is happening  today in Hungary.  What parallels are there?

It was fun to see that both parties said, this is a great movie for our party.  One party said because it is anti-communist it is a good election movie.  We told him that was not our motive, or goal at all.  We didn’t want to criticize or agree with the current government, just to show nothing has changed in the last fifty years.  Another crew member asked how could you get financing for this because you can see all the lines all the turns all the suggestions in the story and in dialogue are so much about what’s going on today.  So we enjoyed the situation that everyone kept hearing what they wanted to hear and read what they wanted to read between the lines, so it’s something that makes people think and makes people think about the recent situation, so that was fun.

How the film evolved over a decade

Q:  I understand that was your first feature film?  Yes.  

Q:  How does it feel having it done?

 I was working on getting my project off the ground for about a decade.  I directed a short film that has done pretty well all over the world. And so I thought ok the next step would be easier for now I have a   [hole in can?]   , but the one or two projects I was working on was too big to get financing in Hungary especially because we imagined  . . .

6.   A Script Appears

I wanted to shoot film based on my script, but it took a very long time that I got very frustrated.  My old friend Norbert Köbli, who wrote the screenplay, suddenly out of the blue called me and said I wrote this script and I know you aren’t interested in other people’s scripts but just read it and if you like you have a chance to direct it.  At that time I said I was interested in anything, Norbert just send it over.  He sent me the script and I read it and said, it’s going to be a tv film because it’s not financed by the film fund, but by another authorization who are usually financing tv movies and short films.  Yes, it’s a very little money, very low budget, but maybe you can take it one step further than a tv movie if you can get hold of the material.  Fine, I’ll give it a try, even if it is a tv movie, it is a narrative I can direct, because I usually direct commercials for a living and you know I wanted to, finally I wanted to film  . . . 

7.   Shooting the film and distribution

It was a very,very fast, crazy fast shooting and we enjoyed every moment of it, and the editing was brilliant. But we had a deadline.  We needed to deliver the film. 

Q:  Where did you shoot it?  

We shot it in Budapest.  So it was a great couple of months.  We had a limited run in movie theaters we gave it a chance, but the Hungarian tv had a premiere date, no distributors wanted to touch it because they didn’t have time to promote the film before it came out.  So we just went from movie theater to movie theater and they enjoyed it very much and they wanted to show it  so they organized special screenings all over the city and then we had the tv premiere and then afterward it came out on DVD because of the demand. 

Because the critics reacted enthusiastically and the audience loved it and so they all wanted to see it again.  So it is out in DVD and from time to time it is being shown in a movie theater in a couple of the cities in Hungary and we just had a rerun on tv so, we are getting good feedback and now we are in the beginning of our festival run.  We had the international premiere in Montreal with [?????] and we won an award in the first fiction film category, Bronze Zenith for the First Fiction Feature Film.  It was a blast.  It was a nice start with the festival.  And probably because of Montreal and the award, a lot of festivals have taken notice  and we’re happy to see it is doing well around the world and we are happy to see it is going to Alaska - We’re pleased -  Actually the short film I was talking about was also screened at this festival in Anchorage, it was called Now You See Me, Now You Don’t  In 2006 it was screened in Anchorage.  

Q: I started going to the festival regularly in 2007, so I don't recall it.  Is anyone from the film coming to Anchorage? -  

 I would love to go, but we are shooting our next movie.  Same crew and same producer, same production company, same writer, financed by the same authority.  And the same amount of money.

8.  The new project - assassination of a famous courtesan, financing the film

Q: What's the new film about?

The ssassinatrion of a famous courtesan….Years ago that shook up the entire city of Budapest, everybody was talking about it because the courtesan was very famous, everyone knew about her and they were shocked because someone famous was getting murdered.

Q:  Was that before or after the Arch Duke got shot?

It’s before.  It takes place in January, so it’s maybe a couple of months before the assassination [of the Arch Duke].  It’s a style piece.  It’s the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy.  So it’s very difficult to recreate the era, because we have to start from scratch, the costumes the props, set, everything.  And we have so little money again, but I just couldn’t refuse this chance because the script is again is something I love very much.  I was warned, do you remember the first time you had to shoot in 17 days with so little money, you suffered and you were frustrated, and you want to do it again?  I said, yes, because it’s a good script and we have now, nineteen days so it’s two more days, - piece of cake - probably it's a bit longer,  the story. so it’s very difficult to shoot again, but hopefully next time we’ll have the backing of the film fund and we’ll have maybe three or four times the time and money, because it’s normal that Hungarian films are being shot in 35, 40, maybe 45 days and we had less than 20 both times.

 Q:  So they got good value for their money?

Yes, and I’m afraid they are getting used to it that I am maybe being categorized as a guy who can make something good with very little money, so let’s not give him any more.

 Q:  That’s good and that’s bad

Yes, so we are very excited, we start shooting in two weeks, and we see how that turns out.   But otherwise we have now a lot of projects we want to take to the film fund

9.  Why the Hungarian poster just had the ambassador's face and the English poster had guns

Based on our success with the Ambassador to Bern, they are open to support us, and we’ll see how this second movie turns out.

 Q:  One more question - about the differences between the two posters

The first one was a teaser poster.  In Hungary the guy who plays the Ambassador is a very famous actor.  So his face alone is a very strong image for most of the audience.  But the producer wanted to something to put more actors, more action to show it has some real action, excitement, suspense in the film, so that’s how we came up with the second poster.  And we decided to use the second one internationally, because no one knows the actor who plays the ambassador outside of Hungary, so we wanted to give a feel of what is happening in the film.  I remember the first version of the poster even had explosions in it because the graphic artist got carried away so let’s not go the Indian way or the Thai or Korean way 

 Q:  The US way

So we don’t have any of that in the film so we took it off.  

 Q:  Is there anything I didn’t ask?

I don’t want to spoil anything for you, so I’d rather not talk about the story  , , I think  the first film it was a great experience but every film maker says that,  especially working with the actors, that was the biggest jump for me, to work with such good actors.  And we were very happy and pleased to see all the love we received.  We didn’t know if it would go anywhere.  We wanted to make a film that might be broadcast on tv once or twice and that was it and we’re happy to see the length it goes.  These are very good months for us.

Q:  Looking forward to seeing it. 

I asked again if anyone from the film might be able to come to Anchorage and he said unfortunately not.  Everyone is busy.  He's starting his new film and the actors are all involved in live theater in Budapest.  He said that right then Ambassador to Bern was at the Cairo Film Festival and they'd been offered airline tickets and free hotel rooms, but no one could even take advantage of that, even though none of them had ever been to Cairo, and it's a lot closer to Budapest than Anchorage.