Sunday, December 12, 2010

AIFF 2010: Snow Dance 2




The SnowDance 2 program was packed Saturday evening.  This picture was still five minutes before the show began.  More cushions were brought out for floor people. 











The audience made lots of appreciative noises during Peter Dunlap-Shohl's Oblivion 1964, a short animation about the big Alaska earthquake.  Peter has Parkinson's and writes a Parkinson's blog and another one called Frozen Grin, but in this picture he was just fooling around. 




Jack Dalton starred in Native Time.  This movie visually gets across some cross-cultural time conflicts.  The slow motion Native crossing the street driving the fast speed non-Native drivers should be understandable to most.



I'll add some video of the Q&A later today.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

AIFF 2010: "crazy Indian family living in New Jersey much like our own."

[I just found this sitting here as a draft.  I thought I'd posted it Saturday.  It's a bit out of date, but here it is.]

Q:  There are so many movies, how do you pick which ones to write about?

A:  You have to embrace serendipity to enjoy a film festival - make some sort of a plan, but be ready to abandon it as things come up.  I remember last year going to the wrong venue and just staying there and getting involved in the best ever Q&A with the film maker.  The audience members just had a variety of expertise relevant to the film and the discussion verged on brilliant.

So, why is Calling Karma on my radar?  Several accidents of life.  I started trying to make a list of all the films in competition in each category, but only made it through the features this year.  Calling Karma is on that list.

And India has always fascinated me - it's this huge part of the world physically and in terms of population.  It's a place where many languages and religions somehow live together - not always peacefully.  It's a place where the past still exists intact almost alongside with the modern.  It's the biggest alternative to the modern world still on earth.  There's a tag on this blog with lots of posts on India.

India has incredible music.  And if all the other food in the world suddenly disappeared, Indian food is so varied and so imaginative and so healthy that after twenty years, few people would miss any of the others - even Thai food.  (Blasphemy!) But even more important, people who know the world in a completely non-Western way are still respected in India, and that gives us tools for alternative thinking as our extreme rationality and focus on money reveals itself as an insufficiently balanced way to live. 


And India has a huge presence in English language literature. Some of that has been translated to film.  A lot of this literature has been expat Indian reflections, and mostly from fairly sophisticated and educated Indians. (I'm getting off on thin ice here as I start speculating beyond what I know.  But bear with me and take this as brainstorming because if I do the research necessary to document this line of reasoning, I won't get this posted before Karma Calling plays tonight.)   I'm not sure how much of the Indian-American experience has been captured directly to film without being a book first.  I can think of one example - the two Harold and Kumar movies.  And one of the locations that Harold and Kumar was filmed is Hoboken, New Jersey.  And Hoboken is where Karma Calling was filmed.

So, that's how this movie got my attention and why I emailed Sarba Das one of the filmmakers who is now in Anchorage and why I'm going to the 8:30 showing at Out North tonight.

So, here's what Sarba had to say in response to some of my email questions.

When we first came up with the idea to make Karma Calling, no one had ever really heard much about Call Centers and "outsourcing" was a relatively new concept.  For us, the journey was personal.   Back in 2003, my brother Sarthak and I were actually writing a screenplay about a crazy Indian family living in New Jersey much like our own.  One day we were sitting down to write and brainstorm, and the phone rang.  It was guy named "Rob" with a very heavy Indian accent on the other end who seemed to be struggling a bit with his English and trying to sell us an increased line of credit.  My brother, fluent in several Indian languages immediately chimed in with Hindi.  Rob seemed relieved.  They chatted for sometime and we soon found out that "Rob" was actually "Rohit" and that he was using an American-friendly name because he was a Call Center Operator--something we'd never heard of before.  He told us about all of the techniques that they were learning in the call center from watching Simpsons episodes to learn about American Culture to Accent Neutralization lessons.  We were fascinated.  Rohit took a liking to us and from there on practically every day we'd sit to write, the phone would ring and he would be calling just to chat, just to find out about our lives in America.  After a few weeks of these telephone exchanges, we found his stories to be so hilarious that it dawned on me...why not include a storyline  in our screenplay about a Call Center Operator calling the Indians living in New Jersey?  And so Karma Calling was born...
She just got to Anchorage early yesterday morning - some preliminary reactions:

I have never set foot in Alaska before and I feel so fortunate to be here now with the film.  The natural beauty is just awe-inspiring and I'm so impressed with the fervent love of independent filmmaking that seems to have taken hold in this community. Grassroots film festivals like the Anchorage International Film Festival are what allows indie filmmakers like myself to share our work with audiences that we'd never dream to have access to otherwise.  It's really an honor to be a part of the festivities.


Karma Calling - 8:30 - Out North - Saturday night

Is this a great film?  Probably not.  It might not even be good.  But this is a film festival and at the very least, you'll get a glimpse of a couple people's take on the Indian-American experience.

AIFF 2010: Phone Dating/Kenny G jokes/European Son/Music and Age

[Brock - skip this post]
I just wanted to write a quick post.  It seems I'm no longer capable of that.  One thing leads to another and short is transformed to long - at least in time spent if not in words.

This started as two brief observations:

Phone Dating

As I watched the big Mama tranny [see comments] character  furiously working her iPhone in Ticked Off Trannies with Knives last night, I thought, gee, in 25 or 30 years people will be able to date films (and find errors) by the kind of phones they used.  It used to be automobiles - "Hey look, that's supposed to be 1955, but there's a '57 Chevy in it."


Kenny G Jokes

At AIFF 2008  Distraxtion won the best animated award based on a Kenny G joke.  This year in the short European Son, two men are discussing ways to commit suicide, and one guy offered, and it went by very quickly, something about just listening to Kenny G for a day.



European Son

So, that was all I wanted to say, except that I liked European Son, but couldn't understand the title.  That's where this post got extended.  It didn't take long to track down the Velvet Underground song.  Here are the lyrics courtesy of MetroLyrics:
You killed your European son
You spit on those under twenty-one
But now your blue car's gone
You better say so long
Hey hey, bye bye bye

You made your wallpapers green
You want to make love to the scene
Your European son is gone
You'd better say so long
Your clown's bid you goodbye
The link isn't completely obvious. I think a blue car was mentioned, but it was the red one he drove off in.  He's definitely over twenty-one.  He is saying bye bye bye.  I thought perhaps the last line might have hinted at suicide, which would fit, but couldn't find any confirmation.  Here's what seemed like the most comprehensive succinct explanation of the song (again from Metro Lyrics - where you can get this as your ringtone and you can hear the song.)
"Discrimination against those who are free, young (both literally and in mentality) and aware. A message to parents, to the intellectuals, to the elite and to anyone who tries to control anyone else in any way imaginable. The freedom explored in the noise is just a literal example of this message. "
Music Taste and Age

And all this raises questions about why I didn't know this old song and about what patterns exist in terms of age and keeping current with music.  In my case, before twenty-one, I knew most new pop music, but after that, my new music intake became seriously limited.  In part that had to do with being in Thailand for three years and away from top 40 radio.  And when I came back FM had grown up and I pretty much haven't looked back at AM since.  Is that a common pattern?  After all, there are radio stations stuck in a time warp playing only the great songs of my youth where you never hear any new stuff.

Help

  • So, can anyone out there explain the movie title "European Son"?   
  • Does anyone know of studies of new music awareness as people go from teens to twenties to thirties, etc.?  
[UPDATE - January 14, 2011 - I did get to ask European Son director Tyler Zelinsky about the title at the festival. I'm catching up on tidbits like this as best as I can.   He said that he listened to the song while he was doing the film and was hoping that the type of scam that's done in the film would come to be known as the European Son, sort of like the Spanish Prisoner.  This is a really good little short film.  Great acting, wonderfully bizarre events, funny, and good technical stuff.]

I did find a thread on a military chat forum, but I'm just going to give that link and stop looking.

http://www.military-quotes.com/forum/music-taste-age-t8222.html

See how one thing leads to another?  Enough.  There are movies to see.  (I've put my tips - there's a lot going on today I just haven't been able to catch up with - in the Anchorage International Film Festival tab above for today.)

AIFF 2010: Festival Blogger Ethics and Objectivity

This festival blogging started in 2007 when I bought a pass for the festival and was at a screening when some of the filmmakers and actors were hamming it up in the lobby at the museum.  I pulled out my camera and taped it.  And posted it.  [Update: I see this doesn't really link to anything.  Blogging while sleep deprived isn't good for making sense.  I was trying to say here that the blogging sort of just happened and then built up over the years until the Festival people started emailing a month before the festival, "Hey, you're going to blog again this year aren't you?" And as I blogged more, I got to 'know' - in that temporary away from home sort of friendship - film makers who came here for the festivals.  And began to realize that knowing film makers affected how I wrote about them.  It doesn't have to be a negative affect, as this post describes.]

Watching Full Disclosure, which touched on how being embedded affects a journalists objectivity in reporting, I could relate well.  As a blogger I've faced a similar issue covering trials, covering the legislature, and covering the festival.  It's much easier to write about someone or their performance if you don't know them.  But when you actually talk to someone, you get a chance to correct your stereotyping, learn more about who they are and more about the background of the film (or whatever topic.)  But it's harder to say negative things.  So it's a double-edged sword.  I think the most important part is to be honest to yourself and to your readers.

Brian Palmer on Shannyn Moore show
Knowing the people I'm writing about has a very positive side effect.  I think carefully about how to write critical things.  I choose my words carefully and attempt to focus on identifying the specific, tangible events that bother me, rather than using general negative adjectives.  Perhaps if US Embassy officials know there's a chance that their messages will become public, they will write with less snark and fewer pejoratives, and simply report facts.

Dave - one of the Beekeeper Team
All that above has a reason.  I've been pushing Full Disclosure and so I think I need to do my own full disclosure.  At the film festival I get to meet film makers.  (Everyone has that opportunity, not just me.  But as a blogger I'm much more forward about introducing myself than I would be otherwise. And film makers react to bloggers much more positively than do legislators!)  Wednesday (or was it just yesterday?) Brian Palmer gave me a copy of his DVD.  I'd read about Full Disclosure, but hadn't seen it.  So the next day I emailed him to say how much I liked the movie and to ask some questions.  And was he available Friday to talk.  He emailed back he was.  So we met at Fire Island Bakery - a few blocks from where he was staying.  But he was scheduled to be on Shannyn Moore's KUDO show in 15 minutes.  So I took him down there.

While we were there, Dave (I have this nagging feeling that I've mixed up his name with someone else, but I'm pretty sure it's Dave) who does lots of technical stuff for Shannyn, was there and I learned he's one of the people who made The Beekeeper, an Alaskan feature that shows Saturday at 10:20pm at Bear Tooth.  

Then I took Brian off to Campbell Airstrip.  I want these out-of-towners to see at least a glimpse of Alaska.  And we got to walk and talk a bit on the trail.  (I knew my extra ski boots would never fit his feet, so we walked, but the cross-country conditions were great.) 

I want to tell you all this because I've been pushing his film here.  But I did that because I liked the film and because his style has some linkage to what I try to do here - get video of people as natural and contextual as I can.  I think what I'm trying to say is that I didn't write good things about the film because we did things together, but rather it was the other way around.  I really liked his film and so wanted to talk to him more about it.  (But he'll probably say I did way too much of the talking.) 

As the first set of film makers here have or are now departing, a new set is coming in.  I went to the Bear Tooth to see some of the shorts.  When I got out, the line was forming for Summer Pasture - the documentary about Tibet.  Then off to Out North to see Wings of An Angel and Full Disclosure.  I saw Elias there (I met him last night and put up a video of him) and talked him into staying for Ticked Off Trannies with Knives.  Elias has a vampire an 'infected' movie.  (He corrected me, but I can see now that I'll have to ask him to clarify the terminology.)  So I thought he might be a good person to watch Ticked Off Trannies with.  I'm not into blood and gore, but the title of this move was so good I had to see it.  The transvestites, in the non-violent scenes, were great - outrageous and funny.  And as Elias pointed out afterward - the film makers were constantly breaking all the rules of film making - intentionally.  And as I watched them take revenge on the evil and perverted sadists, I was thinking - how are they any different from the people they were now torturing?  The movie was vindicated when Mama asked the very same question at the end.

So more dilemmas.  Elias wants me to see Ashes Saturday at 10 at Out North and I want to see it.  But it means I can't see Beekeeper which plays at the same time. 

Tomorrow (well, technically, it is already 2 hours into tomorrow) there's lots going on.  But I need to go to bed.  I've been making serious errors in my blogging (like putting down the wrong venue for films) and I'm going to blame it on being festlagged.  I didn't have to fly here, but I'm losing serious sleep time.

Friday, December 10, 2010

AIFF 2010: Full Disclosure, Full Disclosure, Full Disclosure

Full Disclosure - For US citizens, this is probably the most important film at the festival as well as one of the best.  (It's in competition for best documentary.) Brian Palmer was embedded in Iraq three times with the same Marine unit.  The footage is raw, the camera rolling as things happen.  No mediating local anchors to summarize it in the chirpy dialect of American broadcast news.  The words of the marines themselves - the fucks not bleeped out - as they talk about their best and worst days (most couldn't name a best day), as you go on patrol, as you (I slipped into 'you' instead of 'they' because it feels like you are there) as you smash your way into an Iraqi home to interrogate the owner, because his neighbor said he's helping the insurgents.  I spoke to a wife and mother of men who'd been in Iraq and she said she couldn't watch the whole thing.  It was too real and painful.     

7pm at Out North Tonight  - Below is a video of Brian briefly talking about the film (he's right after Greg at 22 seconds):



It's possible it will be too crowded for everyone get in.  But that's ok because it will send a message to the programmers that movies like this need to be in the Bear Tooth where there's more room. (And there are other good movies to see at Out North - see below.) The Festival programmers don't want to turn away viewers, but they have a bias for putting the features at Bear Tooth and documentaries in Out North.  For the most part, that strategy is right.  But a big crowd tonight will help get Full Disclosure in Best of the Fest next week and onto the big screen at the Bear Tooth where it belongs.

Brian Palmer, the film maker and narrator of the film will be there to respond to questions.

And, if you can't get in, there are two interesting sounding movies at 7:45pm at the Bear ToothOut North:

The Informed Prisoner (8 minutes)
  She has worked her way up the corporate ladder and is close to becoming partner in the firm. However, there is one thing that is standing in the way of Kathy reaching her life long goal: Amir Mustafa. Amir,currently being held in a federal prison on charges that he attempted to detonate a bomb in an airport, will be the last client Kathy will need to represent before having her partnership.
and

Stolen (78 min)
.   - Australian-based filmmakers Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw originally set out to make a documentary about an under-reported land dispute in Northern Africa. Once they started shooting, however, they gradually stumbled on a story about modern slavery that has become hugely controversial.
Or you can still get to the Bear Tooth for Karma Calling.

Plus, the other movie playing with Full Disclosure is:
  • She Wore Silver Wings - This movie (also in competition for best documentary) is about women who piloted fighter planes in WWII because there was a shortage of trained male pilots.  25,000 applied, 1000 were selected. I haven't seen this but heard an enthusiastic report from someone who did.  Plays with Full Disclosre at 7pm at Out North.

Thursday, December 09, 2010

AIFF 2010: Conflicts and Another Shot at Vince Guaraldi

The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi was once.  Sunday at 5pm.  At Out North.  People were turned away, I'm told.  Fanny, Annie, and Danny was shown once - Sunday at 5:30pm.  By lucky fate, I'd previewed both of them on DVD and so when I had to choose between them, it wasn't so painful. 

Both of these are outstanding movies.  I've written about each already.  Both should be shown again so that Anchorage audiences get a chance to see them again. 

A workshop was canceled Sunday at Out North at 3pm, and another showing of Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi is taking its place.  This is good.  But we need a chance to see it once on the big screen at the Bear Tooth.  Fortunately, it's among the documentaries in competition, so it has a chance to get in the Best of the Fest.  You can read why I like it and hear from Andrew Thomas who made it, here.


Fanny, Annie, and Danny is a feature, but wasn't selected to be in competition.  You can hear from Chris Brown the film maker and read why I like it here.  Fanny, et al. is one of my top three for the festival.  I'm hoping that it will get slipped into the Best of the Fest next week so people have another chance to see this film with its fantastic acting and haunting characters. 

There are other features I haven't seen yet which could also be good.  I heard a good review of Hello Lonesome, which plays a second time Saturday at 5:10 pm at Out North.  Opposite the epic Chinese historical drama on a banking family over 100 years ago, Empire of Silver which plays for the first time at 5:15pm Saturday at the Bear Tooth.

And Karma Calling plays for the first and second time
Friday 7:45pm at Bear Tooth and
Saturday 8:30pm at Out North

One other conflict situation arises because there are two venues at Out North.  But the program doesn't reflect that.  It doesn't List Out North A and Out North B.  So it isn't obvious that the program you want will get out in time for the next program.  Example:

5:30  XXXX
7:00  YYYY
8:00  ZZZZ

I thought I could go to all three.  But it turns that YYYY is in one room and ZZZZ is in another and YYYY runs 40 minutes into the beginning of ZZZZ.  You have to check out the length of the film, workshop, or program.  OK, you can tell if they start within 30 minutes of each other, but some of the longer gaps are unclear - especially for people who didn't know there were two separate venues at Out North. 

And don't forget - the second showing of Full Disclosure, the film by a journalist, Brian Palmer, embedded with the same Marine unit in Iraq for three tours.  Powerful. Out North at 7 on Friday.  This is an intimate picture of marines in Iraq.  And the ethical problems faced by embedded journalists. 

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: