AIFF 2010: Oğulcan Kirca - World Premier Outside Turkey Today in Anchorage

Before you start reading this go to the Last Station (Son Istasyon) website.  Just click on the link, let it open, and the music from the film will play as you read this to get you ready for watching today - SUNDAY Dec. 5, at 5:30pm at the Bear Tooth. Besides, the website is very well done.

The showing is the world premiere outside of Turkey, so I hope that the Bear Tooth will be packed. So far I've seen a Canadian film, two American films, an Estonian film, and today this premiere of a Turkish film.

I met the director (and writer) and his brother Saturday night - actually I think it was already Sunday. Their father is a famous Turkish actor - Levent Kirca - and he's the star of the film. Oğulcan said it was 'amazing' to be able to direct his father in his (Oğulcan's) first feature film. But he and his brother pretty much grew up backstage. When they return to Turkey in a few days, they'll stop in New York to visit their sister who is at Julliard studying acting.

The video is really noisy. It also includes a Turkish portion which is then translated by Oğulcan's brother. Enjoy the sounds of Turkish. Sorry for the sound, but you should look at a bit of it to see
these brothers.

There's just this one showing scheduled. Last Station is in competition, so if its in the top two or three of the features it might be shown in Best of the Fest Dec. 13-16.)

I do have an earlier post on this film.

AIFF 2010: Taavi Eelmaa is Afraid of Cameras

Tonight is the first of two showings of The Temptation of St. Tony.  Last night I got to talk to the actor playing Tony in the film, Taavi Eelmaa.  As you can see. if you watch the short video, this guy is special.  From his shrinking back - with a smile - when I tell him my little digital camera is on video, to his brief, serious explanation of  the original St. Anthony. 

This is one of the films I have highest expectations for, though I'm prepared to be disappointed.  But briefly talking to Taavi encourages me. The film is about nothing less, he says, than whether it is "possible at all to be in society a good person?"




Just for fun, I tried Google's translation of Taavi's Estonian Wikipedia portrait.  It changed his name to Jim Johnson and his gender to female and left some of it untranslated.  So I went to Translator which also changed his name and gender, but translated more of the text.

Jim Johnson (born 15 June 1971 in Tallinn), Estonia is an actress. 

Jim Johnson graduated from the 1996 17th Course in Drama Actor air. Kalju Komissarov tutor. 

After school, Jim Johnson worked for six years in the Drama Theatre. Since August 2002, Johnson & Johnson is the Von Krahl Theater. After a successful teatritöö she has performed in several feature films and short films. The most famous of these is Veiko Õunpuu "Empty Beach" and "Autumn Ball." 

Jim Johnson has played a leading role in Veiko Õunpuu 2009th At the end of which premiered the film "Temptation of St Tony." Jim Johnson has played Maria Avdjuško short film, "What is your name?", which was Linnar Priimäega erotic scenes. embodies a series of "Sledge Dogs" investigator mailbox (from the eighth season). 

Privately 

Jim Johnson Alexander Johnson's father is an actor. June 2003

nominated for best European Production Designer(s) at the 2010 European Film Awards for their work on Temptation of St. Tony.  Coincidentally, the awards will be announced in Tallinn, Estonia - the film maker's home - on December 4, the same day the film first shows in Anchorage.

[UPDATE Dec. 4: The Temptation of St. Tony was up for the European Production Designer Award at the  2010 European Film Awards for their work on Temptation of St. Tony.  The award ceremony was tonight in Talinn, Estonia.  We're enough time zones away that it already happened and St. Tony lost to Roman Polansky's The Ghostwriter which swept six of the 18 awards.]

AIFF 2010: The Wild Hunt - Reactions, Mine and Audience

I couldn't tell from what I'd read whether this film was going to work or not.  It took on an interesting set of issues (well this was a good enough movie to allow us all to find our on values and issues in it).  Erik's girlfriend sort of leaves him, but she seems to be needy enough that she wants to put him on hold until she finds something better, for a weekend of medieval role playing in the woods.  We get some substantial issues to deal with:  what is real and what is fantasy as Erik, when he finally decides to go after Evalyn, is told he can't enter the game out of costume.  He fights entering into the game - he first goes in wearing street clothes, he refuses to talk in the mock epic jargon of the role players, he doesn't want to take an oath to Viking gods, and constantly tells people, "I'm not playing the fucking game," he's just there to rescue Lynn, who is now captive Princess Evalynia.   Slowly he gets sucked into his role as a Viking warrior come to rescue the Princess.

This can be a metaphor for all sorts of things - what is reality - back home in the city with the cars or in the fantasy ancient world in the forest?  The modern world's loss of spirituality, connection to lofty speech and noble ideals?  A critique of modern warfare and armies as just a bunch of young men who get too full of themselves?

For me Evalyn was just a confused young soul, lost in between girlhood and womanhood, searching for her identity amongst a bunch of sexually frustrated young males.  I didn't think she was worth the lengths Erik was prepared to go to rescue her.  Or was he simply rescuing himself and she was simply a symbol of his own self worth?

A lot was thrown up in the mix.  Ultimately, it didn't work for me.  But it's a great movie for a film festival - the film makers got to practice a lot of technical and narrative ideas and it has a lot of interesting parts.  Presumably their next project will reflect what they learned doing this one.  And they sent a great trailer in which Erik's brother, in costume on a bridge over a freeway, invoked the Viking deities for the opening of the film festival. 

Unfortunately, my bias against watching graphic violence, didn't help at the end.  I didn't watch, but I could hear the gasps of others in the audience.  Someone seems to be making sure we have a movie every year where someone gets his head bashed in on a rock. I wished they'd just let us know which one it is before hand.


Here's some audience reaction after the showing.



I caught Kelly (the first one on the video)  after he'd already been talking and I'm not sure the snippet I got is clear. I understand his issue to be that the opening movie should not be one that is in competition for an award. That featuring it the first night puts it at an advantage? Last year's opening movie was a very good Russian blockbuster, Hipsters, that cost about $30 million and won the best feature award. His point was that at a film festival, such a movie shouldn't be in competition with artier, less commercial, lower budget films. But they make perfectly good opening night films.

AIFF 2010: Greg Chaney and Brian Palmer Discuss Their Films

During the break I caught film makers Greg Chaney and Brian Palmer discussing their films.  Greg's is Journey on the Wild Coast about a young couple who made a remarkable journey which reminds us that we are all capable of far more than we know. 

From Erin and Hig's website GroundTruthTrekking:

From June 2007 to June 2008, we traveled 4000 miles from Seattle to the Aleutian Islands - solely by human power. This unprecedented expedition took us along the northern edge of the Pacific Ocean - through some of the most rugged terrain in the world - by foot, packraft, and skis.

 Journey plays Monday (7:45pm) and Tuesday (7:00 pm) at Out North.  Greg will be there and the two adventurers as well, unless Erin is giving birth.  And she might just do that during the movie and be ready for the Q&A.

Both Greg and Brian appear on the film.


Brian was embedded with the Marines in Iraq as a journalist.  His movie, Full Disclosure, is based on that experience.  I'm eagerly waiting to see this one.  Running 57 minutes,

AIFF 2010: Opening Gala - Some Photos

Bear Tooth Audience Early On

This is where the blogger considers walking out into the snow and just abandoning everything.  Going home at 1am, my work begins.  And the Bear Tooth auditorium is dark, I won't use the flash, and so I have to pretend my pictures are arty. So here are some photos and I'll try to get some film maker videos up before the sun rises.

The orange cones will be easily recognizable to Bear Tooth regulars.  For others, this is how the wait staff know which order to bring you during the movie. 

Tony Shepherd and Rand Thornsley - the the man who makes it happen and the man who makes it work - opening the festival.  There was even a birthday cake and a singer from the Anchorage Opera led in singing Happy Birthday.

Jon Voight and some of the crew from "Everybody Loves Whales" were there and spoke about being in Anchorage.

After The Wild Hunt showed - I'll try to get into that in another post - there was a break to go into the lobby and eat and mingle.  I got a chance to talk to several of the film makers and will try to get some of that up soon. 

Back in the auditorium, there was a band and also some trailers and film makers in the audience were introduced.  Here's Erik Knudsen, recently arrived from UK and who did Silent Accomplice.

Andy Thomas encouraged folks to check out his film The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi.

And Taavi Eelmaa, from Estonia, talked a little bit about the film in which he plays the title role, The Temptation of St. Tony.  This is a film I'm particularly looking forward to.  It sounds like a perfect festival type movie - honoring classic film makers and telling a dark tale in non-Hollywood fashion. 



More coming.  There are some neat folks in town for the festival and I'm hoping to share some with you here.

Fixing Mom's Keyboard - Intergenerational, Cross Continental Tech Fix

I was on the phone with my mom in LA. She'd taken my son (her grandson) to the airport to fly back to DC. But he'd left an ergonomic keyboard for her to use. And while she liked the keyboard, she wasn't getting the letters she wanted when she typed. My son uses a Dvorak keyboard, but that wasn't the issue.

She types the alphabet and tells me what she's getting. A, ok. B. ok. C ok. D ok. E ok. Trouble starts with J, then K then L. She's getting numbers.

Is there a numlock key? She can't find one.

What kind of keyboard is it?

Kinesis.

I look online. It does look strange. But nothing detailed enough.

An 800 number. Mom's on one phone. Call Kinesis on the other phone. I explain to Rick - my mon's in LA, I'm in Anchorage, my son's on a plane, and she's getting numbers instead of letters.


Rick: I think I can help. Find the Key(something key, I can't remember) in the upper right. Push it.

I repeat this to my mom.

She does it. She types. It works.

It's nice to be able to solve a little, but vexing problem for my mom, so easily. But this is a truly strange world.


Meanwhile, I've added a "Today's Tips" in the "Anchorage International Film Festival" tab above. Let's see if I can keep up enough to even have daily tips. Shannyn Moore has asked me to call into her radio show on KUDO every weekday after the 1pm news to say what's happening at the festival. So putting up daily tips should help get me ready.

AIFF 2010: Fanny, Annie, and Danny - and their creator Chris Brown

Danny's interrupted by the phone while playing computer games in his fancy apartment, which leads to a confrontation that shows us a darker edge to Danny's life.

Fanny is practicing a Christmas song on her recorder. It's pretty bad. Then someone knocks on her door.

Lady: Fanny, you can't practice your flute . . .
Fanny: It's not a flute, it's a recorder.
Lady: You can't do this at 6 am, other people are sleeping.

Fanny acts like a 5 year old, but she's clearly adult, living in a type of independent living/group house. We then follow her to work where she sorts chocolates on a conveyor belt in a near empty factory.

We meet Annie in the dentist office where her boss is telling her, over an open mouthed patient, that he's thinking of adding another 'girl'.
Annie: But I don't need any help.
Dentist: Business is expanding.
Annie: I can handle it.
Dentist: I've already placed an ad, people are coming this afternoon.
Annie:  I have an appointment, but I can cancel it.
Dentist: I can handle this, go to your appointment.

As I write this, I'm seeing foreshadowing of things to come that I didn't see when I first saw this on DVD the other night. I can also see how vividly the whole movie impressed itself in my brain. I think I could reconstruct almost every scene.

I'm not a fan of dysfunctional family movies in general, and my initial reaction was that no one could be so relentlessly nasty to her kids (even these adult kids) as the mom, and if someone were, that those who could - like the husband and Annie - would just leave. For example, Fanny, who comes by bus, gets to the house early. Mom says, "It's not 2 o'clock yet. Wait outside."  Mom has not one atom in her body that is sympathetic to Fanny.

But for the last couple of days, these characters have inhabited my head. They were so real. I can't imagine the actors not really being the characters. And I learned so much about them in 82 minutes. Though I'm still perplexed by the mom - though I'm sure there are people like her. If she hates her kids (except for Danny) so much, why do they get together for Christmas?  But a good film should leave you still chewing when it's over.  And my jaw is sore.

Fanny is a wonderful, wonderful character. A good person struggling to make her way in a world too complex for her brain. Chris did miracles to show her humanity on the screen so well
. And Annie's boyfriend, Todd, though he has problems of his own, is also thoroughly decent and talks to Franny adult to adult. And Dad is in second place only to Job.

This is a powerful movie. It's not a light parody of dysfunctional people, but more a like a serious documentary that follows them as they move toward a disastrous Christmas dinner (well Mom likes to celebrate the week before Christmas, something about less pressure). 

Anyone nervous about going home for Christmas because of family dynamics might want to check out Fanny, Annie, and Danny. I promise you, unless one of your family members gets cut up and put in the freezer, this family will make you feel good about your own. (I say this half seriously, but I want to emphasize, this is a movie that drew me right in with its absolutely real characters.  Even if I don't understand this mother (I'd like to think she's a little over the top, but maybe there are people out there like her) watching each sibling individually in their own lives and then watching them come together was riveting. 

And Thursday night I got to meet the film maker - Chris Brown - and to ask a bit about the dark characters in his film.





This film won Best US/International Narrative at the Kansas City FilmFest and Best Performance at the San Antonio Film Festival. It says a lot for the quality of the films at our festival that this one didn't make it into the films in competition. Or it might say something about the selection committee's tastes. (Don't know cause I haven't seen the films in Features in Competition.)

AIFF 2010: Andrew Thomas on The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi

One of the perks of blogging the festival is getting to see some of the films on DVD before the festival. One I saw this week is Andrew Thomas' The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi. Guaraldi was a jazz musician whose name sounded familiar, but I couldn't have told you why. Until the notes of Cast Your Fate to the Wind began.

There's a lot of interesting stuff in the film. Once you get settled into the music, the film goes off in a different direction - we have civil rights (Dave Brubeck talks about coming back from WW II and how the black soldiers weren't allowed to eat in the restaurant with the white soldiers in their first stop back in the US). We have the hungry i and Lenny Bruce and Dick Gregory. We go to the opening of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral. And we also see Charlie Brown and Lucy. And by the end, we've heard a dozen or more versions of Cast Your Fate to the Wind.

J and I both really liked this movie. So when I said hello to the man in the hat Thursday night at the reception after NightJohn and he said he was Andy and that his film was about Vince Guaraldi, I had lots of questions. After a bit I remembered I had my video camera. So here's Andy Thomas talking about the movie. He does it much better than I and I'm sorry I didn't keep the camera going longer.   He's so completely into the film and how he did it and the interruptions - to do a film about manufacturing nail polish and a German film about spelunking in Italy to pay the bills.




But you'll be able to hear him and ask your own question after  
The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi shows  
Saturday at 5pm at the 
Bear Tooth.  Unfortunately, that's it, the only time it shows. 

AIFF 2010: Charles Burnett and NightJohn

Film maker Charles Burnett after NightJohn Showing

Although the Festival doesn't officially begin until Friday night, there was a pre-festival showing at the Anchorage Museum of Charles Burnett's NightJohn Thursday night.  I heard someone describe Burnett as the best American film maker that no one knows.  But the other film makers there all talked about being in the same room with a legend.






Here, for example, is Fanny, Annie, and Danny film maker Chris Brown talking about Charles Burnett.  (This is a very short video.)






This is a 1996 film about a slave who'd escaped to freedom in the North on his third try and then came back to the South so he could teach other slaves to read.  This was a Disney film, but with a black director and tells the story from the slaves' point of view.  Powerful stuff. 

But I don't have time to do too much except put up some pictures.  I'm not putting up any pictures from the after film talk because even I have some standards about photo quality and the ones I took, well the documentation of the event doesn't erase the low quality of the pictures.  But here are a couple of the reception afterward.

Anyone complaining about the expense of $8 festival tickets should have been at the museum tonight.  Not only was this 1996 film free, but so was the spread afterward.

I've pretty much given up eating cheese for health reasons, but I'd talked to Fromagio owner Helen Howarth last summer before the store was open and when I saw all the exquisite cheeses there, I was pretty sure I knew where it came from.  And I tasted some.  I completely understand anyone's addiction.  This is not your typical packaged American cheese.












Here's Burnett with a film festival volunteer.





And here he was good enough to pose with film maker Chris Brown, whose Fanny, Annie, and Danny plays Saturday at 5:30pm at the Bear Tooth.  I got to see it on dvd this week and the characters were so real and compelling that they seem like people I actually spent a couple of hours with. 

And the third person is Dawnell Smith, the Festival general manager.

AIFF 2010: Free Pre-Festival Movie Tonight

The Festival starts officially tomorrow night but you can get a head start with a free film at the Anchorage Museum tonight at 7pm.  There are still tickets left.  You can order online now.

Click here to reserve Nightjohn tickets

Here's what the Museum says Nightjohn by Charles Burnett, who will be there:

The film, about a slave who risks his life to teach other slaves to read, was called the "best American movie of 1996" by the New Yorker.

The New York Times wrote:

Lest we forget, knowledge is power, and for slaves in the antebellum South, learning to read was forbidden. Some slaves who dared to become literate were punished by having a finger chopped off in front of the whole slave community. Or worse. . .


Although narrated in the simple, straightforward style of a typical family movie and filmed with a picture-book prettiness, ''Nightjohn'' is no cop-out when it comes to confronting the day-to-day horrors of slavery. Its representative slave owner, Clel Waller (Beau Bridges), is a conscienceless brute who terrorizes his field workers with beatings and humiliations and bullies his squeamish young son, Jeffrey (Joel Thomas Traywick), into following his example.  .   .

Burnett has a second free movie showing Thursday night.  You can reserve your ticket at the same link. 

And tomorrow night the Wild Hunt opens the Festival at 7pm at the Bear Tooth.  It's $30 for the event. (It says on page 8 of the printed program.) You can also see the movie for $8 on Tuesday at 7:45pm at the Bear Tooth.