AIFF 2012: My Choices For Awards

 
Let me list my choices first here with little comment and then I'll want to talk separately about some of the categories and why I differ, when I do, with the Festival's awards.

Table Cell	Official Festival Awards	My Choices
Features	Winner: Lad: A Yorkshire Story Runner Up: Things I Don't Understand Hon. Men:  Shouting Secrets	Winner: Between Us  and  Passionflower Runner Up: Shouting Secrets
Documentaries	Winner:  Roadmap to Apartheid Runner Up: The World Before Her Hon Men: Ping Pong	Winner:  Cutting Loose Run. Up: Unfinished Spaces and Reportero*
Shorts	Winner: Lapse Runner Up:  Calcutta Taxi Hon. Men:  Cockatoo	Winner:  Calcutta Taxi and Lapse Runner Up:  Mossadegh and Suddenly Zinat
Animation	Winner:  Paths of Hate Runner Up: Lemons Hon. Men:	Winner:  Much Better Now Runner Up: Lemons Hon Men:  Paths of Hate
Supershorts	Winner:  Her Next Door Runner Up: Matriarche Hon. Men:  Polarized	I'm ok with the first two, but the third did nothing for me.
Sundance	Winner:  Rousseau's Children Runner Up: No Horizon Anymore	Didn't see enough to form an opinion.

HTML Tables

In most cases trying to separate levels is questionable - though I feel strongly about Cutting Loose. I'll give some reasons for my choices in some separate posts.

[See What Makes A Good Documentary?  Cutting Loose and Ping Pong   I'll add a one or two more here as I get them up.]

One of the issues is comparing films with very different budgets and produced under different circumstances.   

 There were some 'in competition' films I missed - Grassroots in the feature category, The Trial of Ben Barry and Hunt in the shorts category, and Y.E.R.T.  in the documentaries.  And as Passionflower demonstrates, some very good films didn't make it into competition.

I'd note that Passionflower got audience choice in the feature category with Shouting Secrets getting second. As I write, the audience awards for documentaries aren't up yet. 

*I was told Reportero, for technical reasons, was not eligible to be in competition.  But I don't have those restrictions.  

AIFF 2012: Features Awards

Features In Competition:

Shouting Secrets

Lad:  A Yorkshire Story

Between Us

Confine

Aquí y Allí

Grassroots

Things I Don't Understand


Honorable Mention:

Shouting Secrets

Runner Up:

Things I Don't Understand

Winner:

Lad:  A Yorkshire Story


[UPDATE Dec. 10, 5:45pm: AUDIENCE AWARDS:  Passionflower won the Audience Award and Shouting Secrets was the runner up.  I've got video of Passionflower director Shelagh Carter here and I'm hoping to write more about the film.]

AIFF 2012: Documentary Awards

Documentary Films in Competition:

Go Ganges

Roadmap to Apartheid

People Of A Feather

Ping Pong

Cutting Loose

World Before Her

Y.E.R.T.


HONORABLE MENTION:

Ping Pong

RUNNER UP:

World Before Her

WINNER:

Roadmap to Apartheid

AIFF 2012: Animation Awards

In Competition:

The Backwater Gospel

Frankie Rulez!!

The Game

Lemons

Much Better Now

Paths of Hate

Survival of the Fetish


HONORABLE MENTION:
 
Lemons


RUNNER UP:

Light Me Up

WINNER:

Paths of Hate

AIFF 2012: Shorts Awards

In Competition:

Calcutta Taxi

Mossadegh

Cockatoo

Hunt

Lapse

Trial of Ben Barry


HONORABLE MENTION:

Cockatoo

RUNNER UP:

Calcutta Taxi

WINNER:

Lapse

AIFF 2012: Super Shorts Awards

 SUPERSHORTS IN COMPETITION:

Bip Bip (Beep Beep)

Blue Dame

Gutty

Her Next Door

Matriarche

O.V.N.I (UFO)

Polarized





HONORABLE MENTION:

Polarized

FIRST RUNNER UP:

Matriarche  

WINNER:

Her Next Door

AIFF 2012: Snowdance Awards

SNOWDANCE IN COMPETITION:

Catching Alaska’s Light Waves

I Met Her In A Coffee Shop

Mothers Against Pornography

No Horizon Any More

PNBMOWE

Rousseau's Children Runner


HONORABLE MENTION:

Scared: Matt Jardin

Keith Reimink at Awards Ceremony

FIRST RUNNER UP:

No Horizon Any More - Keith Reimink


WINNER:

Rousseau's Children - Monica Scharer

AIFF 2012: Awards - Last Night's Quick Freeze Awards

Max and Olivia Quick Freeze crew

Teresa is now thanking the programmers and volunteers. They're still counting audience award ballots so some of those might not be announced until midnight. Here's a video of the Quick Freeze winners from last night.

AIFF 2012: Live Blogging Awards - UPDATED

7:19 The musicians are gone and they are setting up the stage.

Matt Jardin and Harvey Hubbell from Disleksia the movie with OA staff

Carl and Nathan Weber - Alaska Tier 2 Zombie Hunter

Linda Beja and Jon Benedict - Snowdance Programers

Keith Reimink - No Horizon Anymore South Pole

Folks waiting for the Awards to begin

I'm at the Organic Oasis waiting for the awards ceremony (a rather inflated word for what they do here) to begin.  It's going on 7pm and should be starting soon.    There won't be a live feed, but I'll just keep updating as things happen starting a little after 6pm Alaska time.  I suspect the awards won't be given out until about 7pm.  Then I'll post as things happen.

But last night they showed the Quick Freeze movies - had to be done in three days and somehow include 'duct tape,' 'sunrise,' and 'hostess.'

I've got video of the Quick Freeze Awards from last night and I'll add it here as soon as it finishes uploading and downloading.

AIFF 2012: Passionflower, Fairbanks Nigerians, Scottish Cons With Scissors, Elder Ping Pong, Havana, and Lots of Duct Tape

My Saturday at the film festival was one very satisfying movie after another.  [Check the AIFF 2012 Tab above for what's on today.]

I'll start with two movies that will show again today (Sunday Dec. 9) that are very well worth watching.

Passionflower plays today (Sunday Dec. 9) at 3pm at Alaska Experience Theater.

For some reason I do not understand at all, this film was not selected to be in-competition.  It deserves to be.  I chatted with the director Shelagh Carter briefly the other night - the video is here - and that's the only reason I went to see it tonight.  This film isn't easy, and it doesn't offer any easy solutions.  Nevertheless, even though this film didn't begin until close to 11pm I was wide awake and completely in the film the whole way.  It's the story of a young girl whose beautiful mom is behaving badly.  Today we have a word for this - mentally ill.  Actually, the story is about the mom, for the most part from the girl's perspective.  Making the film even more powerful was that I knew from my chat with Shelagh that the little girl was sitting near me in the theater.  And Shelagh will be at the showing tomorrow as well.  BTW, she's all grown up now, art has gotten her through all this, and she is a professor of film and theater in Winnipeg, Canada.

Alaskaland plays today (Sunday Dec. 9) at 5pm at Out North.

This film takes place entirely in Fairbanks.  It's in the Snowdance category, but it could just as easily have been in the features.  It focuses on a Nigerian family - Dad's a professor of engineering at UAF - and the struggles of the children living in three cultures - the family's Nigerian culture, the general Fairbanks culture, and the black Fairbanks culture.  An outstanding film by a UAF alumnus and with the help of the newish  UAF film program.  Good stuff that tells an Alaskan story that most of us had no idea existed. I do think this film would be improved if it had a title more indicative of the story. 

Now I can talk about the others.  I'll just mention them briefly now and I'll write about some of these at more length later.   All of the films I saw today were good, so I won't keep repeating that. 

It started with a pair of in-competition documentary films - Ping Pong and Cutting Loose.  Cutting Loose was exactly right from my perspective.  Scottish convicts who know how to cut hair, and act as prison barbers, have a hair cutting contest.   But really, the story itself doesn't mean much - it's how they tell the story that matters and they did it well.

Ping Pong highlights eight contestants in the octogenarian world ping pong championship in Inner Mongolia.  An inspirational movie for all of us for whom 80 is getting to be in the foreseeable future.

Most common use of Duct Tape in Quick Freeze films

Unfinished Spaces. Wow!  I was going to go home and get a nap before the afternoon films I had scheduled but Kelly talked me into staying.  For now, I'll just say this is the Buena Vista Social Club for Cuban architects.  More later.

Quick Freeze.  These were the films made since earlier this week (I forget now when), using the three terms - duct tape, sunrise, and hostess.  They were staggeringly good for such a quick turnaround.  I did ask one director if he hadn't started working on an idea before the words were given out and he said, "No."