OK The Film Festival's Complete Website is Now UP

Rand has been working pretty hard to get the 'real' website up. From what I can gather, the person who was going to do it, didn't, and so Rand ended up creating it in the last couple of days. It's a big improvement over the early abbreviated version. It isn't as aesthetically pleasing as we might like, but all the information you need is there, with easy navigation, and lots of links. And if you find any important glitches let Rand know.

Here's the AIFF Main Link. On the other pages, for now, you have to go all the way down to the bottom to get back to the links.

The eagle-eyed might notice that this blog is linked on their main page. What's up with that? Well I blogged the festival last year and they liked what I did and asked if I would be the official blogger. They promised me I could say what I wanted, but I decided it was better to blog on my own and then if I write something that upsets one of the film makers, the Festival isn't responsible. They also threw in a free pass for me this year.

I probably won't say anything terrible about a film, but I did rant about one film last year that I thought was exploiting its subject as well as boorishly demeaning a whole country. I mentioned in an earlier post that if I sound a little promotional at times, it's only because I like films and I like the kinds of quirky films that show up at festivals, so I want as many people to know about the festival as possible so the festival will continue. Will I fudge on what I write to get people out? No way. There are plenty of people in Anchorage who like films. They're my main target. To get them out of the house in the dark December chill when inertia tugs heavily if they even think about leaving the house. But if others who normally don't go out to films hear about a movie on a topic they're into, that's good too.

And maybe if enough people come in from the Valley, they can work with the organizers to have a Valley venue too next year.

Minor Quake

The house just moved a bit. I'd guess it was under 3.5, but it all depends on how far away it was and how deep down.
-----------------------------------------------
[Update: Saturday, 1pm]: When I looked at the link on the 3.5, it said

Less than 3.5   Generally not felt, but recorded.

which meant that I was probably wrong. So I just checked and found this:




So today I found all this on the USGS (United States Geologic Survey) site:


So it was about 150 miles north (as the raven flies).

It was a bit unnerving to see all the recent earthquake activity in Alaska. Most of this we never feel in Anchorage. Alaska is just to the right of the middle near the very top with all the little red and orange boxes.

Anchorage International Film Festival -Special Workshops

There will be four special workshops at the Film Festival - all on the weekends. The workshops, from my experience, give you a chance to hear directly from the film makers and get a behind-the-scenes view of the movie. Sort of like the extra material on DVD's except it's real life and you can ask questions. Going to a workshop may mean you miss films playing at the same time, but catching up via dvd or even Youtube in the future is probably easier than getting a chance to interact live with the film makers themselves.


The workshops are $7 each. If you have an "all films and events" pass, you're covered.

Sunday, December 7, 2pm, Out North:

[All images can be enlarged by double-clicking on them.]

Andrew MacLean, an Inupiaq filmmaker, a local boy with a Sundance Prize, will talk about how he made the film Sikumi. The film itself will be shown

• Saturday December 13 at the Bear Tooth at 12:45 pm in the program "Snowdance Shorts" - a collection of Alaska related short documentaries.

I would hope that Alaska Native parents especially can take advantage of this opportunity to bring their kids. Role models are really important and there aren't that many opportunities to see prizing winning Alaska Native film makers (or any prize winning film makers for that matter.)

Photo of Andrew McLean from Native Works. There's also a bio there.




Friday, December 12, 8pm Out North:

Local talent time. Lots of people now have video cameras - even if it's just the one on your digital camera. So spend some time and make a short video during the conference. What can you lose? Watch for the instructions one week from today - Friday, December 5 - on the AIFF website.


Saturday December 13 11am, Out North:
I haven't seen any of the films, so I can only go by the titles and descriptions. But "The Last Days of Shishmaref"* sounds like a film that all Alaskans should watch. I bumped into a woman Monday who is studying the moving of Alaskan villages due to global warming problems and this sounds like an issue we haven't even begun, as a State, to understand. The movie itself will be shown twice:

• 12/7 Sun 6:15pm Bear Tooth
• 12/13 Sat 12:30pm Fireweed Theatre

So, if you go to the first showing, you'll have questions to ask Jan Louter, and can still catch the second showing if you want to see it again.


*The picture of Loutan is from the site linked above. The website is worth checking out, almost a whole project of its own, including blog excerpts like this one:

This makes me think a little about the criticism I read about Claude Lévi-Strauss:

It is perfectly true that an experienced anthropologust, visiting a "new" primitive society for the first time and working with the aid of competent interpreters, may be able, after a stay of only a few days, to develop in his own mind a fairly comprehensive "model" of how the social system works, but it is also true that if he stays for six months and learns to speak the local language very little of that original "model" wll remain.

The awe and amazement one feels on coming into a completely foreign environment can have one filling in the missing details with our own preconceptions; the quote from Jan's blog does have that amazed and dazzled tone to it. On the other hand, outsiders see things others don't see, and so they also can contribute meaningfully to the conversation. And relatively few urban Alaskans have been to Alaskan villages so this film should give us a peek at Shishmaref through the eyes of a Dutchman.

Saturday, December 13 3pm Out North

I was wondering if this might not be interesting for kids so I googled Jeff Chiba Stearns and got to his MySpace page. [The picture on the right is from his meditating bunny site.] These links took me into many different directions. Jeff has a number of incarnations including snowboarder. If I understood it right, he's a neighbor - he lives in British Columbia. Here's the trailer for one of his animated films, What Are You Anyways?



At the film festival, his short animation, Yellow Sticky Notes, will be shown in a late evening collection called "Love and Pain, Short Films for Adults"

• December 12 Fri 10:10pm • Bear Tooth [Not sure where I got this, the right times are below]
  

• Wednesday, December 10 at 5:30 PM - Anchorage Museum

• Saturday, December 13 at 12:30 PM - Anchorage Museum (Jeff will be at this showing)
  

I've sent Jeff an email to see if the workshop will be appropriate for kids. When I hear from him, I'll let you know.

[Update Saturday Morning: Jeff emailed back that yes, children are welcome:

"The animation workshop is geared toward all ages. So, yes, suggesting it would be great for kids is good. I always gage the direction of my workshops by the range of ages in the audience. I think the kids should be over the age of 8 since I will get a bit technical and really young kids will get bored. The workshop is geared towards teenagers and adults, too."

There's an interview with Jeff at Vancouver Animation where he talks about Yellow Sticky Notes, the film showing in Anchoage.]

Lots to keep us all pretty busy.

Claude Lévi-Strauss One Hundredth Birthday - Happy Birthday!

Today - November 28, 2008 - is finally the day Claude Lévi-Strauss turns 100. And yes, he is still alive. I've tried during this last week to offer a glimpse of what he's written and what others have said about him. It's stayed on the fairly heavy side, so for today, here's something everyone can relate to. This takes place in 1941 (I think) when he arrived in the US to teach at Columbia University.

...I arrived in the spring and classes were already over. I went to introduce myself at the New School where I was told all of a sudden, "You can't posibly call yourself Lévi-Strauss. Here you'll say your name is Claude L. Strauss." I asked why, and they said, "The students would find it funny." Because of the blue jeans! So for several years I lived in the States with a mutilated last name.

Ever since, this unfortunate coincidence has continued to haunt me. Like a ghost! Hardly a year goes by without my receiving, usually from Africa, an order for jeans. Shortly after 1950, in Paris, a total stranger came to my door, saying he sold fabric. He had found my name in the telephone book and wanted to propose my name for a pants factory. I objected, saying my position at the university and as a scholar was incompatible with that sort of undertaking. He told me not to worry and explained that the affair would never see the light of day, all he would have to do was suggest it. "Rather than lose exclusive rights to their brand-name, the company would pay handsomely to halt the project. All we would have to do is split the proceeds." I declined.

A few years ago I was at Berkeley as a visiting professor. One evening my wife and I wanted to have dinner in a restaurant where we didn't have reservations. There was a line. A waiter asked for our name so he could call us when our turn came. The moment he heard it, he asked, "The pants or the books?"

One has to admire the level of education of the waiters in California, for in Paris, when my wife leaves her name in a store for an order and people exclaim because it is such a well-known name, it's always because of the pants, never the books

From Claude Lévi-Strauss and Didier Eribon (1988) Conversations with Claude Lévi-Strauss
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 30

The rest of the posts in honor of Lévi-Strauss' birthday are here.

I've seen almost nothing in the mainstream media about this 100 birthday. Googling today, I did find this audio report on National Public Radio.

[Update 9:30pm: Anthropologi has a list of web tributes to Lévi-Strauss.]

Coup Coming in Thailand?

The ADN finally had a picture of the protests in Thailand on the front page of the B section yesterday. I guess Alaskans could be affected by the Bangkok airport being shut down so they thought it was news.

For those who want to know more about what's happening, Bangkok Pundit keeps a running account with links to news sources:

A Coup in the Works?

Posted by Bangkok Pundit | 11/27/2008 03:08:00 PM [remember they are about 16 hours ahead of Anchorage, so this report is about an hour old as I'm posting]

Thai Rath reports that PPP MPs believe there will be a coup tonight and are going to mobolise "red shirts". Also, that all 6 coalition parties agreed to use legal measures against the PAD who have broken the law to try to provoke a coup. PPP MPs have promised to mobolise not less than 20,000 persons per MP.

In Bangkok, MPs from the coalition parties will ask people to bring their cars on the streets or taxis to close roads to prevent a coup. The coalition parties believe a coup will happen tonight..

They are also going to release details of the financial backers of the PAD especially Bangkok Bank and Kasikorn bank. They will need to ask society's questions and explain to the people why they shouldn't withdraw their money. They will also opppose the purchase of goods from PAD supporting companies. They believe there will be no bloodshed.

Surapong has disclosed that 33 MPs have written a letter to the PM to fire Anupong. He says there is a "smell" of a coup in the air.

He Said, She Said

The ADN reported the other day on the disagreement about who will become mayor when Mark Begich steps down to become US Senator:

But chairman Matt Claman and vice-chair Sheila Selkregg have very different recollections of commitments that may or may not have been made at a private meeting in April that led to their leadership positions.

I know both these people and think they're both good mayoral material though with very different strengths. I also learned a long time ago, that what I thought I said and what my wife thought I said (and the same about what she said) are often miles apart.

One communication model identifies several places where the message can go wrong.

1. There's the sender
2. The sender has to create a message (the idea he wants to get to the receiver)
2. The message has to go through a medium or two (maybe just a shrug of a shoulder or raising of an eyebrow, or an actual formal language with words which then have to be conveyed through speech, an email, a note, etc.)
3. Then the receiver has to interpret the message she receives.

Each step of the way is fraught with potential problems.

• Has the sender really figured out what idea he wants to send, or is it still a vague idea?
• Has the sender translated it into a clear message? If the message is verbal, are the words chosen and organized unambiguously?
• Does any of the message get lost in the medium through which it is sent? Is the ink smeared? Does the tone of voice send a different message than the content?
• Finally, does the receiver use words the same way as the sender? How does her mental filtering system modify the meaning of the message?
  

It's very possible that they are both 'right.' The message that he 'sent' may well be what he said it was and, the message she received may also be what she said it was. But when two people, even two good people, strongly want the same thing, their communications may get skewed. Or worse.

I hope they can both put this all in perspective. We need another good mayor. And an assembly that can work closely with the mayor, but also stand up to the mayor when necessary. Good luck to the both of them and to all of us.

Driveway's Good, My Back Isn't

There were several new inches of snow this morning and I went out to clear the driveway. Our new neighbors had already shoveled the sidewalk all the way to our driveway! I like these neighbors. The snow was soft and dry and it was easy to clear, but I could also feel a little stitch in my lower left back. I put ice on it as soon as I got in, but I'm still walking funny. The deck in back is going to have to wait. But it's pretty and if I don't clear it now, there won't be any cars driving on it to make it much harder to clear later.


The table is open for tomorrow and J has a turkey hiding in our refrigerator. Being mostly vegetarian means that Thanksgiving is still turkey. But she did get another range grown organic bird. If you want the organic spiel, with video, you can look at last year's turkey post.

Anchorage International Film Festival - New Website Coming Soon

I talked to Michele at the Anchorage International Film Festival today. I was concerned about the website. Yes, she knew, and they are feverishly working on the new website. The current website will disappear and the new one will take its place Wednesday or Thursday. So be patient.

I also learned why there were blank pages in the program guide. That's what they sent to the Press and the blanks were for advertising. So, the complete program is already available as a downloadable PDF at the current AIFF site, or in readable form in my last post, and when the next Anchorage Press comes out, probably Thursday. That gives you a week to plan what movies you want to see.

Anchorage International Film Festival Program Guide and Tickets

This week's Press should have the whole AIFF program in it. But for those of you who want it early, there's a peek below. Of course you can get your PDF copy from the website I downloaded it last week and again today, but I can't seem to get the bottom of page 11 or pages 12, 14, or 16. Fortunately, the critical page is 15 which has the week's schedule.


Ticket Prices:



The price is $7 for most screenings.(See the program guide for special prices on classic movies, family matinees and Snowdance shorts.)

A six-pack punch card good for any six screenings is also available for $36.

Special event tickets for the opening night gala, Martini Matinee and the Golden Oosikar Awards are available at the venues the day of the event.

Passes:
All Events Pass is $75 includes all the films and special events.
All Films Pass is $60.

Advance Passes Punch card Purchases
Purchase your festival passes or punch cards in advance or during the festival at the Bear Tooth Theatrepub, AMIPA or www.anchoragefilmfestival.org.

Note: AMIPA is on the 3rd floor of the UAA Library. I can't find the link on the website for purchasing tickets.

The Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center and Regal Fireweed will also sell passes and punch cards during the festival's run.


Note again: Pages 11, 12, 14, and 16 are missing. You can enlarge the pages with down arrow on the right. You can also print the pages full size. I'm posting the top of page 11 (I had to delete 11 for it to work with Scribd] below.
Anchorage International Film Festival 2008 Online Guide

Get your own at Scribd or explore others: Culture Alaska Movies

Top of Page 11 - Double Click to enlarge

A lot of people have done a lot of volunteer work to make this film festival possible so go through the program and find something you like. If you're going to see at least ten films (that's one per day, or several bunched up on the weekends) then get the All Film Pass for $60 (and save $10).

There's also stuff for kids.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with the Festival. They liked how I blogged last year's festival and they've given me one free All Film Pass. They may even link to here, but I otherwise I'm just a film lover who's pushing the festival in general so that we have enough attendance that this becomes a regular event.

Claude Lévi-Strauss One Hundredth Birthday - Post 7: Friendly Ciriticism

[All my Lévi-Strauss Birthday posts are here.]
None of these Lévi-Strauss posts are intended to be accurate reflections individually or as a whole. They are basically snippets from a small pile of books and from websites that I find interesting and perhaps someone else will too.

From Edmund Leach (1970) Claude Lévi-Strauss, New York: Viking Press, pp. 11-13

This search for "fundamental properties" is a recurrent theme in all Lévi-Strauss' writings, but it is not just a matter of antiquarian curiosity. The point is rather that what is fundamental and universal must be the essence of our true nature, and we can use an understanding of that nature to improve ourselves:

The second phase of our undertaing is that while not clinging to elements from any one particular society, we make use of all of them in order to distinguish those principles of social life which may be applied to reform our own customs and not those of customs foreign to our own. . . . Our own society is the only one which we can transform and yet not destroy, since the changes which we should introduce would come from within. (Tristes Tropiques, pp. 391-92)

As this passage shows, Lévi-Strauss is a visionary, and the trouble with those who see visions is that they find it very difficult to recognize the plain matter-of-fact world which the rest of us see all around. Lévi-Strauss pursues his anthropology because he conceives of primitive peoples as "reduced models" of what is essential in all mankind, but the resulting Rousseau-like noble savages inhabit a world very far removed from the dirt and squalor that are the field anthropologist's normal stamping ground.

This is important. A careful study of Tristes Tropiques reveals that, in the whole course of his Brazilian travels, Lévi-Strauss can never have stayed in one place for more than a few weeks at a time and that he was never able to converse easily with any of his native informants in their native language.

There are many kinds of anthropological inquiry, but Malinowski-style intensive field work employing the vernacular, which is now the standard research technique employed by nearly all British and American social anthropologists, is an entirely different procedure from the careful but uncomprehending description of manners and customs, based on the use of special informants and interpreters, which was the original source for most of the ethnographic observations on which Lévi-Strauss, like his Frazerian predecessors, has chosen to rely.

It is perfectly true that an experienced anthropologist, visiting a "new" primitive society for the first time and working with the aid of competent interpreters, may be able, after a stay of only a few days, to develop in his own mind a fairly comprehensive "model" of how the social system works, but it is also true that if he stays for six months and learns to speak the local language very little of that original "model" will remain. Indeed, the task of understanding how the system works will by then appear even more formidable than it did just two days after his first arrival.

Well, I certainly can relate to this. When I had been in Thailand six months, I thought I was just figuring it all out. But after a while, the longer I stayed, the less I knew. Not because I actually knew less, but because my awareness of what I didn't know was growing at a much faster pace than what I did know.

Lévi-Strauss himself has never had the opportunity to suffer this demoralizing experience, and he never comes to grips with the issues involved.

In all of his writings Lévi-Strauss assumes that the simple, first stage "model" generated by the observer's first impressions corresponds quite closely to a genuine (and very important) ethnographic reality - the "conscious model" which is present in the minds of the anthropologist's informants. In contrast, to the anthropologists who have had a wider and more varied range of field experience, it seems all too obvious that this initial model is little more than an amalgam of the observer's own prejudiced presuppositions.

On this account many would argue that Lévi-Strauss, like Frazer, is insufficiently critical of his source material. He always seems to be able to find just what he is looking for. Any evidence, however dubious, is acceptable so long as it fits with logically calculated expectations; but wherever the data runs counter to the theory Lévi-Strauss will either bypass the evidence or marshal the full resources of his powerful invective to have the heresy thrown out of court. So we need to remember that Lévi-Strauss' prime training was in philosophy and law; he consistently behaves like an advocate defending a cause rather than a scientist searching for ultimate truth.

But the philosopher is also a poet. William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity (1933) belongs to a class of literary criticism which is wholly antipathetic to contemporary structuralists, but none the less it makes excellent introductory reading for any would-be student of Lévi-Strauss. Lévi-Strauss has not actually published poetry, but his whole attitude to the sounds and meanings and combinations and permutations of language elements betrays his nature. His grand four-volume study of the structure of American Indian mythodoly is not entitled Mythologies but Mythologiques - the "logics of myth" - and the object of the exercise is to explore the mysterious interconnections between these myth-logics and other logics. This is poet's country, and those who get impatient with the tortuous gymnastics of Lévi-Straussian argument - as most of us do - need to remember that he shares with Freud a most remarkable capacity for leading us all unawares into the innermost recesses of our secret emotions.

I'm not sure if this is damning with faint praise, or, what I would rather see it as, an acknowledgment that while Lévi-Strauss does not practice what most anthropologists practice, it's because he is doing something else. I'd go on to say something more sublime, but I'm like that anthropologist who has visited this Lévi-Straussian village for a few weeks. All my impressions are suspect. But there is a lot to churn the brain cells.