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Health, Food & Fitness: Anchorage Museum

• 1pm: Eeva Latosuo, Alaska Pacific University faculty, Outdoor Studies Program and Alaska Avalanche School instructor – Snow and Safety in the Backcountry
• 2pm: Dr. David Newirth, Alaska Natural Health Solutions – Preventing SAD
• 2:30pm: Dr. James D. O’Malley – winter health and safety
• 3pm: Eating Alaska, a film by Ellen Frankenstein, 56 minutes. A documentary about a vegetarian who moves to Alaska, marries a fisherman and hunter and begins to wonder what the “right” thing to eat is on the “last frontier.” What ensues are humorous and enlightening adventures in eating as the filmmaker heads to the woods and mountains with women hunters, communes with the Alaska vegetarian society, talks moose meat with a group of Alaska Native kids in a public schools in the Arctic and more, all in search of a meal that makes sense politically, socially, spiritually and tastefully. This wry look at what’s on your plate explores ideas about eating healthy sustainable food from one’s own backyard, either urban or wild, versus industrially produced food shipped thousands of miles. Collaboration with independent filmmaker and KTOO-TV.
• 4pm: Dr. Durocher, USGS – Rockhounding in Alaska

Sponsored, in part, by BP Exploration.

Movie: Strait Through the Ice

Part of the Movies For Your Mind series, this film shows with a Chilly Willy Cartoon “Half Baked Alaska” 7 minutes (total running time 59m).

US documentary, 2008. 52 minutes. MPAA RATING: Not Rated.  Directed by Yves Billy
http://icarusfilms.com/new2008/strait.html

From the official website: Today the North Pole is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. The Arctic ice cap is less than half the size it was 50 years ago. This radical climate change has thus begun to open the ice-packed Northwest Passage between Europe and Asia, and some scientists predict that the transoceanic maritime route will soon be permanently ice free during its ever-longer summers.  STRAIT THROUGH THE ICE examines the geopolitical ramifications of this development, including disputes between the five nations bordering the Arctic Ocean-the U.S., Canada, Denmark, Norway and Russia-over claims to territorial waters, the control of sea traffic, and the right to exploit the region’s untapped resources of oil and other natural resources. But if this multinational race to the Arctic is not legally regulated, the region’s fragile ecosystem could be devastated.

Anchorage Museum.

Movies for Your Mind

101 Reykjavík

Iceland 2000 comedy romance in Icelandic with English subtitles, 88 minutes.  MPAA Rating: Not rated (sexual content and nudity, violence and smoking).  Cast: Hilmir Snaer Gudnason, Victoria Abril, Hanna Maria Karlsdottir; Directed by Baltasar Kormakur.

The country has no trees. It’s dark most of the time, and the winters are the bleakest on Earth.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0237993/

Review excerpt from the San Francisco Chronicle by Edward Guthman:
Dreamy, immature and stone-cold unemployed, Hlynur is an Icelandic slacker with a beauty of a sexual dilemma. At 28, he lives with his mom, doesn’t work and spends his evenings getting hammered in the local pub. After bedding a fiery flamenco instructor, he discovers that she’s his mother’s lesbian lover – - and may be pregnant with his child. So it goes in “101 Reykjavik,” a wonderful, cockeyed sex comedy from Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur. Set in the capital city of Reykjavik, where round-the-clock summer daylight induces all forms of excess and dysfunction, this is a throwback to British comedies of the ’60s (“Billy Liar, ” “Morgan”) about over-imaginative loners at odds with reality.

Anchorage Museum.

Movies for Your Mind

The Last Days of Shishmaref

Anchorage Museum Auditorium

Alaska/Netherlands 2008 documentary, In English/Inupiaq with English subtitles, 90 minutes.  MPAA RATING: Not rated.  Directed by Jan Louter.

www.shishmaref.nl/shishmaref/shishmaref_release-2.4.4/MainView.html

Review from the AFI Film Festival by Jacqueline Lyanga:
While politicians, scientists and environmentalists debate the effects of global warming, an Inupiaq Eskimo community in northwest Alaska, just under the Arctic Circle, faces the real world consequences of climate change every day. The ice beneath the small Alaskan village of Shishmaref, on the island of Sarichef, is melting. Homes are falling into the ocean. The situation is so severe that it has been predicted that the entire village will disappear within the next 10 years. How can you move an entire way of life? And should these villagers go to the edges of a city, or retain their rural ways? Filmmaker Jan Louter captures the transience of the Inupiaq’s traditional way of life in the face of the collision of climate change, satellite television and mail order shopping. The icy landscape—its water, smoke, steam and sky—is beautifully photographed, as are the village’s inhabitants. Every frame is a poignant portrait. The film doesn’t present a barrage of facts and figures to make its point, instead giving the viewer entry into the issue of climate change by way of a third eye. We feel the loss, the pain and the sadness of the families as they realize that they will never recover a way of life being swallowed by the sea.

DESIGN FOR THE NORTH: Ideas for Northern Living

Performances, outdoor demonstrations and family activities, as well as presentations, exhibits and information designed to celebrate and enhance life in the North, are part of a special FREEZE “Design for the North” event at the Alaska Native Heritage Center. Tickets are $9.95 per person and include:

• FREEZE performance by “Sivuqaq Dancers,” St. Lawrence Island Anchorage Dancers (12 p.m.)
• Observe Native artists teaching class participants make Sugpiaq/Alutiiq headdresses and Athabascan-style winter boots or rifle cases. To participate in classes, contact the Alaska Native Heritage Center for pre-registration at 330-8000.
• Performance of tribal-funk, world music by Pamyua (2 p.m.) courtesy of Calista Corporation
• 2 Tours of outdoor traditional Native housing exhibitions (11 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 1:30-2:30 p.m.) Self guided tours available all day
• Dogsled demonstration, slide show and photo opportunities with Iditarod dogsled musher Eric Rogers and musher Bonnie Foster (all day).
• Demonstrations and presentations by the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, including information about winterizing your home and the Home Energy Rebate and Winterization Programs (3:30 p.m.)
• Exhibit by the American Institute of Architects Alaska Chapter on building in the unique Alaska condition
• Exhibit and videotaped presentations by the Alaska Center for Appropriate Technology and Bioneers in Alaska Planning Group (1:00-2:30 p.m.) of three half-hour sessions from the October Bioneers Conference, including biologist, author and co-founder of the Biomimicry Institute, Janine Benyus, on what ingenious, and often endangered, species can teach us about solving some of our most challenging environmental issues; conservationist, entrepreneur and author Paul Stamets on how fungus-based medicinal and nutritional technologies have the potential to change the world; and Canadian journalist and author Naomi Klein on her vision of how people’s movements can counter disaster capitalism.
• More alternative energy solution ideas for northern climates by the Renewable Energy Alaska Project, a coalition of urban and rural Alaska utilities, businesses, conservation groups, consumer groups and Alaska Native organizations designed to increase the production of renewable energy in Alaska.

Movies For Your Mind

The Ice People

6 p.m., Anchorage Museum

France/USA documentary 2008, 77 minutes
MPAA RATING: Not rated.  Directed by Anne Aghion.

A once-in-a-lifetime journey with Antarctica’s 21st-century explorers
http://www.icepeople.com

From the official web site:
Unique in the genre of exploration and adventure films, ICE PEOPLE takes you on one of the earth’s most seductive journeys—Antarctica.  Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Anne Aghion spent four months “on the ice” with modern-day polar explorers, to find out what drives dedicated researchers to leave the world behind in pursuit of science, and to capture the true experience of living and working in this extreme environment.  And, as it turns out, the film also witnesses one of the most significant discoveries about climate change in recent Antarctic science.

Indigenous Film Festival

Presenting films from around the world, including Australia, Canada, Greenland, New Zealand and more!

See short films, full length feature films and documentaries throughout the day.

Alaska Native Heritage Center. Admission (wristband to come and go throughout the day): $9.95 adults, $6.95 children, ages 6 & under FREE, Members FREE.

See the festival schedule.

Indigenous World Film Festival

Presenting films from around the world, including Australia, Canada, Greenland, New Zealand and more!

Meet film producers, directors, see Alaska Native dancers and enjoy complimentary refreshments.

Alaska Native Heritage Center.  FREE.

See the festival schedule.

Movies For Your Mind

Noi the Albino

6 p.m., Anchorage Museum

Noi the Albino: Iceland drama, 2003, in Icelandic and French, 82 minutes
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for language and brief nudity.  Cast: Tómas Lemarquis, Throstur Leo Gunnarsson, Elin Hansdóttir, Anna Fridriksdóttir. Directed by Dagur Kári.

A wonderboy drop-out in an Icelandic village scale, dreams of escaping from his remote fjord with the girl from the filling station.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0351461/

Film Screening – MTS Gallery

The MTS Gallery along with FREEZE and the Anchorage International Film Festival present three short FREEZing films:

• Sikumi (On The Ice). Directed by Andrew MacLean.
• Lost In Snow. Directed by Vladimir Leschiov
• Susitna Story. Directed by Peter Dunlap-Shohl

Music by Reverse Retro. Catering by Tap Root Cafe.

MTS Gallery. 3142 Mountain View Drive. FREE.