What Makes ConocoPhillips Employee Volunteers So Atypical?

Note: This post wanders, as do many of my posts. It's not because I'm being lazy, though I could spend several more days revising and rewriting this. But blogging isn't academic research. On the other hand, I don't think I should be blogging just off the top of my head without thinking. I'm hoping - but not holding my breath - that my readers may see something that causes them to think a little differently than they did before. But when I write I also learn new things and see things a little differently. So I'm trying to avoid instant posts that reflect nothing but my own biases. The intent here is to look at things and try out new interpretations, not to vent.

That said, this is written in a larger context about the role of large oil companies in the world that I have written about previously. While on the surface, oil companies project an image of responsible corporate citizens, they are rich, powerful players on the world stage who are well dressed and polite when possible, but also in their pursuit of oil are willing to make deals with leaders of countries like Burma and the Congo, leaders who brutally mistreat their populations. In Alaska, all this goes on much more genteelly, but goes on never the less. Some background to my thoughts on all this can be found in the following posts: Economic Hitman and Responding to Trip1050. Trip1050 works for an oil company and commented on my posts on the AGIA forums. He asks why I mistrust oil companies. So, if you are offended by my skepticism about oil companies, read why I feel that way before commenting.

These posts often wander, because I don't think things can be compartmentalized into neat little soundbites. Well, yes, they can. But those are not accurate reflections of the world. They are attempts to neaten the world into pieces we can understand, but aren't usually accurate. So, when I write, I try to capture how my mind wandered into various areas, I try to capture at least a taste of the messiness of reality, and allow the reader to see that nothing is black and white. While I strive to understand why things happen, understanding why someone does something, doesn't mean excusing it. But understanding why may help devise better ways to prevent others from repeating those things. Ultimately, I'm hoping that I and my readers can step back a bit from whatever the topic is, so they can see it in the bigger view, the view we don't get when we are right in the middle of it.


OK, so here's the post:




The Anchorage Daily News has been carrying large ads from ConocoPhillips touting their employees who volunteer in the community.

"Not Your Typical Volunteer" the ads proclaim.

When help is needed, ConocoPhillips employees don't just get their feet wet - they dive in. That's not your typical volunteering and Peter Brakora isn't a typical volunteer.

So, non-ConocoPhillips employees don't dive in? I've seen volunteers at a lot of non-profits who give of their hearts to help out. At Covenant House, for example, I've seen Mentors (people working full time and with families) come to monthly mentor meetings, plus they meet with the young adults they are mentoring a couple times a month, plus phone calls. This isn't just getting their feet wet, this IS diving all the way in.

So yesterday I called ConocoPhillips to find out what makes their employees so much better than other employees. (Wait, you're saying, it says "not typical" it doesn't say "better". OK, so not typical means, what? Different? Different how? The only clue is that "they don't just get their feet wet, they dive in." To me that is saying they do more, they get more involved, they're better. Come on, why would they spend tens of thousands of dollars (they've posted a number of these ads over the last month) to say their employees are just different? They wouldn't. They are saying their employees are better.) First I asked to be connected to the Human Resources Department assuming they would be running employee volunteer programs. That got me to a recording that told me to apply on line. So I called back. The receptionist wasn't sure who to send me to, but settled on Sandy Tusano, who didn't know, but was very nice and tried to forward me to Sheri Jones, who wasn't in, so Sandy sent me to Gina Luckey, where I left a message. (I'm not sure about my spelling of Sheri Jones. When I tried to Google her, I did find a Sherry Jones who once worked with Bill Moyers on an exposé on chemical companies. But this is a common name and I doubt it's the same person.)

In the meantime I went to the ConocoPhillips site to see if I could come up with answers about what makes them special (not typical.)

Headquartered in Houston, Texas, the company has approximately 33,600 employees worldwide [from Conoco-Phillips Website]

In 2006, the company matched nearly 3,500 employee gifts for a combined total of $6.1 million.[from Conoco-Phillips Website]

So, I started calculating. This would mean that just over 10% of all ConocoPhillips employees participated in this program. Those who participated gave an average of $1743. ($6,100,000/3500 = $1743) What does that mean? Is it a lot? A little? It depends, in part, on how much ConocoPhillips employees get paid. Checking the internet, there are various sites giving us a peek into CP salaries. Payscale.com has salaries that presumably CP employees posted. Theirs is a small sample, and not necessarily all people who posted salaries were actually CP employees or posted their correct salaries. I would guess that people checking out salaries are those earning less than average, but that's just a guess. We also don't know if this is a representative set of salaries or if it skews high or low. But I think this at least gets us in the ballpark. (This is an example of my rambling, because I'm not just giving you a number, but I'm telling you how I got it, and why I'm using it, and raising questions so you can evaluate its validity on your own.)

[You can double click the images to enlarge them.]

I'm also going to assume that people tend to stay at CP if they can, so I'm going to take the 10-19 year median salary of $87,973. A person earning $87,973 contributing $1,743 is contributing just under 2% of her salary. (The regs allow them to contribute up to $6000.)[Or so I thought when I read the website yesterday. This turns out to be related to volunteer time. More on that later.]

Or we can put this into context another way. Here's a list of the top eight executive salaries at CP Worldwide (filed 4/2/2008): (Again, double click to enlarge the chart.)

These eight employees out of a total of about 33,000 employees of CP earned $109,440,405. That's $109 million. (That's eight people making the same amount of money as 1,224 employees making the guestimated 10-19 year employee median of $87,973.)

The $6.1 in matching contributions that CP makes for ALL its worldwide employees is equal to 5.5% of the income of the top eight employees of ConocoPhillips!

But I really wanted to hear from ConocoPhillips about what makes their employees such atypical volunteers. So I called Gina Luckey again. She said she'd sent the message over to her supervisor Natalie Lowman, Director of Media, so I called her and left a message. (The CP website lists her as Director of Communications.) She called back not long ago.

She helped clarify some things. First, ConocoPhillips does NOT match cash contributions, they give grants up to $1500 to organizations that CP employees volunteer with for a certain minimum number of hours. I looked back at the website and it does say grants for volunteering on one page, but the other page that said "... the company matched nearly 3,500 employee gifts for a combined total of $6.1 million" does make it sound like contributions in money rather than time.

As I look back now while writing this, that $1500 figure doesn't gibe with the average I figured based on the CP Worldwide website figure of $6.1 million for 3500 employees, which came to $1743 per employee. That page of the website says

By volunteering their time, employees in the United States enable organizations to receive up to $6,000 in grants per year from ConocoPhillips to defray costs for programs and events, making a positive and important difference in their communities.

Natalie Lowman wasn't exactly sure how much CP gave in such grants in Anchorage, but thought it was around $60,000 for 2008. They could give up to $1500 per employee. When I pointed out that the website said up to $6,000, she said, yes, if there were four employees at one organiztion.

Answers.com says ConocoPhillips Alaska, Inc has 900 employees. At $1500 per employee, that would make a total of 40 CP employees volunteering. If they didn't give the full $1500 per employee, say they only gave half of that - $750 - on average, that would be 80 employees out of 900. So we could guestimate that somewhere between 4.5% - 9% of CP Alaska employees volunteered enough to trigger a grant. Or maybe they did volunteer work but didn't apply for a grant. Or more than four people worked for the same non-profit.

I hadn't done that local calculation when I talked to Lowman, but I did mention that worldwide, given the number of employees listed on the website cited above, that it came out to less than 10% of the employees. That's when she cleared up my misconception that CP matched cash contributions. She said that most employees were really busy, like she is, and so they would rather make a monetary contribution than a volunteer contribution. But, she clarified further, the company does NOT match monetary contributions. She also said that most CP employees contribute through United Way. She said if one in ten volunteered, probably six or seven others made monetary contributions.

I also know that CP makes other contributions to the community such as $100,000 to the Museum in 2007. And there was a $3.68 million gift to the University of Alaska also in 2007. But we need to put an * on that. The University of Alaska press release on the gift also says,

The annual gifts stem from a charter agreement between the oil companies and the state regarding the BP merger with ARCO in the late 1990s. Part of the charter agreement identifies public higher education as a top priority for charitable donations.

So, these donations are part of an agreement negotiated so that BP could merge with ARCO in 1999. The Foraker Group Nonprofit Report December 2006 written by the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER), University of Alaska Anchorage (pp. 43-44) gives a bit more information on this charter agreement:

In 2006 two of the largest oil companies operating in the state, BP (BP Exploration Alaska, Inc.) and ConocoPhillips contributed a combined total of over $22 million in cash to various Alaska nonprofits, including the University of Alaska, and other organizations such as local governments. Their annual contribution is based upon oil production and price as defined by a Charter Agreement that resulted from the ARCO BP merger in 1999. Some in-kind donations are not included in this total, and some of their donations fund capital expenditures rather than operations.

So a minimum amount of contribution is required by this Charter Agreement that was a condition for the BP-ARCO merger. I called Scott Goldsmith, the author of the ISER report, to find out how to get access to the Charter Agreement.He wasn't sure if he ever actually saw a copy, but said he'd check for it tomorrow. [Update: I also called UAA Advancement and later the UA Foundation called and said they would find the Agreement and email it to me .] On the internet, nearly all references I find about BP or ConocoPhillips contributions to the University have that standard clause in them.

I also asked Lowman how ConocoPhillips encourages their employees to volunteer. She said that there's paid time off for clean up day and that employees on Boards can go to board meetings on company time because the company wants them to be involved in the community. I think she said there was additional paid time off allowed for volunteering, but I'm not sure.

So, where's this all going? I initially took exception to the idea that ConocoPhillips employees are somehow better than the typical volunteer. Lowman, when I raised that point, said that wasn't what was intended at all. They were just trying to salute their employees who volunteer and they support all volunteers from any organization. I believe that was their intent.

But was "Not your typical volunteer" simply to mean that they are different? "They don't just get their feet wet, they dive in" implies, to me anyway, that typical volunteers just get their feet wet, but do not dive in.

Well, I guess we could say they aren't typical because they are actually getting their regular salary for some of their volunteer work, not like typical volunteers who volunteer on their own time. I don't say this to belittle the ConocoPhillips volunteers, who, I'm sure, spend more hours volunteering than they are reimbursed for. But it does make them atypical. There's a bit less sacrifice if you're being paid your regular salary to volunteer.

Perhaps the ads should say that ConocoPhillips is not your typical employer, because they pay their employees to volunteer. But then some other employers match their employees' financial contributions.

I think we also have to address the question of why corporations give to charity in the first place.

Many economists argue that the purpose of corporations is to make a profit, that any extra money should be given to shareholders, not to charity. GMR, a blogger whose profile describes him as a Republican MBA in Finance who works for a private equity firm summarizes what many feel about corporate giving:

There are a few times when I think a corporation should give to charity. The first is if it's not really charity: on the surface, it looks like charity, but so much good will is generated, that it's a win-win...

The second type of charity that I'd support is if a corporation were trying to reverse an earlier wrong. Even without the PR benefit. (For instance, if a record company distributed a CD that advocated cop killing, which is within the first amendment rights, but then someone followed the advice. The corporation may not have acted illegally, but it certainly didn't act responsibly).

Finally, I'd support general charity to whatever organization if the board truly believed that the shareholders wanted to give to these charities.

Linda Sugin argues in a long article that the tax law should be changed so that charitable deductions are considered business expenses:

In fact, there is significant evidence that corporations generally make charitable donations in furtherance of their business--either with respect to their employees, customers, or the communities in which they operate. Most corporate charitable giving can easily fit within the requirements of section 162's deduction for ordinary and necessary business expenses. (p. 8)

Corporations, she says later, shouldn't be making charitable donations that don't help the bottom line. When they do it leads to abuse:

Both the popular press and the academic literature are replete with discussion of corporate philanthropy that does more to achieve the private interests of managers than either the public interest, which is the concern of charitable organizations, or the shareholders' interest, which is the concern of corporate governance. (27) The problem seems primarily to be one related to executive compensation; corporate philanthropy that allows managers to support their favorite causes and enjoy the prestige benefits of that support is simply a managerial perquisite. (28)

The Supreme Court's interpretation of "gift" implies something given out of "detached and disinterested generosity." (45) Obviously, a corporation never does anything with feelings of generosity. (46) (p. 8)

The above quotes are from a business professor.

I think Alaskans reading these ads should keep this carefully in mind. The big oil companies used to pretty much have their way in Alaska. The merger between BP and ARCO caused some Alaskans to fight for a few concessions, including the Charter Agreement requiring a set formula for charitable giving. Then, in the wake of the FBI corruption investigations, the Legislature did not approve the privately negotiated deal between Frank Murkowski and the oil companies.

Governor Palin set up criteria for the gasline that the oil companies didn't like and they boycotted the AGIA RFP. They still have a lot of power and they don't have to agree to release the gas. They could scuttle the agreement with Trans Canada. They are working together on the so-called and trademarked "Denali Plan" as an alternative. Plus, the price of oil went over $4 last summer and now has dropped under $2.50 in Anchorage (but still much higher than in the Lower 48) which has a lot of Alaskans wondering if something fishy isn't going on.

So this is a good time to make Alaskans think that the oil companies care for Alaskans. That their employees are good community members (and I'm sure many are). But it was the Communications (PR) office who fielded my questions, not the Human Resources office which normally would be in charge of employee benefit programs. Part of me can't help but wonder whether "it's not really charity: on the surface, it looks like charity."

But I probably wouldn't have had anything to say about this if it hadn't been for the implication that ConocoPhillips employees somehow make better volunteers. We know that oil companies put out 'feel good' ads to make the locals think the companies are good citizens, but when they do this at the implied expense of other good citizens, I just needed to say something.

Black Members of Congress Update

I called the Congressional Black Caucus today in a (successful) attempt to finalize my chart on Black members of Congress following the November election. I hadn't been able to confirm the reelection of Virgin Island delegate Donna Christian Christensen. She IS returning. I also wasn't able to determine if any new African-Americans had been elected from districts that hadn't had Black representatives. The CBC said there were no new members, except Martha Fudge who replaces Stephanie Tubbs Jones who died. (Other new Black members who had replaced Black members of Congress had done so early enough to be listed as members of the 110th Congress.)

You can take the link to previous post to see the chart of the members.

This means that the US House now has one fewer Black member because William Jefferson, who was indicted on bribery charges was not reelected. In his place, the first Vietnamese-American was elected to Congress. And the only Black member of the Senate also leaves, but in a more positive way - Barack Obama resigned from the Senate after being elected President.

The link also has a paragraph from a report that lists the number of members who are women, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American in the 110th Congress. It's the last paragraph of the post.

AIFF - The Real Place takes Cam Christianson back to Sundance

At last year's Anchorage International Film Festival, I wrote about my favorite animated film, Cam Christianson's "I Have Seen the Future."

I Have Seen the Future was a very classy animated tennis game in shades of green and yellow. The camera swept around, the tennis court warped, the main tennis player had an interesting face - not some standard look - and it all worked well with the song by the Canadian singer Chris Demeanor. (Who could forget a name like that?) An original look for the whole film(at least for me) and it all fit together nicely.

It didn't win here in Anchorage, but it went on to get picked for last year's Sundance Film Festival.

I just got an press release email that Cam had a second animated film accepted to Sundance for January 2009.

From the Calgary Herald:

For the second time in as many years, Cam Christiansen will be hobnobbing with North America's filmmaking elite in Utah after his animated short won a coveted spot at the Sundance Film Festival.

Earlier this week, the National Film Board announced Christiansen's The Real Place will show in late January at Robert Redford's celebrated festival, topping off an impressive year of achievements for the 38-year-old filmmaker.

His first film, I Have Seen the Future--which was made with Calgary singer-songwriter Kris Demeanor --played the festival last January, nabbed a top prize at the prestigious Los Angeles Film Festival, was selected by the Toronto Film Festival as one of 2007's Top 10 Canadian shorts and is among 36 films short-listed for a 2008 Academy Award in the best animated short category.

"It's fantastic," says Christiansen.

"It really felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity. But I guess this makes it twice in a lifetime."

The Real Place, which was directed and animated by Christiansen and written by Blake Brooker and uses motion-capture cameras and digital photography, is a beautiful and lyrical five-minute ode to Calgary playwright John Murrell.

Update - Tuesday Dec. 16: Here's a link to The Real Place Facebook page. One quote about the film that seems particularly poignant is from the subject of the film:

For me, your film is about my spirit. No one else -- no one -- has ever captured it so well" - John Murrell

AIFF - Last Movie is Over - Coyote's Brett Spackman

Hoar frost decorated Anchorage today when the fog lifted. The temp was around 10˚F (-12˚C) as we headed for the PAC to see the Alaska Theater of Youth production of Fiddler on the Roof. (He's not on the roof in the picture.) The voices were really impressive. Then we split during the curtain call, but got to the Bear Tooth so late that Only really didn't make much sense to us. Then back home to rest until the 8 pm showing of Coyote. I'll post the after movie Q & A with the filmmaker later.

Coyote doesn't quite have the polish of a Hollywood movie and that's good. But I would never guess that two guys made the movie on "as much money as two guys can raise" with friends helping out and the writers/directors also the leading characters. Very impressive. One of my movie standards that I think should be used more often in judging movies is a ratio between quality and cost. While Brett was circumspect about how much money this film cost - Blockbuster and Walmart will have the DVD's soon, and they are working on outside the US rights now - he suggested it wasn't all that much.

[I took the picture of Brett yesterday at Out North]

And, as he said in the Q&A, the immigration, particularly the illegal immigration question is morally murky and it's more shades of gray than black and white. So the topic was interesting, important, and they took a relatively neutral stand. Well, they were really probably sympathetic to Mexicans trying to get to the US, but they raised a number of caveats. But this was more an adventure/action film than a message film.

And I could see why it got the audience award for best picture.

Here's a video of Brett I got Saturday when we were both at the animation workshop. [As I'm putting this up Viddler seems to be extremely slow loading. Hope it clears up soon.][Switched to YouTube, Viddler is having problems.]



And then the Festival was over. I couldn't be happier. The Festival was great - there were some really good films - but ten days movie going and blogging is enough. Now I just have to catch up with my video clips and thoughts on some of the films.

AIFF - Streetsweeper by Neil Mansfield

I'd been hearing contradictory messages about Streetsweeper - some loved it and others thought there was nothing there. Quite literally, one friend said, "There's no there, there." So I went into the theater Saturday night prepared to be let down. But also prepared for something very different from a typical Hollywood movie. And I walked out pleased with the movie and with it's being selected as the best feature of the festival.

So, why would someone like it and others hate it? I propose that it depends on someone's idea of a movie. From a traditional movie perspective, we would take it very literally and say:

• It's about a crazy homeless man with a streetsweeper cart who acts out his mental problems by sweeping the stripes in the crosswalks, polishing traffic signs, and lugging his cart up and down stairs, and reading the scraps of paper he picks up.
  

This appears to be how Peter Porco at the ADN saw the movie:

Once we get the general idea that the homeless man is in his own world, reciting to himself bits of poetry, lines scrawled on notes he finds in the street, memories from a wretched childhood; once we fall into the easy rhythm of Keith pushing his broom cart through the margins and empty corners of the tidy, humdrum city, it isn’t long before we’re bored.

(I would note here that Porco wants to speak for everyone, replacing his first person perspective and claiming to represent all of us with the use of "we" throughout. He doesn't represent me or most of the people at the Bear Tooth Saturday night who stayed for the whole movie and the Q&A afterward.)

So if we don't look at this as a typical Hollywood movie with a plot line, how else can we look at it? There are several overlapping ways to watch the movie that brought me a great deal of satisfaction.

• Streetsweeper can be seen as a visual concert. Just as the symphony is sounds without verbal content, this was a series of visual images (with the added sense of sound). In his visual composition, Mansfield challenges us to look at things so ordinary that they have become invisible. We normally walk [drive] past them without seeing them - the patterns of railroad tracks, of cracks in the street, of the all angles and curves of urban settings, but he shows us the beauty that is all around us that we don't see. If it were a series of spectacular shots in brilliant color, this wouldn't work. Instead he takes the totally mundane and asks us to reconsider what we usually pass right by. The streetsweeper is a device as significant as, say, giving a piece of music a title like, "Pictures at an Exhibition" or "The Flight of the Bumblebee." It gives us a reason to be looking at these images, but there is no exhibition, there is no bumblebee, just notes. Probably there is no streetsweeper either, it's just an excuse to wander around Newcastle and look at it with fresh eyes.

• Another way to think about the movie is as visit to a gallery where we look at photos of urban landscapes. But these are more than photos; they move too. And there's sound. Just as someone could easily lose herself for an hour or two looking at pictures (at an exhibition?) that don't have a story line or even content, she could just sit back and enjoy the visual stimulation and soothing of Streetsweeper, and even relive the excitement of seeing the beauty of the patterns of lines made by railroad tracks that most of us haven't seen since we were first exploring the world as little children. When everything was new and didn't have names and contexts and we could just enjoy how the images tickled our eyeballs.

• One could also think about this as a walking tour through Newcastle, Australia. Wandering this way and that, past signs, up steps, down steps, by the river, crossing streets, past trees, just wandering without a clear plan, to get a feel for the place. I think this alone wouldn't carry the average viewer without the more generalized rediscovering of the invisible beauty experiences mentioned above. But I thought about how this would be an interesting way to explore Anchorage as I was watching, and even toyed with the idea of going off to some unknown city, getting a cleaning cart and broom, and exploring, say, Buenos Aires or Barcelona or Budapest, by sweeping and cleaning my way through town.

I found the movie allowed me to relax. If I skipped a few images, it didn't matter. I wouldn't miss some important clue in the plot, I wouldn't miss someone's head being blown off. I didn't have to listen carefully to every word. First, there weren't that many. Second, they didn't really matter. And the pretext of the street cleaner evaporated as his stops to clean zebra stripes became less frequent and precise, as time between his dusting off a street sign became longer and longer and he just pushed his cart along, and as the broom eventually disappeared altogether. Like at a concert, my mind could drift, could think of other things, and then come back to enjoy new images and sounds. I even slid, a few times, into some unconscious interactions with the streets of Newcastle and then rejoined the journey taking place on the screen.

But if you were headed to the theater expecting Brad or Meryl in some dialogue heavy Hollywood formula of character development with plot with dialogue, and didn't know how to 'see' this movie, it would be easy to be bored. I think of a perception game I've used with students. I show them several series of numbers and ask them to give me the next number. The first few series are figured out by looking at the mathematical relationships between the numbers. Say, add 2 to the previous number. Or multiply the first number by the second number to get the next number. But then I ask for the next number in this series:

2, 3, 5, 6...

I get all sorts of responses and mathematical justifications. But the next number is 8, because it is the next number with curves.

Then I give them

16 5 18 3 5 16 20 9 15 ...

This drives them crazy. The next number is 14. These are the numeric equivalents of the letters that spell the word perception.

Just like we first are looking for mathematical patterns and then can't see the visual patterns, or the symbolic use of numbers for letters, I think people go into movies looking for what we are programmed to see, and cannot easily switch to see a movie using a different way of organizing images and sounds.

I enjoyed Streetsweeper because its film used a different model than the standard we normally see, a model which focused on the visual images, which, for the person willing or able to see differently, gave a chance to see the beauty in everyday things. It showed us the poetry in words on lost or tossed pieces of paper. It isn't for everyone, particularly for those going to see blood and body parts, or just to have one's rational brain cells stimulated. This is a very non-verbal movie. And since this isn't part of our tradition, it's the kind of movie that doesn't have good commercial prospects. But it pushes us to see differently and is precisely the kind of movie that Film Festivals should be about.


Somewhere on my disk are some visuals to help illustrate this, but I'm not sure they are necessary. We'll see. If I have time, I may add them later. Thanks Neil for a great show.

[Update: Sunday night - Here's Neil answering questions after the showing Saturday night.]
[Update: Monday night - I've been having trouble viewing the videos I've posted since yesterday. I'm on a Mac using Firefox. I switched to Safari and it was fine. If others are having problems seeing the video, try changing to another browser. Also let me know if there are problems and what system (pc, mac, linux) and browser you're using. Thanks.]

AIFF - Awards

It's Sunday morning, the next films start in about 11 hours. The Awards Ceremony at Middle Way Cafe waited for the crowd at Streetsweeper to get over there before things were announced. We already knew that Streetsweeper got best feature and Last Days of Shishmaref got best feature documentary. But I didn't know the others.


So here are the winners:
Best Short Documentary: Leave Her To Die
Best Super Short: Spider
Best Short: Open Your Eyes
Best Animated: Distraxion There's a short clip at the link, definitely worth it to get a sense of this delicious animated film.
Audience Awards were given for
Best Feature: Coyote
Best Feature Documentary: The Wrecking Crew

[Update: The official list, with runners up, plus the Snowdance (Alaska related films) winners are up at the link.]
Wrecking Crew will be shown Sunday at 5:30pm at the Bear Tooth
Coyote will be shown Sunday at 8:00 at the Bear Tooth

I really didn't see much in the way of short documentaries, but I wanted to see Leave Her to Die simply because it takes place in Thailand, and we're headed back in January for three months.

Best Feature: I finally saw Streetsweeper tonight. I was getting mixed reviews from people. I enjoyed it thoroughly. But it is easy to understand why some might not like it. I heard from one person whose taste I respect: "There's no there, there." So I was prepared to be sorely disappointed. But the was the there, just not the one he was looking for. But this deserves its own post. Later.

Best Documentary: I've already commented on Shismaref and posted over ten minutes of director Jan Louter at Saturday's workshop. Good Alaska movie.


Best Short Short: Spider Everything about this is well made. Including the surprises. But aside from being technically well made, does it have any deep lasting meaning? I think I ended up seeing it about four or five times because it kept popping up in places I didn't expect it. In this category, the one I instantly bonded to was: No Regrets. The music, the humor, the whole thing just worked for me.

Best Short Documentary: Leave Her To Die. I've got nothing to say about this category because somehow I didn't get to see any of these.

Best Animation: Distraxion. I loved this film. Kenny G is one of my pet peeves, and so I could totally relate to the poor put upon employee who was hounded by his boss' taste in music. And while I'm not a heavy metal fan either, I thoroughly love his getting revenge through Yngwie Malmsteen. When Mike puts this online, I'll put it up. This one did everything right. But there were just so many imaginative, creative animations. Definitely the most competitive category. Jeff Chiba Stearns' Yellow Sticky Notes was also great, and totally different. And his workshop today was outstanding. I've got lots of video of that coming eventually.

AIFF - Jan Louter Workshop

I liked "The Last Days of Shismaref" very much. The photography was stunning. The last scene - the all white screen and then two people walk off into the distance was a piece of visual art all in itself. The scenes with the families were real. I haven't been to Shishmaref, but I've spent a few days in Wales. Clearly Jan had gained the trust of the people in the film - not an easy thing to do. The Alaska Native villagers I've met are very open, trusting, and sharing. They have often given to Outsiders who didn't understand that giving was a two way process.

And I've written here in the past about the problems of Outside journalists trying to tell the stories of Alaskan Native villagers. So I had a lot of questions. I had a sense from the film what the answers would be, but I wanted to hear it from Louten himself. I was concerned when he said after the showing last week, that when he first read about Shishmaref, he knew there was a story there. And that Shishmaref was a metaphor for global warming.

The idea of him having "the story" before going to Shishmaref leaves the door open for him to use Shishmaref and its people to tell Jan Louten's story and not Shishmaref's story. To a certain extent, when he began today to say that he scripts his documentaries very carefully before he shoots, that concern wasn't mollified. But overall, what he said and the film itself, suggests to me that he did listen carefully to the people of Shishmaref. He said he took the film to Shishmaref and showed it to the people and told them if there was anything that they felt should be out, he would listen to their arguments. That they had nothing they wanted cut was reassuring.

He talked today about making documentaries almost like making a fictional feature - he does lots of research and then scripts it all carefully. He gave an example of a film he did on American writer, John Fante. He didn't want talking heads, so he had a person he was interviewing drive the car while he talked. This way he could get Los Angeles into the film. And they drove to the cemetary where Fante was buried. This way he could let the audience know Fante was dead without actually saying it. He simply showed the grave stone.

Here are some unedited clips from today's workshop. The film will be shown again tomorrow (Sunday) evening at the Bear Tooth at 5:30, for people who have not seen it.

AIFF - Yellow Sticky Notes Maker Jeff Chiba Stearns

I got to talk to Jeff last night at the museum, just before his video Yellow Sticky Notes was played at the Museum. But we spoke about a previous film - What Are You Anyway? - which is about his growing up half-white (and half-Japanese) in Kelowna, British Columbia. Since I'm on the steering committee of Healing Racism in Anchorage, I found the video a great tool for using in workshops looking at racism. Though I had a question about a part near the end where Jeff says his new girlfriend's behavior showed him that if he was proud of his heritage, the disturbing words and questions wouldn't bother him. I agree that is a good strategy if you are subject to prejudice, but in a training session with people of the dominant ethnicity, you need to discuss that this doesn't mean that the victim should be blamed. This perception on Jeff's part is good in unintended insults based on ignorance, but doesn't address the structural basis for discrimination built into society that causes people to have negative or just inaccurate preconceptions about people of different ethnicities.

You can see "What Are You Anyway" at the link. Trust me, it is well worth it - funny and informative.

Jeff explained that he made the movie as an expression of his own experiences and was suddenly called on to talk about the issues of people of mixed heritage by schools and universities, and that he's learned a lot about the subject. Anyway that's the context for the bit of video I got of our discussion.



Jeff will give the filmmaker workshop

TODAY (Saturday, Dec. 13) at OUT NORTH at 3pm








Here's a link to another YouTube of Jeff talking about making Yellow Sticky Notes.

AIFF - Martini Matinee, The Video

Here are a few clips (unedited so I could get it up quickly) from the afternoon session at the Mixed Grill in the Inlet Tower. People were all having a good time. I'm still having intermittent trouble downloading the video from iMovie to .mov, but if I do it at lower quality, it works. So the quality is even bad by my already shaky standards. But you can get a little sense of how it went.

AIFF - Friday

It's 10:18pm at the Bear Tooth for the 10:10 showing which is going to be way late. The line was long. We got in late.

Started the day's movies at the Mixed Grill where they had the "Martini Matinee". That too was jammed and we saw great animation. They also introduced some of the film makers there and announced that Last Days of Shishmaref won the best documentary. We'd already heard that Streetsweeper won the best feature. Though I'm hearing from some people that they were disappointed. I'll get to judge tomorrow night.

Then to the Museum, with a stop at the PAC to get tickets for Fiddler on the Roof Sunday afternoon. It's the last performance, it's in the middle of the film festival, but I want to see what Christian Heppinstall has done with it. At the museum we saw Rachel: A Perfect Life. It was good, if you like watching brain surgery. Well there was brain surgery, but it was good, despite that. But this is a rush post before the late shorts/animation begins. Then we saw one of my favorite films of the week - The Wrecking Crew. When I first saw it in the schedule I figured it had to be good if just for the music. The Wrecking Crew was the backup band for most of the big hits in the late 60s pop music in California. It turned out to be an interesting movie that filled in a lot of gaps - these guys and one woman - played in literally every big hit. It was sort of like a public television fundraiser oldies show, but much, much better.

Also got to talk to Jeff Chiba Stearns. I'll add some video later.