Thursday, December 09, 2010

AIFF 2010: Elias Matar Wants You to Bond With His Zombies




The sun was pinking the mountains when I left for the 4pm showing of The Silent Accomplice.  Seeing it on the big screen made a big difference.  I've adjusted my original added this caveat to my original post and Avenue Marie wrote in the comments a very moving account of her experience with the movie. 

Then we enjoyed the world premier of 22:43.

In between movies I ran into Elias Matar, the director of Ashes, who's up here for the Saturday 10pm showing at the Bear Tooth  Out North of his 'infected origins story.'  (How do I find the film makers in the crowd?  Just look at the film maker videos and then look at the audience members videos. The visitors are usually pretty obvious.  Plus Elias was with Don Chan who's the hospitality coordinator, running out to the airport to drop people off and pick them up, and driving film makers around town in his van.  Today he took a van load out to Girdwood for some sightseeing.  I got to take Don for some sightseeing last year. After the festival he got on cross country skis for the first time.

Anyway, here's Elias:



[More on Ashes here, after I saw the film.  Keep scrolling down after you link.]

Shane and Craig over my water glass at the Bear Tooth
Then we went back into the theater for three gay themed films. It began with two shorts and both had a wedding scene - Now and Forever and Bedfellows. The long one - Holding Hands - was a strong video about a young male couple in Sydney, Australia who were attacked one night walking home holding hands. Craig got has face smashed in against the sidewalk and Shane nursed him back together while handling their boarding house business on his own. They also were willing to talk to the press and garnered lots of attention which led to getting the police department to change how they dealt with homophobic violence. The two were interviewed every couple of weeks for over a year and we watch them struggle back from this traumatic experience.





Shane's skull after the 1st, before the 2nd operation



It was a very moving film, well made, which made - how often does this point have to be made? - the point that in the end, we are all equal human beings, deserving of at the very least tolerance, but really respect.

We skipped the the party at Mad Myrna's and I was still up way too late blogging.

AIFF 2010: World Premier of 22:43 Gets Good Audience Reception

22:43's Facebook page has this movie/tv page up showing the headline that the World Premier is in Canada.  Which they are quick to correct:

22:43 Natürlich liegt Anchorage NICHT in Kanada, sondern im US-Bundesstaat Alaska. Damit hatte "22:43" seine Weltpremiere in den USA ;-) Aber trotzdem vielen, vielen Dank für den tollen Bericht!!!


[Translation:  Of course, Anchorage is not in Canada, but is in the US state, Alaska.  Therefore, 22:43 has its world premier in the USA.  Despite that, many thanks for the good news!!!]

I would comment that the Germans who (rightfully) scolded Joe Miller in their comments on this blog for his comments on the East German border fence, might want to remember that this Austrian(?) newspaper thought Alaska was in Canada.


This is the third world premiere that I went to this week - The Last Station (world premier outside of Turkey); Journey Along the Wild Coast; and tonight, the Austrian film 22:43. The opening credits of 22:43 already had me sucked in as I tried to figure out exactly what I was seeing, but I liked the stuttering of the image. As the film began I was surprised at how clear the German was for an Austrian film. (OK I know they speak spectacular German in the Burgtheater, but I also know the Viennese can speak an unintelligible language of their own.)

22:43 worked despite a complicated set of plots and sub plots, despite the supernatural element, and despite the background airplane trip metaphor which made sense at the end.  Lots of stuff was happening, but even with subtitles, everyone I spoke to was able to follow pretty well.  (There's one woman on the video who needed help after it was over, but she said she'd see it again.)  It helped that Max, Hannah, and Chris were all appealing characters.  And the dog (I can't remember his name and the 22:43 website doesn't list him on the cast page) helped too.

I think it's still too early for me to write too much.  Some things are only now beginning to filter through and make sense.
 

I knew this was a world premier and no one was aware of anyone from the film being here, so I got audience folks coming out to give their impressions of the film for the benefit of the filmmakers.  I'll post that soon here. 




There was a good audience for a Wednesday afternoon. I'd say the Bear Tooth was 2/3 full - maybe 150 to 180 people.

Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Why Obama Needs to Stand Firm and Why He Can't

Summary 

1.  Prisoner's dilemma research shows that the Tit for Tat strategy is the most successful in long term game relationships.  A game is a situation in which the outcome of a relationship is affected by how each player acts.  The Prisoner's Dilemma is one kind of game.  The basic choices are 1)  cooperate and 2) defect. Tit-for-Tat strategy is to cooperate in the first round of a relationship (or negotiation) and after that mimic the other player's last strategy. 
This model would suggest that Obama should begin by cooperating, and then copy the Republicans' last strategy.  The Republicans have been defecting in almost every interaction with the Obama administration.  But Obama, for the most part, cooperates.  In a prisoner's dilemma situation this is a sure losing strategy over time.

2.  African-American males are successful in the white world when they act in a non-threatening way.  If they can maintain self-control, suppress anger, and respond instead with quiet, measured, rational words, they lower the likelihood that they will trigger latent white stereotypes of blacks.  Getting angry and articulating black frustration and anger may work well inside the black community, it doesn't play well outside it.

Thus, these two models would suggest that Obama needs to stand up to Republicans every time they defect (do not cooperate), but all his training, indeed, the very behavior that has allowed him to get elected president, now prevents him from doing what he needs to do - express his feelings and stand up and strike back at Republicans.  Now that he has made it to the presidency, he has to learn how to let go of the black male survival tactics and act, not like a black male, but like an equal to all the others in DC who are allowed to show appropriate anger. 

The Background

[Note:  1.  These aren't terribly difficult concepts, but they run contrary to how many people think.  Going over them in class, it was much easier when there was interactive discussion so that if students didn't grasp a point, I would know and could try a different approach.  I also was able to use a simulation exercise that let students see for themselves how they fell into traps based on their own models, traps which cost them.  My point here is to suggest that if this is new to you and doesn't make sense right off, that you shouldn't simply dismiss it, but be humble and accept that there might be something here worth pursuing.  At the very least, I'd ask you not dismiss it simply because you don't get it.  You can also use the comments option below. (To do that, click on the word comment at the bottom of the post.)  Or go to pursue other sources that explain it better than I do.  If you know this well and disagree with it, or I've made an error,  point out those problems in the comments too.
2.  These are just two conceptual models for thinking about this issue.  They offer an explanation.  There are a lot of other ways to look at the situation, which could be better models for finding strategies for Obama.]

Why Obama Needs to Stand Firm


Game Theory -  Game theory is an field of mathematics that examines games.  Games are relationships in which  
  • two or more players interact 
  • how each player plays (behaves, acts)  
  • affects the outcome of all the players. 
Commonly understood 'games' are the obvious examples - chess, football, etc.  But game theory extends to all interactions where the outcome of each player is affected by the behavior of all the players, such activities as finding a parking place, elections, investing in the stock market, or making dinner.


Types of Games  
(I'm focusing just on two types of games.)

Zero-sum games are games where there is a winner and a loser, where the more I win, the more you lose.  In zero-sum games, the size of the outcome is fixed.  It's like a pie.  There is just one pie.  The more pie I eat, the less there is for you.  It's a $10 prize.  The winner gets the whole $10.   Many people see every interaction with other people as a win-lose situation and thus they do everything they can to win as much of the pie as they can.  In their eyes, life is a never ending competition for fixed, finite resources.

Variable-sum games are where the outcome itself could vary depending on how the players play.  Variable-sum games are not as obvious as zero-sum games because the activities we tend to call 'games' tend to be zero-sum in design.  But having a barbecue is also a type of game.  Does one person supply all the food and do all the cooking or is it potluck?  How this is worked out will affect whether there is a lot of delicious food or nothing edible.  The outcome - amount of good food - is not finite, but variable.

But we can look at traditional zero-sum games and see them, too, as variable sum if we pull back a bit.  They are zero-sum if we only look narrowly at who wins and who loses.  But if we look at all the outcomes, it becomes clear they are variable sum games too.  Take a boxing match.  If we only think of winner and loser.  It's zero-sum.  But if we look at other outcomes it's variable sum.  Will the boxers emerge healthy and whole or will they be injured or even permanently maimed?  I might lose the match, but be able to write a book about my experience and gain fame and fortune even though I lost.  Or I could become depressed and drink myself to oblivion.  The outcome is extremely variable if we consider all the outcomes and not just the win-lose and who gets the prize.

One more example.  Was the first Iraq war a zero-sum or variable-sum game?  [I'm not going to answer that here, but I will respond to readers in the comment section.]


The Prisoner's Dilemma

The prisoner's dilemma is a particular type of game.  It comes from the police tactic of separating two prisoners and telling each:

"The other guy has confessed.  You're going to jail.  If you confess too, you'll only get three years.  But if you refuse, you'll get ten years because your buddy confessed."

The prisoner has to determine if his partner confessed or not.  If he didn't confess, there's no evidence and they will both walk.

So, the basic structure of the prisoner's dilemma game is this:

  • If you cooperate and the other player cooperates - you both come out ahead.
  • If you cooperate but the other player defects   -  the defector comes out better than the cooperator.  (The reverse is true if you defect and the other player cooperates)
  • If you both defect  - both lose, but not as much as when one cooperates and one defects.
Robert Axelrod used computer simulations of prisoner's dilemma games and found that the winning strategy - over a period of many games - was Tit for Tat.

Tit for Tat Strategy

In this strategy, you begin by cooperating, and then copy the other player's last move.  This doesn't necessarily work in individual games, but the player who uses Tit-for-Tat in every game comes out ahead overall in a series of games.

Examples that Axelrod uses include the arms race and the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  If both players defect all the time, they both lose more and more as they go along.

I recognize that just reading what I've written above isn't going to convince the skeptics.  One needs to read further, even participate in simulations, to see how this plays out in life.  But I can only lead you to the water.  Most will have to do more reading on this to really get it.  But I'll go on anyway.

Implications for Obama

You led off by cooperating.  The Republicans have defected every time.  The only times you (defected) stood up to them - say on health care - you ultimately won.  The worst situation is to cooperate when the other player defects.  You fall into a deeper and deeper hole.  And they are not encouraged to cooperate, because they know that you will cave and cooperate again.

Now, both sides defecting constantly is a lose-lose situation for the nation in the long run.  And there are other games going on besides the votes in Congress.  The Republicans are clearly winning the game of interpreting what is happening to the American people.  If a plurality of people get their only news from Fox News, that will probably continue to happen.  Democrats have to better communicate the stories about what's happening in DC.

But with the Republicans saying the deficit is the most important thing (they won't fund unemployment benefits UNLESS the money is made up somewhere else) yet adding to that deficit by insisting on tax cuts for the top 2%, the Democrats have an easy opportunity to score.  If they can't capitalize on the Republicans now accepting extended unemployment assistance AND adding to the deficit with the tax cut extensions, then they have no chance of winning.   This is a message the American public would understand.  And when the Republicans can block anything with a 'majority' of 40%, there is another message that Americans can understand.  The minority, not the majority, rules in the Senate.  The minority is holding the country hostage.


Why it will be hard for Obama to show his anger and stand firm against the Republicans

Black American males have not traditionally succeeded in white American through confrontation.  When they have stood up to white authority, even white non-authority, black men tend to lose.  This is not a story most white people know, but every black person does.  Black parents teach their sons that they have to be respectful with everyone and if stopped by the police to show their hands and not do anything to give the cops an excuse to shoot them.

Terrance at Pam's House Blend expresses this training clearly:
As an African-American male, I have always been taught to show respect to the police, even when or if I feel that the officer is wrong. As a survival technique, I am teaching this to my son and I convey this to my students and all of the other young people that I engage in my lectures. My parents and other elders have always taught me "an argument with a cop is an argument you will always lose ... if you don't get along with the police, you will probably go along with the police and that's a trip you do not want to take. Even when you're right, if you fail to comply, you're wrong. You're objective during an encounter with the police is to leave that encounter in the same manner in which you entered it, in one piece. You can challenge the officer later in court. That's 'Black Man - 101.'"



Ask any African-American mother about her teenage son if you don't believe this. Here's a post from My Sweet Brown Son.  First she talks about how her 6' 250 lb son was asked by his high school football coach for his class schedule.

. . . Take a good hard look at him on the 50-yard line, and it’s easy to get it twisted: He looks like an angry, aggressive, big, black jock—a guy who crushes the opponent on the field, and off the field, probably doesn’t put much effort into much more than football, girls, and black boy shenanigans.

I don’t know if this is what one of his team’s assistant coaches had on his mind recently when he called the boy over to take a look at his class schedule. Mazi handed it to him and shifted nervously from foot to foot, his mind on who knows what. I can only guess what he expected to find, but when that coach looked at Mazi’s schedule and then back up at Mazi, I could see in his eyes that his perception of who my boy is was completely, forever changed.

See, what that coach wasn’t expecting to see is this.

Image from My Sweet Brown So

That’s Honors Physics. Honors Algebra. Advanced Placement Psychology. Honors Language Arts. And Mechanical Drafting—the first in a series of courses that’ll put Mazi on firm footing toward becoming an architect. Peep the grades: All A’s, and one B. He’s number 44 in a class of 546—and still climbing.
She goes on to speak of her fears for her son:
And every time that child leaves this house, I fear that someone will look at him, his size, his skin color, his swagger, and see what they want to see, and not who Mazi is. Not a day goes by without us warning him to be respectful, to watch his tone, to be extra vigilant when approaching people in his path. And last week he got his license and bought himself a car with the cash he makes as a lifeguard, which of course means that now when he snatches his keys and heads for the door, I'm a nervous wreck thinking that he's going to get stopped by the cops.

I have good reason to be nervous for him, you know. In just the past week, three—THREE!—black men have been shot, two killed . . . [Emphasis added.  This was a Jan 19, 2009 post.]
Jonathan Capehart in a Washington Post piece explains another aspect of the controlled anger of successful black men:
Black men, especially educated black men, grew up with images of non-violent protests in the face of aggressive policemen, consequences of actually "displaying anger" like the Rodney King situation and are conditioned not to "act out" in crisis situations. Even in sports, you see "fits of rage" with black athletes, but even that is more controlled than, say, hockey, where if black athletes were to display that level of rage -- it would be called a riot!
If Obama were to display anger he runs the risk of Angry Black Man syndrome, becoming too scary or threatening to the public, immediately non-presidential! . . .
. . ."You can't show anger, otherwise you are judged a certain way," said one prominent friend who would only speak about this on background. "It's already a societal thing where people find black men dangerous. So you can't be angry.... You learn early on there are certain lines you do not cross." Think about it. There's no African American version of, say, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff with a widely known and celebrated reputation for F-bombs and confrontation. 
In a more recent Washington Post article - after the elbow in the lip and Wikileaks - Courtland Milloy writes:
By most accounts, Obama acts like a black man behind closed doors. He talks trash while shooting hoops, talks Chicago South Side tough with his aides and conveys a range of emotions, including anger.
Once in public, though, he demurs - as if upholding some unspoken bargain with white America to never look like an angry black man in exchange for continued off-the-charts "likability" ratings and a shot at reelection in 2012.
For a more historical look at this, we see an analysis of black male images in the movies:

From WW Norton, Looking at Films
In that film, Poitier's role (a black doctor treating a white racist) was a type he was to repeat many times over: a character who, when faced with adversity and racism, expresses his anger with controlled eloquence, effecting change through the strength of his will and the righteousness of his cause. In Ralph Nelson's Lilies of the Field (1963), Poitier played another righteous character, a handyman who helps a group of German nuns build a chapel in the Arizona desert, and he became the first African American actor to win an Oscar for a leading role. Poitier played similarly admirable and well-received characters in Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) and James Clavell's To Sir, with Love (1967). In the former, Poitier portrayed a highly respected doctor with impeccable international credentials who falls in love with a wealthy, white San Francisco college girl; and in the latter, he portrayed an English schoolteacher who in just a few weeks turns a ragged group of East End students into proper young British adults. To such roles, Poitier brought a dignified, controlled, and stoic presence. He played heroes who sublimated their aggression and passion by mastering socially sanctioned manners, in every sense of that word.
Whites may respond that things have changed, and they have.  But if you've ever been bitten by a dog and/or know lots of people who have, you learn to act carefully when there's a stray dog around you don't know.  I first became aware of this different way of seeing the world in 1967 when I visited a black friend at the University of Missouri.  Wherever we walked around campus he pointed out escape routes if a police car was nearby or a group of menacing white students in his path.  Years later I asked a black colleague at a conference why he was always in a suit and tie.  His answer was, so when (not if) I get stopped by the police, they might think I'm not dangerous and it will be a little easier.

And it's still an issue.  Just last spring I talked to a white woman who had recently married a black man - a man in his fifties who has won the highest honor his profession has to give.  They were driving in New Jersey late at night and were stopped by the police and treated badly. She started to yell at the cops about rights and racial profiling and he very firmly told her to stop and get back in the car.  Later he told her to never, ever do that again.  He's the one who will get the consequences of her righteousness.  

So, the US has created an environment which forces black boys to act submissively dealing with white authorities if they want to stay alive, let alone succeed.  And teaches black men that they have to suppress their anger and be calm, rational, and non-threatening, perhaps most important here - non-confrontational -  if they are going to succeed in the white world.

We have a president, who would NOT be president, had he not learned those lessons well.  But as President he has to mix it up with powerful white men, AS AN EQUAL, not as a black man adapted to succeeding in a white world. 

But no president has all the necessary skills.  They need a vice president and other officials around them to balance their strengths with other strengths. If Obama can't learn to play hardball with white Republicans - not to mention those in his own party - then he has to get some good poker players to advise him and perhaps even sit in for him where he needs these skills.

AIFF 2010: Erik Knudsen - Silent Accomplice and Cinema of Poverty Workshop

[UPDATE: Dec. 8, 11pm: I got to see The Silent Accomplice tonight on the big screen and it is a totally different experience from what I had watching it on my laptop last week. The visuals are beautiful and sound is, well, sound, not noise with real speakers. An important lesson to remember. And especially for a movie that has no plot or dialogue. I've also added the video of Erik talking about "What makes a movie good" at the bottom.]


I'm putting the video up now because that's what I have available.  I'll try to put up my thoughts on Knudsen's The Silent Accomplice which plays today at 4pm at the Bear Tooth.

For a list of today's events see the Anchorage International Film Festival tab above (and below the header.)




[UPDATE: 1pm]

My recommendation on this whether you should see The Silent Accomplice:
[It plays today (Wed) at 4pm at the Bear Tooth.  You don't have to miss anything else to see it.  Also again Saturday at Out North at 1pm.]

1. If you hate Hollywood films and come to the festival to see experimental stuff, don't miss this film.

2. If you are interested in the film making processes, then go see this and pay attention to what works and what doesn't in this film and what this film adds to our conception of what a film can do.

3. If you don't like abstract paintings and you don't like music without a clear melody and beat, and you enjoy Hollywood blockbusters but not films with subtitles, then stay away from this movie.


It's easier to justify seeing this film if you bought a festival pass than if you have to shell out $8.

Tony Shepherd, the AIFF founder liked this film.  He writes in the hard copy festival program:
"A masterpiece of visual complexity that blurs the line between experimental and mainstream"
In my normal understated way, I'd say, I see it a little differently.  Here are my thoughts after seeing the film on DVD a week ago. If you're going to see the film, you might want to wait until afterward to read further.

[Dec. 8 - I feel I have to remind the reader of the notice at the top. I saw the film tonight on the big screen and it went by quickly and I enjoyed it very much. So my points here become less of an issue because the power of the visuals does carry the film for me.]

I saw this as a dvd on a very small screen. It’s very possible seeing it on a larger screen would change my reaction to the film.

About five minutes into the film I looked at my wife. You don’t have to watch this if you don’t want to, but I should watch more. At the 30 mnute mark I would have left if I didn’t feel some responsibility to the film maker and festival viewers.

At the end, they listed the cast - there were lots of people in this movie. But early on I was thinkng the key actors were the water and the various water containers - lakes, rivers, bottles, pails, sinks, watering cans, washing machines, etc. The people were mere props. There was no dialogue. A word or two may have escaped the lips of the props, but the only talking came from scenes that had the radio and television on.

But the camera lingered way too long for me on way too many scenes. There was nothing subtle about this. It wasn’t clear what the message was, but it was about water and its importance to people. Probably something environmental. We watched a little girl on the floor playing with some sort of wooden toy. It was probably 30 seconds, but it seemed interminable. Plus you couldn’t really tell what she was playing with. A truck? A train? And then at the end, we could see it was Noah’s Ark. I felt like I was being hit on the head with this vague water/environmental message. Later we got more than background television sounds from a show about whales. Bang, another hosing off with the water message.

But I have to stop and ask myself, “Am I missing something here?” If I don’t like this, can I explain why? Can I do it in a way that allows potential viewers to decide for themselves if it’s their kind of movie? Can I do this so that the film mkaer isn’t trashed, but is given honest feedback about why I thought this didn’t work?

At the 2008 AIFF, the Australian movie “Street Sweeper” was this sort of genre. (No real story line, not much dialogue, long lingering shots of every day things.) I don’t remember how much talking there was - I do remember a scene where the street sweeper spouted poetry - but basically the camera followed a Newcastle street sweeper who bizarely (that’s not a negative comment) arrives from the ocean to take his cart and sweep his way across the city for three days. It’s all visual and audio (almost none of it verbal.) Some people walked out. One Anchorage reviewer dismissed it. I thought it was fantastic - like a visual concert.

Recently we saw a Mexican film, “Ala Mar,” where the camera lingered far longer than would be tolerated in conventional film making. But it was appropriate to the story - of a small boy from the city visiting his father who lived in an offshore Mexican fishing community. Life there was much slower and the lingering shots were beautiful and got the audience into the pace and rhythm of this fishing community.

So, I’m not averse to non-traditional movies or long, slow shots. But they didn’t work for me in this film. A couple of reasons:

1. Water was the star of the film, but there were all these people. The credits at the end of the film didn’t mention the water or all the vessels that held water. It just listed people, but in a sense, they were the props, not the actors.

2. In The Street Sweeper - I’m probably making a leap here since it’s been a couple of years now - I’m pretty sure that the camera either was focused on the streetsweeper or looked at the world from his perspective. There was a point of view for the viewer. In Accomplice, I never knew why I was looking at something - from whose point of view? Why these people? Well, of course, there was usually some relationship with water, but not always. And we weren’t seeing the world from the water’s point of view, though we saw people interacting with water.

There were some nice camera shots, but many where we lingered were not particularly striking or interesting shots. The opening with the little girl looking at her reflection in the water through the magnifying glass was absolutely cool photography, but that level was not sustained. The click/still after the photos were takien in one scene is an old film cliché. And even if had been a totally original technique, two or three shots would have been enough.

3. For much of the movie the sound was variations of white noise - water flowing, lots of rain, machinery, vehicles. I found it annoying. The sounds of breaking glass, even the radio announcers, was a welcome break from the noise.

4. What was the point? I’m guessing there was some vague, but not subtle, environmental message. We saw people filling water bottles, watering flowers, washing dishes, washing clothes, cavorting in a fountain, floating in water. We saw boats floating in water and ice cooling fish and we saw steam,. We saw streams and a river and falling rain and the ocean. We saw clean water and we saw water with some sort of nasty looking white foam. And we saw men with flourescent green vests that said “Environment” on them throughout the movie. Was this supposed to remind us how important water is in our lives?

5. And the title doesn’t make sense to me. Merriam-Webster online defines accomplice as

one associated with another especially in wrongdoing

So, who does the title refer to? Who is the criminal and who is the one who helps the criminal? The people in the film are mostly silent, but it says “the” which implies one. The water - whether flowing or as rain - is hardly silent. What is the crime? Is the crime something people are doing to the water? If so, then the title is another less than clue about the message. If the water, then I have no idea what that would mean.

There are lots of films in the festival. This is one that pushes the limits, takes risks, tries something different. I don’t think it works. But, if film is to not get stagnant, people have to take risks. Many of these risks won’t result in great films. But they will discover new techniques, new ways of looking at the world through a lens.

Somewhere I have a bit of video of Mr. Knudsen.  I told him my thoughts about the movie and on the clip I asked him what makes a good film?  I'll put it up when I find it among all the clips I've put on my computer this week. Note, I just sprang this question - if you make an unconventional film and already break the rules of traditional film making, what makes a film good? Is every film good or are there some standards?

OK, 10:56pm  - Here's the video:

AIFF 2010: Samsui Women, My Perestroika, Along the Wild Coast

The Singaporean movie was a short, utilitarian, documentation of women who came to work in Singapore from mainland China about 70 years ago.  Two women, one in her 90s and one 100, sitting in their wheel chairs, talked about their lives as manual laborers building buildings in Singapore.  Nothing fancy here, just grabbing some history while it's still available.  Nice little film.

Full House at Out North for Hig and Erin's Journey Along the
My Perestroika was a fascinating film that featured several 30 something Russians talking about their childhood and the fall of the Soviet Union.  Old photos and movies from their childhoods were interwoven.  A film like this has to make any thinking American pause a moment.  They talked about their childhoods nostalgically.  The had good, carefree lives then.  And the US they saw on television and movies - riots, murders - made them thankful they lived in the Soviet Union.  Just like Americans learn to be thankful they weren't born anywhere else either.  They included a pool table representative, two teachers, a musician, and the owner of a French shirt company for men.  

Film maker Greg Chaney, Hig, Katmai, and Erin+
Then we switched into the art gallery which was also set up like a theater for Hig and Erin's story Journey Along the Wild Coast.  The video quality was pretty bad at first, then seemed to get better as they went along walking, skiing, and paddling from Seattle to the Aleutians.  Film maker Greg Chaney got 100 hours of video to edit.

The movie is pretty straightforward as they take pictures and shoot movies of themselves going from I-5 into Canada and then into Alaska, crossing icy bays, going through a few towns, and finally lots of bear encounters near the end.  The story itself is so compelling - it took them over a year - that it makes up for the video quality.  I also liked their diary description explanation to things as they happened, with no narrator pompously summarizing everything.  

I misread the program.  It turned out that the shorts program played in the main auditorium at the same time as Journey Along the Wild Coast.  Then a friend dropped J home and I went on the the Canadian reception and the Canadian shorts.  

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

AIFF 2010: How'd This Film Get In? Commercials Don't Belong Here. Even Classy Ones.

Jeff Chiba Stearns is a great animation artist. His film about Yellow Stickies a couple of years ago at AIFF was clever and well executed. He used yellow stickies to make his film. He even got the interest of 3M which makes yellow stickies. All well and good. I even have a yellow bunny post-it pad he gave out at his animation workshop which was one of the best I've ever been to. Real hands on. I did a post of his film including a video with him about it.

Art Fry picks up yellow post it at 3M Headquarters
But his animated film this time seemed to me to be more of a corporate commercial - or as Public Television would call it an underwriter announcement. It's about the 30th anniversary of the yellow stickie pads and some pads sitting around a computer see a father's day card. So they google (actually it's some generic search engine) father's day and find out Father's Day is. The stickie then googles 'father of post-it notes" which leads the stickie to make a trip to 3M headquarters to meet Art Fry the Father of the Yellow Post-It note.



BUT, it's really a commercial. Jeff's LinkdIn page says:
Currently, Meditating Bunny Studio Inc. has moved into commercial production and has begun production on a viral video for 3M Canada's 30th Anniversary of the Post-it Note.
I understand that 'commercial production' doesn't necessarily mean 'producing commercials.'   But AIFF isn't an advertising film festival. This animated film should not be in the festival. Unless maybe 3M was a major sponsor of the festival.  There are other venues for this kind of work.   Like the ClIO's.

Not only is "Ode to a Post-It Note" in the festival, it was picked as an Animation in Competition.  It's in the running for the best animation film at AIFF 2010.  A commercial!  That will help raise our stature as a serious film festival.  

So how did it get in?  Well, here's what the AIFF submission rules say:
The competition is open to any film or video completed after to January 1, 2009 regardless of content, subject, or origin.  The film cannot be screened in Alaska or the USA on broadcast cable TV before December 17, 2010.
So, technically, McDonald's ads and even Miller and Murkowski ads could start showing up in the animated and shorts programs, as long as they are reasonably well made and haven't aired yet on US television. [Why does it say in Alaska or the USA as though Alaska were not in the USA?]  Is that where we want AIFF to go?  Corporations could test their commercials by sending them to film festivals first.  That's not the direction I'd like to see this festival go.

I think the committee should look into revising the submission rules to keep commercials, even good ones, out of the festival.  Or, if they insist on leaving things wide open, commercials should be labeled as such and put in a separate program.  People who want to see 90 minutes of commercials can go there.  (I say this knowing that Out North shows the best British commercials every year.)

My objections, I'm sure, are based on some underlying but yet unarticulated concern about the commercialization of everything.  Perhaps others can express it better, or explain why I'm wrong.

AIFF 2010: Tuesday Festival Tips for Pearl Harbor Day

I've added a tab for the "Anchorage International Film Festival - Daily Tips" just under the orange header.  But it seems most people don't know it's there.  So today I'm going to also put up my tips as a separate post too. 

Tuesday Dec. 7  - TODAY'S   TIPS 
This is getting harder as it becomes obvious that there are too many overlaps. For example
  • Hello Lonesome is a feature in competition at 5:30pm at the Bear Tooth.  It's won some awards.  But it's 93 minutes so if I watch it all, I can't get to Out North in time to see all of . . .
  • Journey on the Wild Coast starting at 7pm at Out North.  This documentary is about Hig and Erin who walked/skied/and paddled from Seattle to the Aleutians.  I missed it in another conflict once. 
  • The Wild Hunt was the opening night show and plays again at 7:45 at Bear Tooth.  You can read my thoughts and hear some audience reaction.  It's worth seeing, but I don't agree with the reviewers who put it 'in competition' but left Fanny, Annie, and Danny out of competition.  I certainly am not interested in a second go at it.  
  • I think I'll just go to Out North for the 5:30 Documentary double bill - My Perestroika (in competition) and Samsui Women, a movie from Singapore.  Stay for Journey and the shorts program Crazy Love.   Damn.  How can they have a whole shorts program and not have a single one of the films in competition in it?  But judging by the animated films I saw Sunday, the best films may not all be 'in competition.'  Jeff Watkins who made Dishonesty which I did see and will be meaningful to anyone in a relationship, is scheduled to be there. 
  • Then back to Bear Tooth for the Canadian Reception and shorts at 9:45pm.
Given that today is Pearl Harbor Day, the programmers missed a great chance to show The Red Machine  today.  We saw it last night.  It's about breaking the Japanese code machine in prior to WW 2.  It's a film that was invited and is not in competition.  It was a very slick and irreverent spy movie.  It shows again on Wednesday at 7:45pm at the Bear Tooth. 

Monday, December 06, 2010

AIFF 2010: Iditarod Film - Mush's Maker Alex Stein Video

I ran into Alex Stein Sunday night at the Bear Tooth. He and I were on Shannyn Moore's show at KUDO (1080 am) together Friday - but we were both calling in - to talk about the film festival. Shannyn's asked me to call in after the 1pm news during the festival to talk about what looks good each day. I think I might have said that in an earlier post, sorry. It's hard keeping things straight. For tonight's lineup, click on the Alaska International Film Festival tab above.

Anyway, Alex gave a brief description of the film on the video.  Mush  plays again  

Saturday evening at 7:30 in a Snowdance (Alaska films) program at Out North.

Alex focused on some of the mushers who were bringing up the tail end of the race to learn about their motivation when they know they can't win. (Why does everyone have to always win? Just being able to mush to Nome is adventure enough.) He's scheduled to be at the presentation Saturday.



AIFF 2010: Antonio Garcia, LA Scout Checking Out Movies

Sunday night I ran into Kodiak born Antonio M. Garcia who now lives in LA and works for a producers' representative company called Ostrow and Company.  He says Alaska is hot in Hollywood right now.  Watch the video.


AIFF 2010: Day 3 is Over, I'm Exhausted

I was feeling guilty that I hadn't packaged the animated films in competition into a neat post. But I went to see the 1pm "Cool Animation for All Ages" program at Out North Sunday. It was great not having any idea what was coming up, what was supposed to be good, and being able to just enjoying the great imaginations of the animators. Not everything was great, but every film had something of interest. 

I got there late and knew it would be crowded by all the cars parked on the street. 

The top one below was called Tmelines, and took the literal lines on the woman's face and drew pictures of - the parents' deaths, raising kids - the things that put the wrinkles on the face.  









And then there was one that was my clear favorite - a perfect mesh of animation style and story that surprised me with great twists in its short run time. Toothnapped!  It's middle right - but that's not a good representation of that film (or any of the others.)










I also liked Not Over Easy - the egg image.  I didn't catch the pun until I watched the movie.  (It's about breaking up AND eggs.)




 Taking care of aging parents came up two or three times.  A few examined couples learning to negotiate with each other.  Two took place in prison. 


I stayed for the workshop on "Cinema of Poverty" which was about how some huge number of features are made each year - say about 12,000 - of which a tiny fraction will have theatrical release, and maybe 20 will break even or make money.  (I could be distorting the numbers a bit, but you get the idea.)  Erik Knudsen, the workshop leader, was saying the film makers shouldn't lust after big bucks, but be creative and work within the budget restraints.


And there were these two bikes there, and another one at the actual bike racks.