AIFF 2011: No Love Tonight, But Meet You at Apartment in Athens at 7:15pm

I emailed AIFF features coordinator Tony Sheppard to get some more information about the film Apartment in Athens.  It appears our showing is the North American premiere.

I was conflicted between seeing Apartment or Love Me To Death which I missed the first time round.  But it turns out the copies of Love You To Death have gone missing.

So, unless something happens between now and 7pm, Love You To Death is cancelled according to the email I just got.  I don't have to make a decision.

The only film tonight is 

Apartment in Athens.  7:15pm Alaska Experience Theater.  Tonight (Tuesday).  

This is a seriously good film.  I just posted about it here.  When it was first supposed to play, Sunday Dec. 4, the DVD didn't last past the first 15 minutes or so.  It kept stopping.  I haven't been able to find anything using the English title on Google except the Anchorage International Film Festival.  Using the Italian title (the film is an Italian film, but the 15 minutes I saw were in German and Greek [Italian]), I found that the world premiere was October 14 at the Bombay International Film Festival.  It played again - and won best film - at the Rome International Film Festival about Oct. 22.

I can't find any record of it playing in any US or Canadian film festivals.


[UPDATE Dec. 17:  I wasn't as impressed with the whole movie as I was with the view of the beginning I had a week earlier.  Most of the movie was shown in the wrong aspect ratio which made everyone look shorter and stouter.  Then about 60 minutes in, the disk stuttering problems started again.  The projectionist switched it to his Mac for the end of the movie and the aspect ratio seemed better and there were no problems.  But the technical problems didn't help my appreciation of the movie.  But this was an adaptation of a novel, and I think that trying to get the whole novel into a movie meant subtleties were lost.  The significant change in the German officer when he returned from Germany is explained, but it still seems extreme - especially given how he subsequently acts.  Perhaps in the novel this is better explained.

But this is a good movie that raises interesting questions about how humans use and react to power with a number of interesting twists to make it more complex.  The father's role is perhaps the most interesting.]

AIFF 2011: An Apartment in Athens or Love You To Death?

[UPDATE:  It's not totally clear, but this could be the North American premiere of Apartment in Athens.]

I haven't seen Love You to Death because it was playing at the same time as In The Shadow.  The good news is that Love You to Death was the runner up for Audience Choice Award for best feature at the festival, so it is playing again tonight in Best of the Fest.  The bad news is that it's playing at the same time as Apartment in Athens.

Both appear to be very good films.  Love You To Death got the Audience Choice Award Runner Up for feature films at the Anchorage Festival.  Apartment in Athens was Best Film at the Rome International Film Festival in October. 


Love You to Death begins at 7pm and An Apartment in Athens at 7:15pm.  Both are at the Alaska Experience Theater (mall at C St. and 4th Avenue.)

I saw about 15 minutes of Apartment last week, before the disk started stopping.  It got so bad they shut it down and tried a second disk.  It did the same thing.  I've talked to Brandon McElroy who was the technician.  I'll do a post on the topic of glitches during the film festival, an issue that has bothered film makers and audiences alike over the years.  Brandon has given me some explanations for why it happens and what we'd lose in order to make it rare.  And film makers I've talked to say it also happens in much bigger festivals than Anchorage.

Because Athens didn't get played during the festival, they are showing it again tonight.  If they can get a disk that works.  (It's in PAL format which limits the machines here that can use it.) 


Apartment in Athens

Image from Appartento Ad Atene

Athens felt like a very good movie for the short part I saw.  It takes place in WW II when a German officer moves into the apartment of a Greek family.  The officer takes a fancy to the young ten year old daughter.  The father is troubled but hopes that with the officer in the house, they might get better food rations.  The mother is upset, but knows how to act properly in front of the officer.  The 12 year old son doesn't hide his anger.  And that's about all we saw.  But it had the makings of a powerful movie.  And a translated Italian review suggested this was a film which explored deep issues about freedom and subservience.

The image - the only page of the movie's website - says it won Best Film at the  Rome International Film Festival last month. An Italian Website says its world premier was to be at the Bombay Film Festival (ironic that Yuki Ellias, actor in Love You to Death, is from Bombay).  It was scheduled in Bombay October 14.    It's based on a 1945 novel by Glenway Wescott.  From Wikipedia:

. . .  Wescott was born on a farm in Kewaskum, Wisconsin in 1901. . . He studied at the University of Chicago, where he was a member of a literary circle including Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Yvor Winters, and Janet Lewis.  Independently wealthy, he began his writing career as a poet, but is best known for his short stories and novels, notably The Grandmothers (1927). He lived in Germany (1921–22), and in France (c.1925–33), where he mixed with Gertrude Stein and other members of the American expatriate community; Wescott was the model for the character Robert Prentiss in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.


. . . Apartment in Athens (1945), the story of a Greek couple in Nazi-occupied Athens who must share their living quarters with a German officer, was a popular success. From then on he ceased to write fiction, although he published essays and edited the works of others. In her essay on The Pilgrim Hawk Ingrid Norton writes, "After...Apartment in Athens, Wescott lived until 1987 without writing another novel: journals (published posthumously as Continual Lessons) and the occasional article, yes, but no more fiction. . .

[See further comments made after seeing the whole movie here.]

Love You To Death
An Anchorage friend who was born and raised in India had high praise for Love You to Death.  It's not a typical Bollywood film, but an alternative look at the same old stars and same old ways of making Indian movies, she said.  It's in Hinglish - a mix of Hindi and English.  As you can see in the video below, the star's English is excellent.  There are subtitles when needed. 
Here's the video I got of Love You To Death actor Yuki Ellias when she was in Anchorage last week.

AIFF 2011: "You Wanna Touch My Penis?" Asks Best Feature Director

The prizes in the Anchorage International Film Festival are called "Golden Oosikars."  Oosikar is a fusion of Oosik and Oscar.  Everyone who's seen the Academy Awards knows what an Oscar is.  But Oosiks are not as well known.  From a page on walrus ivory and bone at BooneTrading:

RW10 WALRUS OOSIK SPECIMENS (walrus penile bone). Oosik (pronounced "oo' sik") is the Eskimo word for the walrus penile bone (baculum). Oosik is the original "ugly stick"; large ones were used as clubs by the Eskimos or used for making tools like picks and knives because the bone is so dense. They're an excellent conversation piece, color's mostly a rich brown tone.  These ancient specimens are polished glassy smooth. Available July - October, prices are approximate, these sell out quickly so order early.

From a post on the legal sale of ivory on Gustavus.com:

WALRUS (non-fossil)-
Regulated by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act. Raw walrus ivory predating the Dec. 21, 1972 law, tusks bearing the Alaska state walrus ivory registration tags or post-law walrus ivory that has been carved or scrimshawed by an Alaskan native (Eskimo) are legal to buy, possess, and sell.

Raw walrus ivory obtained after 12/21/72 is not legal to buy or sell unless both parties are Eskimo (it is legal to own). A $30 export permit is required to ship walrus ivory or oosik (legal as per above) out of the United States.

FOSSIL WALRUS IVORY-
Not restricted as it pre-dates the 1972 cutoff, it is legal to buy and sell anywhere within the United States. Shipping ivory or oosik (fossil walrus penal bone) out of the U. S. requires a $30 permit.

So after receiving his Golden Oosikar last night (Sunday) for Best Feature Film, Director Travis Betz would smile when people came up to him and ask, "Do you wanna touch my penis?"  And then he'd whip out his oosikar.

The winning movie, The Dead Inside, plays again Wednesday at 7pm at the Alaska Experience Theater.  A lot of people I talked to were both surprised, but in agreement, with the choice of the zombie musical love story as the winner.  I'll try to write about the film tomorrow.

Tonight (Tuesday), at 7pm also at Alaska Experience Theater, they are showing Audience Award Runner up  Love You To Death, a modern Indian comedy that I haven't seen yet.  So I'm glad it plays again.  Except it plays at the same time as Apartment in Athens which had DVD problems when it showed in the festival.  The first 15 minutes were great and I pestered features programmer Tony that they had to show it again.  But I can't be in two theaters at the same time.  (Thanks for scheduling it, I know there's not much time available, but grrrrr.)  It is contingent on them working out the disk problems they had the first time.  (I'm planning a post on technical glitches sometime soon.)

And to take the Oosik theme in another direction, you can listen to the music of a group called OosiK if you click here and listen.  Or just watch the video.
OosiK "Dark Toffee" (excerpt) from Ryan K Adams on Vimeo.

AIFF 2011: The Awards List

Here's the whole list from the Official AIFF 2011 website.  I've added some pictures,  and links to posts if I had one about the film. (Super short director Dan Holechek's video hasn't been up before this post.)

Golden Oosikar Awards
Feature
Winner The Dead Inside directed by Travis Betz

Runner-Up ”The Flood [Mabul]” directed by Guy Nattiv
Honorable Mention ”Kinyarwanda” directed by Alrick Brown


Documentary
Winner “Give Up Tomorrow” directed by Michael Collins
Runner-Up “Goold’s Gold” directed by Tucker Capps and Ryan Sevy
Honorable Mention “With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story” directed by Will Hess

Snowdance Documentary
Winner “Tashalaska” directed by Tessa Morgan
Runner-Up “Chad Carpenter: The Man Behind the Comic” directed by Stefan Quinth

Snowdance Short
Winner “Bike, Ski, Raft Denali Traverse” directed by Luc Mehl
Runner-Up “Could’ve Been More” directed by Matt Jardin

Short Film
Winner “North Atlantic” directed by Bernardo Nascimento
Runner-Up “Two-Legged Rat Bastards” directed by Scott Weintrob
Honorable Mention “I’m Coming Over” directed by Sam Handel

Super Short
Winner “Love, At Last” directed by Alexander Jeffery
Runner-Up “A Finger, Two Dots Then Me” directed by David Holechek and Daniel Holechek
Honorable Mention “The Man at the Counter” directed by Brian McAllister

Animation
Winner “Something Left, Something Taken” directed by Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata





Runner-Up “This Is Not Real” directed by Gergely Wootsch


Honorable Mention “Year Zero” directed by Richard Cunningham III





Aurora Winner
“Andante” directed by Assaf Tager


Quick Freeze
Winner
Runner-Up
Honorable Mention



Audience Choice Awards
Feature
Winner “Inuk” directed by Mike Magidson
Runner-Up “Love You To Death” directed by Rafeeq Ellias
Honorable Mention “The Wedding Party” directed by Amanda Jane









Documentary
Winner “With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story” directed by Will Hess
Runner-Up “Lesson Plan” directed by Philip Neel and David Jeffery
Honorable Mention “Goold’s Gold” directed by Tucker Capps and Ryan Sevy

AIFF 2011 - Inuk Wins Audience Award for Feature - Plays Tonight at 7pm

(l-r) Jean Michel, Ole, Mike thanking everyone for the award

I paced myself to make it through the festival which ended yesterday.  But Best of the Fest is a three day addition where some of the winners are shown again.

Tonight, Audience Award favorite for features Inuk will play at the Alaska Experience Theater at 7pm.

Three of the film makers - the American producer-director Mike Magidson, the French writer Jean-Michel Huctin , and actor Ole-Jørgen Hammeken have been in Alaska this week. They were here for the opening night, then went off to Barrow, and were back for the awards last night.  I'm guessing they'll be at the screening.

This is a powerful film, very relevant to Alaska.  A Greenland Inuit young man is having troubles and gets sent to a shelter for kids with problems in the north.  There he connects with his traditional culture on a seal hunt when he and the seal hunter (Ole-Jørgen Hammeken) connect.

Ole is pretty amazing - he's circumnavigated the arctic in a small boat (over six years I think he said).  I'll try to post a video of him talking about the part from Point Hope back to Greenland.

Or you can go tonight and ask him yourself.    Get there a bit early.  The other two times it played it sold out. 

We Had A Little Snow

Looking out our bedroom window this morning:

The Super Shorts programer took some film makers to Whittier yesterday and said her SUV was blown nearly off the highway a couple of times. It was raining in the morning when we headed for our first films yesterday. 
We had breakfast at about 2:30pm downtown at Hot Stixx - a place I really wasn't even aware of. It's replaced the downtown deli and the vegetable medley with eggs was better than most vegie omelets I get in restaurants. The vegies weren't mostly raw and it was served in the cast iron frying pan it was cooked in. It was raining when we walked over from the Alaska Experience Theater after watching Allensteig, but there was already this much snow before we got our meal.

They actually closed the Anchorage Schools today - but the University is open and the airport is supposed to be on regular schedule.

AIFF 2011: Awards - Features - Live Blogging

Top Three:

Mabul
Kinyarwanda
The Dead Inside



Winners:
Honorable Mention:  Kinyarwanda

Runner Up: Mabul


Winner: The Dead Inside

AIFF 2011: Live Blogging - The Awards - Documentaries

Top Three:

Give Up Tomorrow
Goold's Gold
With Great Power:  Stan Lee Story

Winners:
Honorable Mention: With Great Power:  Stan Lee Story

Runner Up: Goold's Gold


Winner: Give Up Tomorrow

AIFFF 2011: Audience Awards Feature and Documentary

Features:
 Honorable Mention:  The Wedding Party

Runner Up:   Love You To Death

Winner:  Inuk


Documentaries:

Honorable Mention:  Goold's Gold

Runner Up:  Lesson Plan

Winner:  With Great Power:  Stan Lee Story

AIFF 2011:Snowdance Awards

Snow Dance Documentaries

Top Three: Two

Chad Carpenter:  Man Behind the Comic

Tashalaska
 

Winners:
Honorable Mention

Runner Up:  Chad Carpenter:  Man Behind the Comic


Winner:  Tashalaska


Super Shorts:

Winners:

Runner Up:  Could Have Been More


Winner:  Bike, Ski, Raft, Denali Traverse