AIFF 2014: Reflections On This Year's Festival From Jim Parker and From Me

The festival activities are now over (well, as I write this there are still people in the Alaska Experience Theater watching the last movie in Best of the Fest).  Let me take a first stab at some of my reactions to this festival.  But first, here's Jim Parker, Director of Film Programming, talking on Dec. 13, about how the festival was going for him.




Jim has been really great to work with as a blogger trying to get information about the festival this year and in previous years.  So I'm not at all happy with the news that he's moving to North Carolina, but he did say he hopes to be up for the festival next year.

Now, my thoughts:

1.  Technical Issues

I experienced fewer technical glitches and I didn't hear about them from others.  There were a couple of times when the wrong film began to play, but it  was quickly fixed.  I don't know about any showings that had to be canceled because the the film was in a format that particular theater couldn't play or other technical problems.

I'm still hoping they'll have a way to play movies without the audience seeing the computer screen as the projectionist (can we still use that term?) goes through the list of films and then clicks the right one.  (And while part of me likes the transparency of that, another part would like the film to just come on without us seeing under the hood.)

2.  The Festival Trailer

We've had good ones in the past, but no matter how good they were, after seeing them about four or five times (they're played before each film), they tended to get tiresome.  This year's trailer incorporated clips from about 20 different films in the festival and had music that I enjoyed hearing each time it played. I never got bored watching this one and I watched it a lot of times. And I enjoyed the care with which the clips were edited and how the music worked with the video - especially as it went to the clip from Taking My Parents To Burning Man.  Each time, I could identify a clip from one more movie I'd seen.


2014 Anchorage International Film Festival Teaser from Anchorage Int'l Film Festival on Vimeo.


3.  The Venues

The Museum and the Alaska Experience Theater are a five minute walk from each other.  That was good.  The Bear Tooth had no films the second weekend this year.  I never made it to the library or the Alaska Community Works.  Perhaps ride share boards could be put up in the venues for people looking for a ride to get to another showing.  For the most part, the volunteers seemed to be good at getting rides for visiting film makers, but others could have used some help too.  The Bear Tooth had good lighting for film makers doing Q&A after the films.  In the past, I've had to settle for sound only because the stage was too dark for video.  The sound had an echo up front, but when I moved back and to the middle it was better.  Mike at the Bear Tooth was great, and the Alaska Experience Theater staff was doing a lot more too - like food and drinks.  They also had a scanner for pass holders which made getting tickets much faster.  And they had 'real' tickets.

4.  The Films

Overall, I thought we've had stronger fields in the past.  There were plenty of good films.  Animation and Narrative Shorts were strong, but there was only one program of animated films.  There were a lot more Alaska films and they got audiences.  I only got to see two - but one, The Empty Chair, was really, really good.  The films offered a very diverse set of experiences and points of view.  And as much as I complain about not being able to see everything, that's not really a bad thing.  I'll talk more about the films I liked in a later post. [UPDATE:  Dec. 29:  Here's my list of favorites compared to the festival awards - and comments on the features.  I'm working on the documentaries.]  One word that came to me throughout, and I heard from others, was "editing."  A lot of films seemed to go on too long.  It's hard to cut up your baby, but it often makes a better film.

5.  Scheduling

With so many films shown in different locations, it's impossible to make a perfect schedule. But I'd like it to be not only possible, but relatively easy, to see all the films in competition in any one category.  Animation:  no problem.  They were all in one program.  Narrative Shorts?  Much harder.  Thursday had all three programs playing.  You could watch the Love and Pain program and then the Mixed Bag program.  But the Global Village overlapped the other two.  And the Mixed Bag program only played once.  You had to carefully read the program in advance to see that the only way to see all the Narrative Shorts was to go to the first Global Village program the first weekend.

I wasn't able to see all the documentaries in competition, but I think I could have, if I sacrificed seeing those of another category.

A little more attention to timing would have helped a couple of times.  One night there was an hour gap between films at the Bear Tooth.  The next night the gap was 75 minutes.  They could have put in most of a shorts program in the gap.  Or had some film discussions for the audience members who were staying for the next film.

6.  Visiting Film Makers

There were lots of them and it was great hearing them after their films and talking to them in between films.  It would be nice if they had badges that labeled them as film makers so that audience members could know more easily.

Those are just some off the top of my head thoughts that I wanted to get down before I forget them.

And Bye Jim, we're going to miss you.

Cuba and Marijuana - Strong Emotion And Political Power Have Too Long Trumped Reason

"President Obama on Wednesday ordered the restoration of full diplomatic relations with Cuba and the opening of an embassy in Havana for the first time in more than a half-century as he vowed to “cut loose the shackles of the past” and sweep aside one of the last vestiges of the Cold War."  (NY Times)

When Nixon, in 1970, announced he was going to China to reestablish diplomatic ties, it was 21 years after the Communists defeated the Kuomintang.

It's taken almost 65 years since Castro took over Cuba in January 1959, for the US to finally begin to reestablish diplomatic ties with Cuba.

Havana was both prosperous and corrupt before the revolution, and there was a huge economic gap between the cities and the rural areas. From PBS:

Between 1952 and 1958, Cubans from all walks of life -- students, businessmen, mothers, politicians -- united in opposition against Batista. Author Carlos Alberto Montaner describes the mood: "the talk was about democracy, freedom and respect for human rights; the... objective was to restore the rule of law that had been swept aside by Batista."

Cuba had been a Spanish colony and then, after the Spanish-American War essentially became a colony of the US.  Again from PBS:

Since achieving independence in 1902, Cuba had suffered what simply could be called bad government. A bloody and costly struggle to achieve independence from Spain had devastated Cuba's economy. The insurgent leaders, known as the  had been decimated. José Martí, Cuba's , was killed in battle in 1895. On May 20, 1902, the birth date of the first Cuban republic, no leader had the power to harness the passions and ambitions unleashed by independence. The U.S. Congress passed the Platt Amendment, granting the U.S. the right to intervene militarily in Cuba to protect its interests there. The U.S. position further undermined the legitimacy of the government, as it placed the United States at the center of Cuban affairs. Invoking the Platt Amendment, the United States would occupy Cuba between 1906 and 1909, and continue to intervene in later years.

If we hadn't been so consumed by the Cold War and still being lapped by the ripples of the McCarthy era, and had not been so blindly supportive of American business interests in Cuba, we might have worked with Castro from the beginning.  But CIA chief Allen Dulles and others were hostile.  His (and his brothers') strong support for US business interests can be seen in this discussion of the Dulles brothers and Nixon in 1948.  By 1959, John Foster Dulles was dead, but Allen was CIA chief,  presumably with the same interests of protecting US corporations. Castro's flirting with communism was a big problem for them.  Castro versus the Eisenhower Administration gives a sense of the competing interests and policies.

We don't know how all the wealthy, who fled Cuba for Miami, made their fortunes in Havana, but in many cases, I suspect they would not want their true stories exposed.  Other people had more legitimate gripes.  But the Cuban-Americans, bolstered by the US loss of face by having a Communist country 90 miles from its borders, have been able to hold the Castro regime and the people of Cuba hostage to US embargo for over 50 years.  Whatever evils Castro has committed, and he clearly did not live up to the revolution's promises of democracy, they aren't worse than other countries we have diplomatic relations with - China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, our WW II enemies Germany and Japan, and various South American dictatorships over the years.  The difference is an emotional difference fired up by an active Cuban refugee community.  Even the sting of losing a war to Vietnam only lasted 20 years before we had full diplomatic relations again.

In the same way, marijuana was emotionally linked with the hippies and  the anti-war movement of the 60's and 70's.  And a huge illegal drug smuggling business whose wealth is able to corrupt law enforcement officials, legislators, and private companies.   


In both the cases of Cuba and marijuana, US policy was twisted from reasonable and humane by strong, negative emotional reactions and the power of those with a vested interest in the status quo.  For many, marijuana represents lawlessness and the anti-government protests of the Vietnam war.

Cuba has had and continuous to have serious issues.  Moving toward normal diplomatic relations with Cuba ends a 55 year grudge.  It doesn't solve all the issues, but it's a step forward.

Legalizing marijuana also moves us to more reasonable and sensible approaches for dealing with the side effects of marijuana use.  It doesn't mean we'll adopt good policies.  Certainly the new Alaska law legalizing marijuana, is imperfect.  It gives away too much power and incentive to private sector businesses  to sell as much grass as they can.  The state needs to craft regulations to most sensibly implement the legalization, such as requiring more consumer protection in terms of quality of the products and labeling and limiting advertising.

But at long last we can stop the costly, ineffective wars against Cuba and marijuana users, and move on to more positive and productive relationships.

Just as Nixon's trip to China is seen as his greatest legacy, I'm sure that Obama's reopening our relationship with Cuba will be a big part of his legacy.

Coney Island, Venice Beach, Santa Monica Airport, And LA Rain

We flew down to LA right after the film festival ended and slept most of Monday. But I did get in a bike ride down to Venice beach. There was some sun, but mostly clouds.


There were some, but not too many, boardwalk vendors.  I'd been thinking about the Venice Boardwalk after seeing the film Coney Island:  Dreams for Sale at the festival.  It was about a developer who bought up a huge chunk of Coney Island real estate and was planning to build some big hotels and a mall.  Local folks rose up in protest, but were only modestly successful in their efforts to scale the development back.  The area wasn't zoned for large scale residential, but people in the film speculated that a hotel could and would be converted to condos eventually and the development would destroy the quirky kinds of shops and the unique community at Coney Island.

Venice Beach has, at least superficially, the same kind of quirky shops and community, and it's also right at a beach.  It doesn't have an amusement park, but there is a small one on the Santa Monica pier about a mile north.

The movie, which, by the way, was the runner up in the documentary category, got me thinking about whether the Venice Boardwalk was a likely target for developers like Coney Island and what protection there was for this strip along the beach.  I guess the people in the area need to be alert for people buying up property - making sure they aren't fronts for some giant developer.  This is one part of the southern California beach that is still wide open to anyone.

It also got me to thinking about what happened in the November election in Santa Monica where there were two ballot initiatives.  One, from the jet owners and airport interests to require a vote of the people of Santa Monica before the airport could be curtailed or closed down.  The other, in response, was to require a vote only if there were plans to develop the airport, but not to put in park or recreational activities.

It turns out the private jet and airplane folks' initiative (D) lost (58.8% to 42.8% and the park initiative (LC) won (60.2% to 39.8%.)  There were only 24,053 people who voted for Measure D and 500 more who voted for LC.  I'm not sure how many registered voters Santa Monica has, but in 2005 there were 60,000.








Over night it rained somewhat.  California still needs lots more rain to make up for the long period of drought and more is scheduled tonight.  Here's one of my mom's epidendrums after the rain - the red flower, not the leaf.  This is two pictures photoshopped together, with some playing around with the leaf.  But not too radically.

The epidendrums are tiny (about the size of a quarter) orchids that bloom in a bunch of ten or fifteen.

"My job description is to enlighten minds, open hearts and create world peace."

". . .  his actual title is "Jolly Good Fellow."
Chade-Meng Tan: Which nobody can deny.
Anderson Cooper: So, what does a Jolly Good Fellow do?
Chade-Meng Tan: My job description is to enlighten minds, open hearts and create world peace."

(Chade-Mend Tan works at Google.)

This is from an Anderson Cooper segment on 60 Minutes on Mindfulness.  There are several points in this report where Cooper asks someone things like

"I can imagine some people rolling their eyes and saying, "Oh, come on  , , "    

or

"To some people though this may sound like kind of New Age gobbledygook?"

When he does, the person he's talking to cites research that documents the positive benefits of meditation and mindfulness.

"Judson Brewer: This is just the next generation of exercise. We've got the physical, you know, exercise components down. And now it's about working out how can we actually train our minds."

The Western world has mastered a way of knowing the world called science, which enables humans to manipulate the natural world in many powerful ways, that often have negative side effects for human beings.  Such as the stress that causes people and, according to this report, many corporations, to turn to mindfulness.   Meanwhile the Eastern world has worked on mastering oneself, focusing on one's own body and learning to control it.

To me, there is something wrong when humans work to find technologies to create more efficient and effective ways to literally kill other human beings as well as technology that slowly kills what it means to be human.  

You can see the whole video (and text) here.
At the film festival, I had to remind myself to enjoy the movie I was watching and not worry about the ones I was missing.

AIFF 2014: Awards Update - Alaska Films, Features

I'm at the Organic Oasis.  People are eating.  I'll just add to this post rather than a bunch of posts.  So keep checking.  [I've changed my mind, I'll just be putting up new posts, and add to them.  The did the docs first because one of the winners was heading to the airport.  See doc winners below.]

Starting 6:48pm

Features
#3  I Believe in Unicorns
#2  Come To My Voice
#1  Ambassador To Bern

Made in Alaska
#3  Empty Chair
#2  Tracing Roots
#1  Detective, Detective, Detective


Added starting 6:33pm

Special Award - Founders Award - Film and Film Makers in the Spirit of the Festival

Universal Language

Shorts
#3   How Hipólito Vázquez Found Magic Where He Didn’t Expect It
#2  What Cheer?
#1  Bis Gleich


Super Shorts
#3  Enfilade   (see wikipedia)
#2  Full Windsor
#1  Four Brothers, or Three, Wait . . .


Animation Awards
#3  Ronald Gottlieb
#2  Wire Cutters
#1  365


Reading a poem about the oosik, which are the awards for the festival.  I have a picture of the oosik awards in an earlier post tonight.

6:32pm Thanking all the sponsors now.

She's thanking lots and lots of people who were involved in various activities like the library discussion on homelessness, the QuikFreeze people, Frost and the drive in movie,

I'm missing people.  I should have gotten her list before hand.  I'll try to update this later.

This is in reverse order - most recent first.
Charlie  - who did the trailer (which was really good - probably the best ever, because it included clips from some of the films and had great music (that could be listened to over and over again.)

Animation - Jonathan, Rachel

Docs - Will and Jim Parker

Shorts Programmers - Rich Curtner and George

Features Programmers Kelly Walters, Gita, Natalie Eleftheriadis

Volunteer Coordinator - Rebecca.  Has been volunteer at Sundance for many years.

Tony Sheppard - Founder of the festival and hospitality left this morning.

Christie - applied for several grants for us and got one from the Atwood foundation for film maker travel.  Liaison at the library too.

Rich Curtner - the board president, and shorts programmer along with George
all the technical stuff on the website, and all the media, finances.  We owe him a lot.

Thanking key people - Jim Parker first - who's leaving for North Carolina.

Best Docs:

#3:  Seeds of Time
#2:  Coney Island
#1: White Earth

AIFF 2014: Pictures from Award Gala

I was going to add names, but this is going way too fast.  These are pictures of folks eating and now they are giving out the awards.  They are recognizing Jim  Parker, the director of film programming who is moving to North Carolina after this festival.  

AIFF 2014: Sean McCarthy On 'Moving Out' And The Kurdish Film 'Come To My Voice'

We saw the animation program last night and it was probably the overall strongest program.  Every film was good and a number were better than that.  I also knew nothing about what I was going to see - except for Ronald Gottlieb - which meant everything was a total surprise.

One of the film makers there was Sean McCarthy with a 6 minute video that he and many, many friends have been working on for several years.  It was quite elaborate with the key character going into different picture frames in a gallery and interacting with the pictures.   Here's Sean briefly talking about it after the showing last night.  But this is the kind of thing you can't talk about very helpfully, you have to just see it.  I tried to link it in the video, but I couldn't figure out how to link it to something outside of YouTube.





Here's a link to the video on his website. I had trouble getting it to work. I'm crediting that to my slow internet connection.

And for the record, we saw Come To My Voice this morning.  A strong feature about a Kurdish village where an informer has said they had guns.  But the Turkish soldiers can't find any.  So they take the men and tell the women and the mayor that when they turn in the guns, they'll release the men.  The film focuses on the mother of one of the men and her granddaughter as they go about trying to free their son/father.  This is the kind of pictures we should see more of, to give a sense of words we hear on the news all the time, like 'Kurds.'  By the way, the mountain scenery was beautiful.  

[For people interested in the technical stuff - there are black borders on this video because the new iMovie has a wider screen for the videos and since I'm pretty close to my subjects, it cuts too much out.  So I need to see if I can adjust my camera to to use a different aspect ratio.]

AIFF 2014: Sunday. The Last Day. Turkey, China, Florida, Then Awards

This is the last day of the festival.  Sort of.  Tuesday and Wednesday will have Best of the Fest, where they will show some of the winning films again for those who missed them or want to see them again.

So here's Sunday:

I've heard good things about Come To My Voice from different folks, so that's where I'm headed first.  It's a film that focuses on a Kurdish family in Turkey.  I suspect I'll then go see the Chinese films.  Husband, Wife, and the Other Man, then the shorts.  They are sponsored by the Confucius Institute at UAA and should be good.  Though, they will have been approved by the Chinese government.    I saw Last Stop, Flamingo.  It's a quirky little film that had lots of nice touches about the director's road trip to Florida.  (Quirky isn't a put down.  I mean here that it creates its own conventions and doesn't worry about how a film is supposed to be.)

The Awards Galas I've attended in past years have been very casual events with good food and a chance to talk with the different film makers.

AIFF 2014: Barefoot Artist and Coney Island

Barefoot Artist turned out to be a really good documentary.  Maybe.  I have some second thoughts, but I can't deny I was pulled right into the story from the beginning and the movie traveled far - geographically and emotionally, and raised lots of questions about art, fulfilling one's own destiny, and duty to others.  More on this later after I've thought it through.

Alessandra Giordano after Coney Island

Coney Island, Dreams For Sale was yet another film that shows the how hope and dreams can inspire a community  and how a film maker can be entangled into a long terms commitment to a story.  Like Divide In Concord,  Coney Island followed community organizing over a public decision,  The film showed a wide variety of interesting characters and pulled a lot of loose ends together well.





I also saw Last Stop, Flamingo.  There were a lot of interesting parts here - I liked the animation between parts.  I didn't get a sense of it all fitting totally together, though there was a theme of the present and the past and change as he looked at different people and places that reflected unfulfilled dreams, and change over the centuries.  The film reflects a lot of talent.

I also realized that I could use the back of the Museum's auditorium to walk back and forth while watching Flamingo.  I really needed to be doing something other than sitting.  I think for just one movie, sitting is fine.  Especially if you can walk or bike to and from the movie.  But for a festival where you're watching two or three or more movies a day, there's a need to move around while watching.  

AIFF 2014: Who Is Ronald Gottlieb And Does Engin Karabagli Have Hairy Legs?

In Engin Karabagli's short animated film, which plays in the Animation program tonight at 7pm, the main character is named Ronald Gottlieb.  And that is also the name of the film.  Where did that name come from?

Ronald Gottlieb has a problem in the film.  He has no hair on his skinny legs.

At the festival, I keep running into Engin.  We made a short video of him describing his film last week.  It was the regular canned statement that all filmmakers have practiced just in case someone asks.  I prefer something more spontaneous.  So I asked for more on Thursday.  And I put the two clips together and posted them Friday here.

But then I thought I really should have asked him why he named the movie Ronald Gottlieb and was there some personal issue about leg hair?  And so when I saw him again Friday night at the short docs program, I got the chance to ask those questions.  And you can see and hear the answers below.



You can see Ronald Gottlieb and the other short animated films at 7pm today (Saturday) at the Alaska Experience Theater.