AIFF 2009 - Playground and Other Documentary Thoughts

It's been somewhat foggy all day.  Here's 4th and C as we head for the Alaska Experience Theater.

If we sit in the back row the large, close screen is bearable.

Again, we chose to go with a documentary - Playground - instead of a feature.  This was one of the documentaries in competition, but so was the feature, Against the Current. 

It's clear why we'd rather see entertainment than go to class, but this is another topic everyone should know.  This was about child prostitution.  After a brief introduction that talked about the issue overseas, the movie zeroed in on the US.  Did you know that Atlanta is the 13th most frequent destination for people arranging to have sex with kids? 

I can understand that a lot of public policy issues are  hard to grasp.  I don't really know whether the bank bailout put the brakes on the recession or not.  And while I'm convince global climate change is real and is serious, I can understand that someone who doesn't want to believe that can point to experts that support their position. 

But child prostitution?  There's nothing to debate here.  The movie makes it clear that these girls (it mentions boys, but focuses on girls) are not doing this voluntarily.  In one interview a girl explains how she's trained to act like she enjoys it, and when she considers telling the client he smells and she doesn't want to do this, she thinks of the money she'll lose and the beating she'll get. 

The movie says while this used to be thought of as a low income problem, with the internet, that's no longer the case.  One mother talked about how her wonderful middle class daughter got caught up in drugs as a teen and is still on the streets at 22. 

And there was discussion of situations where a known sex offender was in a motel room with an underage girl, but since they were both dressed, nothing could be done.  Or a father who was told when he snatched his underage daughter off the streets, that he could be prosecuted if he didn't let her go.  Or the issue of privacy violations that prevent publishing pictures of kids being bought and sold - even though their pictures are up online in sex acts.

If the anti-abortion crusade but a quarter of their time into this issue, actual living kids might be saved from physical and mental torture that drives them to death, drugs, and/or lifetime psychological issues. 

Why don't we want to see this sort of movie?  Why don't we want to take an hour to educate ourselves on these horrific events happening in our own towns?  I don't know. 

As a movie, this was more in the educational documentary mode like Tapped, the one the other day on bottled water.  Not like Mount St. Elias which was basically an action film, or Prodigal Sons which was almost a reality show with the lead character - it appeared - videotaping part of her life.  Prodigal Sons is still my favorite so far among the documentaries I've seen. 

   It's clear that we deal with this sort of subject through feelings easier than through logic.  The interviews told far more than the statistics, though both are needed. The special part of this movie was the exquisite animation by Japanese animator, Yoshitomo Nara.  These animated interludes were brief timeouts from th heart rendering realities. 

I also caught this quick video with one of the AIFF volunteers at the desk before we went into the movie.



Then we went over to the Bear Tooth to see American Primitive.  I'll talk about that one later. 

AIFF 2009 - Know Your Mushrooms and Trip to Hell and Back

A couple of movies that are NOT in Snowdance (the movies made by Alaskans or in Alaska) but maybe should have been played Tuesday night.

Part of Know Your Mushrooms included scenes of mushroom hunting in Alaska. As I said in the previous post, it was a fun movie, but nothing great. If you are interested in mushrooms - and the movie makers think everyone should be because of their importance in the world - you might check it out. A couple of viewers give their impression of the movie.



Unfortunately, there was only that one showing of Know Your Mushrooms.


[Video about Trip to Hell and Back removed at the request of the person in the video]




Trip to Hell and Back is paired with Girls on the Wall in the Program Road to Redemption and plays again Saturday, Dec. 13 at 3:15pm at the Museum.

Bohemian Waxwings Visit

AIFF 2009 - Brief Post on Know Your Mushrooms and Son of the Sunshine

The Canadian Consul hosted a wine and cheese party after the Canadian film Son of the Sunshine tonight. It got late, so I'll just post a minimal post. Know Your Mushrooms was not a great film, but it was fun and lots of information on mushrooms - their contribution to the decomposition on earth, relationship to religion, health aspects, and psychedelic aspects. A very laid back movie.

Then there was a fairly long break so I got this video so that people who didn't make it to the festival can see the main venue for the feature films - the Bear Tooth Theater and Pub.






I'm still digesting Son of the Sunshine.  Below right is Writer, Director, and lead Actor of the movie talking one of the film goers.  It was a difficult movie, in part because so many of the characters were not terribly likable and we only really got to know enough about the main character to get a sense of his strangeness.  Plus, he could be extremely sweet and caring.  But the others - Ariel, the mom, etc. - were there but we didn't, at least I, didn't know who they were enough to fell sympathetic towards them.  But difficult doesn't mean bad, it just means you have to work harder to process it.  And I'm not there yet.  

Australian Neil Mansfield's film Streetsweeper was last year's best feature. It too was a difficult film because it didn't follow any of the conventions of film making. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but others thought it was awful. While Son of the Sunshine was difficult, it had a much more traditional structure. Perhaps it was easier with Streetsweeper because it was so different, whereas with Sunshine, it's close enough to standard film genres we know, that some people may think that's what he was doing, but it didn't quite work. He wasn't doing that. He wasn't telling a story as much as conveying a feeling, a feeling that wasn't always comfortable.

After the wine and cheese and most of the people were gone, some locals and some visiting film makers moved into the Bear Tooth Grill for more conversation.

When I left it was already 1am and the earlier fog had left all the trees frosted.

So, please excuse this sorry post. It's late and I'm past my bed time and hoping to get up early tomorrow morning.

AIFF 2009 - Tuesday Picks

The 5:30 shows include Know Your Mushrooms at the Bear Tooth.  Snowdance 2 at the Alaska Experience Theater - a mix of Alaskan made and/or made in Alaska.  Out North has Snowdance 3 which includes People of the Seal and Unalaska along with in competition animation Hugo in the Land of the Lemonshark.   Given my interest in mushrooms, I'm headed to the Bear Tooth


Animation 1 at Out North at 7:45pm  tonight is full of good stuff, including Peter Dunlap Shohl's Frozen Shorts.  Also Calypso and the Mouse that Roared.  And Topi, which I'm expecting great things from - I missed it because I had to leave early on Saturday to get to Hipsters.  There's a lot of good stuff in this mix and if there's one you don't like, well it will be over soon, and the next one will be up.

But I saw most of this one, so I'll be at Son of Sunshine, one of the features in competition, at 8pm  at Bear Tooth.

The other 8pm showing, at Alaska Experience Theater, is two shorter documentaries, including Trip to Hell and Back, which is in competition, about horses and crystal meth.  Looks like a very interesting picture.

AIFF 2009 - Natalie Eleftheriadis and James Harkness Celebrate "Birthday"

Hipsters was stunning.  Then Bomber took us for a quietly brilliant road trip into family relationships.  And Monday night, Birthday seemed to eliminate the medium altogether absorbing us into the lives of a few Australian sex workers and their clients.

This was an intimate film.  We saw characters alone in their rooms physically and emotionally naked.  Their faces filled the screen.  Sometimes in duplicate as they examined themselves in the mirror.   Somehow, the camera took us right through their skin into their souls. There was no place to hide, for the characters or the audience.  We were right there in the middle of it as the characters exposed themselves.

We didn't just watch them.  We lived their lives with them for the 104 minutes of the film.  By the end of the film it felt like I had known each of the characters for years.  The actors simply disappeared into the characters.  Natalie Eleftheriadis was M.  Richard Wilson was Joey, an incredibly nuanced character.  There was no cast, the characters seemed to play themselves. 

This film plays again Saturday at 10:15pm at the Bear Tooth.  So, if you missed Hipsters too, you can see a double feature Saturday night starting with the giant cast and loud, busy backdrop of Moscow at 8pm then move to the intimacy of the almost completely interior brothel and church scenes of Birthday.  (Photo from the Birthday website.)

 

I'm guessing we got this world premiere of the film Birthday, in which two of the characters have birthdays, here in Anchorage partly because Monday was also director James Harkness' birthday.  I'll stop here and let you listen to  James Harkness and Natalie Eleftheriadis tell you about the film themselves.   (The silhouette is not some hot new film style, just the necessity in the dark Bear Tooth.  You see it more or less the way we saw it.  With the occasional flash.)

Here's your study question for the video.  Who said,  "I hate being a lawyer, I'd really like to go back to being a sex worker"?



I started, last night, to rant about why this wasn't listed among the films in competition.  But I decided to check with Tony Sheppard, the feature film programmer, first.  I got an email back this morning saying Birthday is, in fact, in competition.  I've updated my Features in Competition post and linked it to here. 

[No, I'm not paid by the Festival - except for a media pass.  We've just had some amazing films.  And maybe if I see the film a few more times I'll find some flaws, but I'll probably find more to praise as well.]

[Update,  2pm:  As someone concerned about intimate partner violence who has identified other films in the festival dealing with human trafficking, I probably needed to comment on the portrayal of sex workers in this film.  I'm not an expert in this area, maybe slightly more informed than the average person.  The film makers, in the video, say they visited many brothels and talked to many of the workers.  They would have a better sense than I about what the lives of these women are like.  My sense is that there are sex workers and then there are sex workers.  The brothel in the movie shows large, lushly furnished rooms, including nice, en suite bathrooms with full shower/bath.  The clients were charged something like Aus$300 for half an hour.  I'm willing to accept the filmmakers' word that the image portrayed in this film is accurate concerning this particular brothel.  But it is important to also note that many sex workers are in much different conditions, tricked into the trade, and virtual slaves against their will.  Probably going to see the documentary Playground (Wednesday, Dec. 9 - tomorrow as I write - at 5:45pm at Alaska Experience Theater)  would be an important contrast the way sex workers are portrayed in Birthday.]

AIFF 2009 - Prodigal Sons (Wow!)

I'd more or less decided to go to see Adopt a Sailor after Birthday.  But I hadn't counted on the fact that the filmmakers (director and co-producer/lead actor) were there and would talk about the film using up all the spare time we had to get to Out North. (That's not a complaint, just an explanation why we didn't go to Adopt a Sailor which started at 7:45,  Prodigal Sons didn't start until 8.)  I'll talk about Birthday in the next post.  Right now I'm waiting for the video of their after film discussion to download from the camera. 

But all that is preface to our decision to follow our friend C over to the Alaska Experience Theater to see Prodigal Sons.  When I quickly copied from the description earlier today, I did wonder why it was Prodigal Sons since it was about a daughter returning to her high school reunion in Montana.  I should have read the whole description. 

We were a few minutes late, but it quickly became clear that the daughter, Kim, had left this town as a son, Paul, years earlier and this was her first trip home as Kim.  It took me a while to unravel the other relationships (and since very few of you are likely to ever see the movie, I'll take the liberty to discuss more about the story than I normally would, BUT it does play again on Saturday at 1pm at the Alaska Experience theater and it was a really interesting story.  So, if you think you might go, and you should, stop now, and read this later.) Actually, knowing all this doesn't matter.  It's just the skeleton.  The film itself fills in the flesh. 

So I sit back thinking ok, this is going to be about this transgender woman dealing with the people from her life as a male.  The friends at the reunion seemed to be accepting. (She was the high school football quarterback.)  But, of course, that's just me trying to label it, compartmentalize it, and move on to other things.  It soon becomes clear that there are a lot more identity issues.  Younger brother, Todd, came out in high school, but it seems he still has some issues with the third brother Mark. 

Mark, who was adopted and who had a severe head injury in a car crash at 21, has to deal with the different identities that reside inside his damaged brain, trying to ressurrect the Mark that died in the crash by living in the past when that Mark was still alive, and warding off the newer, violent Mark with meds he hates to take. There are the identity issues from not knowing his birth parents and why he can play the piano beautifully, but can't read a note.  All this on top of normal adult sibling reconciliation challenges.  There's also Mom.  Lucky Dad has already passed away.  No, these are all good people, and Dad's presence may well have helped.   

There's a lot here in this documentary to mess with everyone's ideas of normal and abnormal and to tear holes of doubts in our well constructed stereotypes.  And to raise questions about our own unanswered issues.  Good stuff.  

Kimberly Reed, you made a really outstanding film.  This is one more amazing movie in town because Tony Sheppard and some others decided Anchorage needed a film festival.  People are filling up the venues.  50% full for an 'obscure' documentary on a Monday night is pretty good I'd say.   The Bear Tooth was pretty much full for Birthday and we walked past a long line of folks waiting to see Paddle to Seattle. 

AIFF 2009 - Monday Recommendations

We have a lot less to choose from today - just two slots at three venues - but we still have to choose.

I'm headed to the Bear Tooth for the 5:30 World Premiere of Birthday.  The Australian director is scheduled be there.  This is a feature film that I haven't seen, but the ADN did a review today.  I try not to read those reviews because they usually tell the whole story.  I'd rather learn it from the movie itself.

The other options at the early slot are From Somewhere to Nowhere.  This too looks like an interesting film - a documentary about migrant workers in China.  The documentaries give us windows into worlds we often know little about and I'm sure this one will give an atypical view of China.  I remember the migrant worker housing at People's University where I taught for 3 months in 2004.  It was pretty sketchy.  And my students, it turned out, never talked to the migrant workers, even though they shared the same campus, though they were there for very different reasons and they passed each other often.  This one is 5:45 at the Alaska Experience Theater. 


Then, there's Allusions/Delusions, one of the Shorts programs.  This one includes two that are shorts in competition - The Capgrass Tide and Free Lunch.  Capgrass has some Alaska like landscapes - particularly the mudflats where people go clamming, and sometimes don't come back.  The production values of this short, tight story are terrific.  Free Lunch is about a rich kid in LA who rejects the family to run a lunch wagon in the poor sections of LA.  I found that in the other shorts programs  the other films turned out to all be quite good.  I'm tempted to go see this program too.  At Out North at 5:30.

Then I'm still undecided about whether I stay at the Bear Tooth for the 8:15 Paddle to Seattle - what looks to be a good kayak movie; head to Out North for Adopt a Sailor,  a feature about New York couple that take in a sailor during fleet week at 7:45pm (Birthday's 104 minutes, so I should have enough time); or head for the Alaska Experience Theater to see Prodigal Sons, about a woman going to her high school reunion in Montana at 8:00pm.

I'm leaning toward Sailor, but we'll see.

What is Copenhagen?

1. Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark.
2. Copenhagen is a Tony Award winning play by Michael Frayn, based around an event that occurred in Copenhagen in 1941, a meeting between the physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg.  (From Wikipedia,)
3.  Copenhagen is the United Nations Climate Change Conference being held in the city of Copenhagen beginning today. 

You have probably heard the word "Copenhagen" a lot lately.  I first heard it being used in the third context last April at the Indigenous People's Summit on Climate Change here in Anchorage.  I had three days then to get a sense of what it was about.  So, here's a brief primer to get you started finding out more.  This will probably have a lot more impact on all of our futures than say, the Super Bowl, even if we aren't watching it live on television.  You can, however, watch webcasts.  


The host country's official website:

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Website

Who or What is the UNFCC?  From the UNFCC website:

Bodies of the Framework Convention, Actors in the Negotiation Process, and the UNFCCC secretariat

Bodies of the Convention and partner agencies
* The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the prime authority of the Convention. It is an association of all member countries (or "Parties") and usually meets annually for a period of two weeks. These sessions are attended by several thousand government delegates, observer organizations, and journalists. The Conference of the Parties evaluates the status of climate change and the effectiveness of the treaty. It examines the activities of member countries, particularly by reviewing national communications and emissions inventories; it considers new scientific findings; and it tries to capitalize on experience as efforts to address climate change proceed.

* A Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) counsels the Conference of the Parties on matters of climate, the environment, technology, and method. It meets twice a year.

* A Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) helps review how the Convention is being applied, for example by analyzing the national communications submitted by member countries. It also deals with financial and administrative matters. The SBI meets twice each year.

* Several expert groups exist under the Convention. A Consultative Group of Experts (CGE) on National Communications from "non-Annex 1 Parties" helps developing countries prepare national reports on climate change issues. A Least Developed Country Expert Group (LEG) advises such nations on establishing programmes for adapting to climate change. And an Expert Group on Technology Transfer (EGTT) seeks to spur the sharing of technology with less-advanced nations.

* Partner agencies include the Global Environment Facility (GEF), which has existed since 1991 to fund projects in developing countries that will have global environmental benefits. The job of channeling grants and loans to poor countries to help them address climate change, as called for by the Convention, has been delegated to the GEF because of its established expertise. And the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides services to the Convention, although it is not part of it, through publishing comprehensive reviews every five years of the status of climate change and climate-change science, along with special reports and technical papers on request (see the section on the IPCC under "Climate Change Science.")

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Actors in the negotiation process

* Countries belonging to the Convention hold the real power -- they take decisions at sessions of the Conference of the Parties (most decisions are reached by consensus). Member countries often form alliances to increase efficiency and maximize influence during negotiations. The Conference has several groupings representing the concerns of developing countries, least-developed countries, small-island states, Europe (through the European Union), non-European industrialized nations, oil-exporting nations, and nations committed to "environmental integrity."

* Countries get extensive input from other sources, both through official channels and in behind-the-scenes chatter. This is not surprising, considering that the global climate is facing a major threat, coastlines and even countries may disappear, and industries and livelihoods may wax or wane. . . not to mention that millions of dollars are being allocated for programmes and activities.

* "Observer" is the official -- and misleadlingly quiet-sounding -- term for groups and agencies allowed to attend and even speak at international meetings, but not to participate in decision-making. Among observers permitted by the Convention are intergovernmental agencies, such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO); the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); the International Energy Agency; and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). To date, over 50 intergovernmental agencies and international organizations attend sessions of the Conference of Parties.

* Observers also include a lively crowd of non-governmental organizations, known as "NGOs." These represent business and industrial interests, environmental groups, local governments, research and academic institutes, religious bodies, labour organizations, and population groups such as indigenous peoples. To win accreditation as observers, NGOs must be legally constituted not-for-profit entities "competent in matters related to the Convention." Currently, more than 600 NGOs are accredited to participate in meetings related to the Convention.

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The UNFCCC Secretariat
* A secretariat staffed by international civil servants supports the Convention and its supporting bodies. It makes practical arrangements for meetings, compiles and distributes statistics and information, and assists member countries in meeting their commitments under the Convention. The secretariat is based in Bonn, Germany.

Alaska's role in the Conference.  I'm stepping out on limb here, because I'm not at all sure how many Alaskans are taking part and in what capacities.  So I'll just list what I know and any readers who know more can comment.

Indigenous People's Global Summit on Climate Change (link goes to this blog's coverage of the Summit) - was held in Anchorage last April.  That conference brought together representatives of Indigenous peoples from around the world to give direct testimony on how climate change is affecting their ways of life and to prepare for Copenhagen. 

The Summit's website gives a better description and has a link to their declaration (link goes to pdf file):

The Inuit Circumpolar Council hosted April 20-24, 2009 in Anchorage, Alaska a Global Summit on Climate Change that brought together indigenous delegates and observers.

The purpose of the summit was to enable Indigenous peoples from all regions of the globe to exchange their knowledge and experience in adapting to the impacts of climate change, and to develop key messages and recommendations to be articulated to the world at the Conference of Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009.

Indigenous Peoples from all regions of the world depend upon the natural environment.Their rich and detailed traditional knowledge reflects and embodies a cultural and spiritual relationship with the land, ocean and wildlife.

However, human activity is changing the world’s climate and altering the natural environment to which Indigenous Peoples are so closely attached and on which they so heavily rely.

In a very real sense, therefore, Indigenous Peoples are on the front lines of climate change. They observe climate and environmental changes first-hand and use traditional knowledge and survival skills to adapt to these changes as they occur.  Moreover, they must do so at a time when their cultures and livelihoods are already undergoing significant changes due, in part, to the accelerated development of natural resources from their traditional territories stimulated by trade liberalization and globalization.

Reflecting their position as “stewards” of the environment and drawing upon their age-old traditional knowledge—the heart of their cultural resilience—Indigenous Peoples were among the first groups to call upon national governments, transnational corporations and civil society to do more to protect the Earth and human society from climate change.

Indigenous delegates were selected from each of the UNPFII regions, with a view to ensuring balanced representation of professional expertise, gender balance and stakeholder participation within the available funds. Additional participants include both indigenous representatives and observers, who were interested in attending the Summit and were able to fund their own costs.

The United Nations University (UNU)  assisted the Summit in synthesizing relevant background information and providing logistical and media support. During the Summit, UNU provided substantive assistance in the form of rapporteuring, writing reports and proceedings, and aiding the Summit organizers with auditing procedures.

 APRN reported on some Alaskans going to Copenhagen including students from UAF's Rural Development Program; Patricia Cochran, the head of the Alaska Native Science Commission and coordinator of the Indigenous Peoples Summit; as well as Larry Hartig, Alaska's Commissioner of Environmental Conservation.  You can listen to the APRN piece here.

And, of course, you can follow blogs and twitter.

AIFF 2009 - Mount St. Elias (Audience Reactions) and Tapped

 Mount St. Elias tells the story of climbing up, then skiing down  Mount St. Elias, the second highest peak in the United States (and Canada - it's on the border) at 18,008 feet (5,488 meters).  However, because it is so close to the sea, it is the highest vertical mountain in the world from bottom to top with snow most of the way.  This led the mountaineers to the goal of climbing to the top and skiing down.  Actually, part of the ski trip was done earlier from the base camp.  The rest done from the peak to that base camp six or seven weeks later.  Here's what some of the audience thought:



This was my second documentary of the day.  It was testosterone heavy.  We kept hearing phrases like "testing myself,"  "proving to myself and to the world," and  "any misstep would be fatal."  This was about seriously goal-oriented men who took enormous risks to achieve their goal.  I think that people should do what they do well.  But I've also learned that people who become obsessive - workaholics, for example - are often using their obsession to avoid dealing with other parts of their lives.  These men were driven.  And obviously skilled skiers.  But was something missing in their personal lives that risking those lives in such a punishing environment was so attractive? 

And I couldn't help think about the people in "Tapped" the movie I'd seen in the earlier in the afternoon, who were fighting what politically seems equal odds - against Nestle's, Coca Cola, Pepsi - who bottle water -  and the petroleum industry that makes the plastic bottles.  It was hard to go to a documentary that I knew would be telling me about the problems of bottled water.  It's not that I disagree, but did I really want to sit through that?  Fortunately, none of the other venues had a must-see film.


[photo - cleaning the Bear Tooth theater between films]

It turns out I did want to see this movie, though the big screen is really close in the Alaska Experience Theater.  The film was well done.

I think Alaska would be significantly better off if the people who went to Mount St. Elias had also gone to Tapped.  In the same amount of time, they would have learned a lot about the negative impacts of buying bottled water.  I covered the details in an earlier post - also with audience comments. (And two of the Tapped commenters certainly aren't wimps - they met working in Antarctica.)


In Tapped, people were working hard for the public benefit.  In Mount St. Elias, people were working equally hard, but focused on very personal goals.  I think we all have to deal with figuring out who we are as individuals before we can reach out to help others.  And some of the people in Tapped also articulated personal events - a sister's cancer death in one case - that made them so tenacious in their fight for clean air, the right to water (and preventing privatization of water supplies), and the end to plastic bottles.

Both films showed people giving their all to meet their goals, it's just that the goals were so different. 

Homeboyski has several posts on the mountain and the film.