AIFF 2014: Who Is Ronald Gottlieb And Does Engin Karabagli Have Hairy Legs?

In Engin Karabagli's short animated film, which plays in the Animation program tonight at 7pm, the main character is named Ronald Gottlieb.  And that is also the name of the film.  Where did that name come from?

Ronald Gottlieb has a problem in the film.  He has no hair on his skinny legs.

At the festival, I keep running into Engin.  We made a short video of him describing his film last week.  It was the regular canned statement that all filmmakers have practiced just in case someone asks.  I prefer something more spontaneous.  So I asked for more on Thursday.  And I put the two clips together and posted them Friday here.

But then I thought I really should have asked him why he named the movie Ronald Gottlieb and was there some personal issue about leg hair?  And so when I saw him again Friday night at the short docs program, I got the chance to ask those questions.  And you can see and hear the answers below.



You can see Ronald Gottlieb and the other short animated films at 7pm today (Saturday) at the Alaska Experience Theater.

AIFF 2014: Saturday Schedule - Lots of Movies, No Bear Tooth

The second weekend, lots of movies, lots of hard choices.  But no Bear Tooth this weekend.  That's new this year.

Here's the grid for Saturday.  You can get it with live links here.

The only thing I'm absolutely sure of, is that I want to see the Animation program at 7pm.  And I've heard good things about The Barefoot Artist showing at 11am.  Appropriate Behavior is a figuring out who I am film about an Iranian-American lesbian.  It's funny and well done.  I've posted about 6 Bullets to Hell here.  A friend has challenged my problem with a gang rape and murder in the movie.  I'm not saying it doesn't fit in the movie, but I am saying that in general, movies that have violence against women as entertainment, aren't movies I want to see.  There are times when such events are part of the context of the movie that makes an important point.  My friend pointed out that a 14 year old is molested in WildLike too.  My response is that

• what we saw on screen was from the point of view of the victim
• it was suitably uncomfortable and creepy
• the film showed the long term negative consequences
• the situation was integral to the whole story which was about sexual abuse and its terrible consequences

Is a movie like 6 Bullets To Hell merely reflecting society?  Or do such movies model behavior for viewers as well as desensitize them to the fact that such actions are despicable?  Even if the movie then proceeds to portray the perps as the bad guys?   I don't know the answer to that.  I'm not for banning such scenes.  But I don't have to watch them and I hope others object to them as well.  This is NOT entertainment - and 6 Bullets To Hell, if not meant to be entertainment, is nothing at all.  

Sorry, didn't mean to go there, but I do think violence against women is a major problem in the world and in Alaska and it should be challenged when it's used as entertainment in films.

All The Time In The World is about a family of five that spends a year in the Yukon wilderness.  That's all I know about it.

A non-film event Saturday is the SAG-AFTRA seminar.  That stands for Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Actors.  It's intended to educate both actors and film makers on the role of the union is film making.  It's being put on by Ron Holmstrom.  Below is a video where he explains more:

I mistyped the date - as you can see above - but that led me to learning about using annotations in YouTube as you'll see if you watch the video.

AIFF 2014: Engin Karabagli, Ronald Gottlieb, And Saturday Night's Animation Program

The only animation I've seen so far this year has been the feature length Rocks In My Pocket which I thought was great, though I understand the folks who say it was too long and needed some editing.  I forgive the film maker for such little issues given the amazing visual story she told.

There was also a bit of animation in some other films - in the short narrative film about  communicating with plants, Life and Perception by Andre Stamatakakos.

I first ran into Engin Karabagli, last Saturday afternoon and got a bit of video about his film.  I missed the animation program that evening, but I've seen Engin here and there and yesterday I decided to get something a little more candid than the first shot.  His film, Ronald Gottlieb, plays again Saturday night at 7pm, when I'm planning to see it.  Here's an invitation to see Ronald Gottlieb by the film maker - who was born in Istanbul, grew up in Holland, went to NYU, and now is based in Istanbul.



If you see him around the festival, be sure to say hi.


Here's the whole animation program from Anchorage Festival Genuis:

7:00 PM     Sat, Dec 13

screens with... I Need My Monster | Stephen Baker, Howard Cook 2014 The Gulf | Carl Beauchemin 2014 Indian Ate The Woodchuck | Brad Pattullo 2014 Ronald Gottlieb | Engin Karabagli 2014 Something Important | NaiWei Liu 2014 Waterproofing | Brad Leyden 2014 365 | Greg McLeod, Myles McLeod 2013 Speed Dating | Meghann Artes 2014 Wire Cutters | Jack Anderson 2014 Sebastian | Vlad Marsavin 2013 Moving Out | Sean McCarthy 2013

And if you really can't go tomorrow night and really want to see Ronald Gottlieb, it's on Engin's vimeo page.

AIFF 2014: Is It Really Friday Already? Festival Choices for Today

Martini Matinee should give you a chance to see Divide In Concord  a political documentary (in competition) where the community is debating banning plastic bottles.  I've got more information in the post on documentaries in competition.

I'm headed to downtown to the Alaska Experience Theater  for the Short Documentaries.  I've heard good things about this program.  Here's what's in it:

• The Strong People | Matthew Lowe, Heather Hoglund 2013
• White Earth | J. Christian Jensen 2014
• The Last Free Place | Madeline Basil 2013
• Mississippi Milk | Brittany Retherford, David Rogers, Shanna James 2013
• The Stick Maker | curtis albucher 2013
• Flying Lessons with Mr. Smolin | Matt Checkowski 2014

Then Coney Island - a documentary in competition - about developers buying land right next to Coney Island and the community's response.

And if I can still keep my eyes open, back to the Bear Tooth for Teacher of the Year.

AIFF 2014: Seeds of Time and Mixed Bag Shorts Make Great Film Night [Updated with Video]

This turned out to be the most satisfying evening at the festival.

Seeds of Time was inspiring in many ways.  The film is about a man from a farm family who eventually sets up the world's biggest seed bank in arctic Norway to collect seeds of the different varieties of food crops.  While our politicians are ditzing around, there are people doing things to be prepared for the impacts of global warming on agriculture.  There was a line in the film that went something like:  Politicians are about winning, while scientists are about finding solutions.  When I see a film like this on a critical issue facing humankind, I shake my head in dismay at all the people who will spend their time on activities that don't lead to any growth in understanding.  But they'll never see this film.  A thoroughly satisfying film, despite the dire implications for future food security.

We were going to sneak out of Seeds of Time  to at least catch Universal Language, which I'd enjoyed so much the first time, but Seeds of Time was too good to leave.  But we did get to catch the end of the Love and Pain program - Reaching Home and What Cheer?  were just as good as they had been the first time.

Then we saw the Mixed Bag program - the only time it was shown.  One after another we saw great short narrative films.

• One Armed Man | Tim Guinee 2014 -  A Phillip Seymour Hoffman production, about a worker in a cotton gin factory who lost an arm in a work accident who confronts the owner of the factory, drew me in immediately.  This has to be a scene from what will be a feature length film eventually.  
• 
  
• Samantha '66 | Dan Wainio 2014 -   

A young man is looking at super 8 film of a man and woman which he tells us at one point, was his dad, several years before he met the woman he'd marry. Not great, but playful and interesting.

Tom in America | Flavio Alves 2014  -  Another serious production that's going on to be a longer film, looks at a couple who've just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and the wife finally figures out her husband is gay.  The Brazilian director, Flavio Alves, answered questions at the end of the program. (See video below)

• The Ladder | Pete Fitz 2013  - 
• Compared to the previous ones - especially Tom and One Armed Man - this was a little lighter, but it
• was still a nice, solid, little film
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• Life and Perception | Andre Stamatakakos 2013  - I'm still thinking about this one about a scientist who is being dismissed by his colleagues because he's trying to communicate with plants.  As he's about to give up, the experiment works.  Then the film goes into an animated scene and the Indian sounding music takes off in a different direction.  It worked for me. 
• 
  
• Zugwang | Yolanda Centeno 2014  - If there was a weak film in the group, this would be it.  Even so, it was wasn't bad.  A nerd sees life as a game of chess.  
• 
  
• Enfilade | David Coyle 2014  WOW! Things work mysteriously in this white room with red trim.  A very nicely thought out and executed film.  
• 
  
• Break in Reality | D.K. Johnston 2014  -  We've seen films by people from this Alaskan team of film makers for some time now and this was the most professional of all.  

All in all, this program should have played more.  I was told they wanted to have more times for the Alaskan films.  I don't mind that, but this program was better, in my humble opinion, than some of the features that are getting two shots.

I'll be putting up some video of the Q&A, but it's late now and the video is uploading slowly.
[UPDATED 7am:  here's the video:]

xxx

AIFF 2014: Thursday's Choices - Universal Language In Love And Pain Program

Frederique Nahmani is one the two main characters in the short narrative film Universal Language.  Kirsten Russell directed the film. Kirsten's Kickstarter Page is a good place to learn more about the film.  Here they are Monday night at the Bear Tooth and I believe they will still be here Thursday evening when the film plays again in the "Love and Pain" short narrative program.  I say this here, because for me, that film is the only one so far that has, for me, transcended beyond the story - things just all worked. 6:00 pm AK Experience large theater.  

As you can see in the grid below, the three programs that short narratives in competition will all play Thursday.  But, unfortunately, they weren't scheduled so you could see them all unless you planned ahead and saw Global Village already, because the Mixed Bag program only plays once, overlapping with Global Village.   And, unfortunately, with the 8pm feature, Come To My Voice, which people told me I must see.  It's about Kurds in Turkey.  8pm Bear Tooth  Come To My Voice plays again Sunday at 11am.  

The after school program is "youth films' made by Anchorage students.  I'm guessing some of the most original stuff might be in there.  Or else they just copied what they thought was how to do it.  You'll have to go to find out.  3pm Bear Tooth

The Other Side is part of the Confucius Institutes program of Chinese films.  It's feature about artists in China.  You can read more here.  5:30 pm Bear Tooth

Seeds of Time is one of the documentaries in competition that examines the underground seed collection and the man who established it to preserve as many seeds as possible for the future.  Read more here.  5:30pm Ak Exp Small

Finally, always one of the more exciting events of the festival - the Quiksilver Short Film Contest.  The films can't be more than 5 minutes long and they must include in the film three 'prompts' that were given out Dec. 4.  I don't know what they are.  It's fun to watch the films and try to figure it out.
But it is late  10:15pm Bear Tooth

Another good film in the Love and Pain program was Reaching Home.  Below is a very brief video with the director Ken Murphy last weekend.

AIFF 2014: The Good And The Bad Of 6 Bullets To Hell

[I didn't start out to do a post on 6 Bullets To Hell.  It just happened.  I don't have the video edited that should go with this - the Q&A after the film - and I'll add it later.  This post just wrote itself.]




The face you see on the screen is not always a face you'll recognize off the screen.  I tried to take a couple of pictures of the opening of 6 Bullets To Hell to be able to give you a sense of the kitchy spaghetti western look in the titles and images.  I was too late, but this image from the screen turned out useful because I had - unknowingly - just taken Crispian Belfrage's picture with Ken Luckey. I'm still not sure who this is.  I thought it was the hero Bill Rogers.  But as I look at the actors, I'd say it looks more like Ken Luckey than Crispian Belfrage, who played Rogers.  Luckey played Joseph 'Two Gun Joe' Ross, a scuzzy guy with yellow teeth.

6 Bullets To Hell is one of those films I'm not sure what to do with.  Is it cool because it's an homage Sergio Leone?  Or is the homage idea just a way to get away with a tacky movie?  Was it an excuse for these guys to go to a grown up summer camp in Spain and make a movie?  It mostly followed the spaghetti plot line (from Wikipedia):

Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars established the Spaghetti Western as a novel kind of Western. In this seminal film the hero enters a town that is ruled by two outlaw gangs and ordinary social relations are non-existent. He betrays and plays the gangs against one another in order to make money. Then he uses his cunning and exceptional weapons skill to assist a family threatened by both gangs. His treachery is exposed and he is severely beaten, but in the end he defeats the remaining gang. The interaction in this story between cunning and irony (the tricks, deceits, unexpected actions and sarcasms of the hero) on the one hand, and pathos (terror and brutality against defenseless people and against the hero after his double play has been revealed) on the other, was aspired to and sometimes attained by the imitations that soon flooded the cinemas.

In this case the hero has given up being a gunfighter for farming. (Thus the first question in the Q&A which I'll get up eventually.)  It's the outlaw gang that comes into town.  I don't recall any deceit by the hero.  He went up to each target and told them he had come to kill him.  We certainly had scenes of terror and brutality - particularly the gang rape and murder of the hero's pregnant wife.  One can argue that this film portrays the rapists as disgusting thugs who all get killed in the end and so it tells a moral tale.  But the good guys are all good and the bad guys are mostly all bad.  One did halfheartedly protest the rape and murder, but he was quickly killed.  He should have pulled out his gun and shot a couple of the gang since he ended up dead anyway.  But then there would have been no need for the hero.  Some of you may be detecting my attempt to be fair with a movie that has such gratuitous violence (we really don't see any actual sex).  I'm thinking I should have asked them about how they felt about adding one more violent gang rape and murder to the endless such images that are already on the screen.  Was it better than The Lookalike because it was an homage?  Or because there were clear distinctions between the good guys and bad guys?  Or because it was outdoors mostly?  Or was The Lookalike better because the characters were more nuanced?  In both most of the women were basically sex objects for men and some got shot.

Better to compare it with the opening night film WildLike which looks at sexual abuse from the abused perspective, where we see the social and emotional impacts on the young girl.  Or I Believe In Unicorns which also has a younger girl seduced by an older (but not that much) guy.  In these films there was little violence.  WildLike portrayed the lead up to sex, but then cutaway.  Unicorns was more overtly sexual, but the kids had some clothes on, and the nature of their sexual relationship was important to understanding the story.

They clearly were having fun being in Alaska, and the audience made me proud with their unexpected questions and (expected) hospitality.  Here the crew are getting some pictures together in front of the film festival sign.

Russel Cunningham, Luckey, Tanner Beard, Belfrage, and friend (r-l)

I probably would have skipped 6 Bullets to Hell since I knew it was not my type of movie.  But it played at 10pm, there was no other films on at that time, and I was already at the Bear Tooth.  The Q&A was more entertaining than the film and I'll add that here when I get the video ready.

Any movie can give one something to chew on.  I'm not sorry I saw this one.  I enjoyed talking to the actors who were there.  They were genuinely decent guys.  I just keep thinking though, that we have relatively little time on earth and we should be thinking how what we do makes the world a better place to be, helps make humans more hopeful and decent to each other.  Maybe they'll take the experience they got from this film to make future films that add a little more understanding and insight into the world.

AIFF 2014: Anchorage Audience Liked The Ambassador To Bern

This film plays again tonight (Wednesday) at 5:30 downtown at the Alaska Experience theater.  Last night's audience at the Bear Tooth appeared to really like it  Here is a sampling of the audience as they walked out.  (And the two dark ones at the end were in the unlit theater still.)





This is everyone I talked to.  (I didn't cut out ones I didn't like.)

There was a short written explanation of the context at the beginning of the film, but it went too fast for most people to read.  AVO was the secret police in Hungary.

Actually there were two stories going on.  The breaking into the Hungary embassy is what we see on the screen, but the background (which relates to what's going on) was the Hungary freedom fighters in 1956 and the subsequent Soviet invasion to put them down.  Among the embassy staff there are people who were on different sides of the political upheaval  in Hungary.

You can see my Skype interview with the director, Attila Szász, here.

AIFF 2014: What's On Today (Wednesday)

  Here's the Wednesday schedule.

ACS Internet was down till just now.  Just a quickie here and I'll try to get a Wed post up shortly.

Ambassador to Bern was very good last night.  Two Hungarian immigrants to Switzerland in 1956 break into the Hungarian embassy in Switzerland after the Russians invade Hungary.  I asked a bunch of people, as they came out of the theater what they thought.  Intense was a word a number used.  It's one of the best films I've seen at the festival so far.   I've got a Skype interview I did with the director, Attila Szász up here.

[UPDATE:   I just posted video of audience reactions to The Ambassador to Bern.]

I saw the documentary  Mala Mala  Monday night.  It's a strong documentary that takes you into a world I knew nothing about - transexuals in Puerto Rico.  While the filmmakers take is sympathetic, it's not all a pretty picture.  When you seriously look into the world of transexuals, you have to question our culture's traditional black and white notions about gender.  What your genitals look like simply may not be consistent with what you head knows.  Is that a disorder?  To the extent that people's mental and physical identities are inconsistent and that causes them pain, sure.  But if society were not so freaked out about the idea, they would have a lot less pain.  Worth seeing - and it had the best final credits of any film I've seen so far - neon lights, music, and a dancer.

Both these are 'in competition' for awards in their category, and if I hadn't seen them both, I think I'd be headed for the Alaska Experience small theater to see them at 5:30 and 7:30.


The Mexican Consulate program at the Bear Tooth should be good too - they always bring up first rate films and there's a reception after The Zebra.   I suspect that's where I'll end up.

But the museum hosts two docs that have tempting subjects.  Thule Tuvalu is a documentary that apparently links glacial melting in Greenland to the flooding of the South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu.  Cold Love looks at arctic exploration.

Winter Project is a feature centering on snow machining in Alaska.

AIFF 2014: Powerful Alaska Film On Juneau Japanese-Americans And WW II

Imagine the high school newspaper editor's father being arrested by his best friend's father and sent out of state for the crime of being of Japanese.

The Empty Chair in the title of the film refers to a chair on the stage of the 1942 graduating class at Juneau High School.  The valedictorian, John Tanaka, wasn't there.  He'd been relocated with his family to an internment camp after Pearl Harbor was attacked.  John's best friend's dad was the highest ranking military officer in Juneau at the time and was ordered to arrest John's father, and later to round up all the Japanese-American residents and ship them south to an internment camp.

I got to see The Empty Chair Sunday morning - at its world premiere on the  73rd  anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  Heres a bit of video I took during the Q&A after the Sunday showing.



This film is a testament to how a dedicated film maker can preserve a small but significant part of history with his camera.  Greg Chaney interviewed Juneau residents who experienced those events.  Japanese-Americans who were kids back then and were sent to camps during the war.  Their white classmates, and a few others alive at the time like Katie Hurley.

Chaney chronicles a small Alaskan town - the film estimates Juneau had about 5000 residents then - where the Japanese residents were well integrated into the community and how some key members of the white community struggled when they were required to deport these citizens to the camps.

The film also takes advantage of vintage film and photos from any number of archives and from some family film that includes footage of playing in the snow on Dec. 7, 1941.

This is a huge contribution to Alaska's history and because it focuses on high school (and younger) kids, it would be a terrific addition to Alaskan history curriculum in high schools throughout the state.

It plays again tonight (Tuesday) at the Alaska Experience Theater at 7pm.

The programming is tight this year, but if you're seeing The Ambassador to Bern at 5:30 at the Bear Tooth, which I also recommend, there will be time enough to get downtown to see The Empty Chair.    It's ok if you're a few minutes late, though you might want to reserve a ticket in advance if you can.

The movie is quite well done, even on the minuscule budget they had.