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Friday, March 26th
EATING ALASKA UPDATE ON SCREENINGS AND USE
Some upcoming screenings
Alaska Anthropological Association Meetings
March 26, 2010
Millenium Hotel, Anchorage, Alaska
Movies and Munchies in the Eureka Coop Community Kitchen
Friday March 26, 12 & 6 PM
4th & B street
Tenakee Springs, Alaska
Filmmaker in the schools (K-12)
Community Screening
April 2, 2010
Earth Day 40 Film Series
Saturday April 10, 2009 1 PM
Bethlehem Public Library
Delmar, NY 12054
Sonoma International Film Festival
Sonoma, CA
April 18, 2010
12:30pm Ramekins Cafe Cinema
Hosted by the Alaska Wilderness League. Reception after with Sonoma Wine and Wild Alaskan salmon!
"In keeping with the Cinema Epicurean theme, the festival always features a focus on food and wine." Last year that meant Food Inc, this year it includes Eating Alaska.Sonoma News
The Alaska Wilderness League hosts the screening.
The League exists to lead the effort to preserve Alaska’s wilderness by engaging citizens, sharing resources, collaborating with other organizations, educating the public, and providing a courageous, constant and victorious voice for Alaska in the nation’s capital from all 50 states.
Filmmaker/Director attends
University of Maryland’s Earth Day Film Festival
Part of Earth Month
April 21 & 22nd, 2010 4:05 PM
Earth Day Film Festival-
Moving Toward Sustainability
University of Connecticut-Avery Point
Groton, CT
Marine Science Building, Room 103
Thursday April 22, 2010 6:00 PM
Sponsored by the University of Connecticut Libraries, with support from the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (CANR), UConn's Department of Dining Services, retired veteran CANR writer Alexander Gavitt, and the Storrs and Avery Point EcoHusky student organizations.
Nome Community Screening
May 2010
Date TBA
(Director attends/during an artist in schools residency)
Twisp Rural Roots Film Festival
Twisp, Washington
May 29, 2010
CONFERENCES AUGUST-SEPTEMBER
Society for Social Problems, Atlanta
North American Assn. for Environmental Education, Buffalo, NY
Rural Sociology Conference, Atlanta
Paths Across the Pacific, Sitka
ALSO: LA City College, Earth Day and Slow Food and public library screenings in the works
USE NOTES
Alaska Fish and Game is planning to use Eating Alaska in community workshops and trainings. This is part of the "No Child Left Indoors" campaign to reconnect kids with the restorative, challenging, primal qualities of nature. Even in Alaska kids (and adults) are spending more and more time engaged in sedentary, indoor activities.
Michigan State University recently screened Eating Alaska as part of a Food Film Series
The festival is part on an ongoing conversation at MSU on food, sustainability and the environment.
"A documentary about a vegetarian who moves to Alaska and is forced to confront a lot of the ethical issues she thought she had already settled on. The film chronicles her experience and the dilemmas she faces. Humorous and relatable to anyone who has ever pondered over the ethical questions of being a vegetarian or a carnivore." (from a blog on the Michigan State University Fisheries & Wildlife Club).
Other campuses are using the film in classes including:
Environmental Studies/Human Ecology/Ecology
Culinary/Nutrition Studies
Sociology/Anthropology/Geography
Humanities/Philosophy
Public Health
Community Agriculture/Fisheries/Food Security
Native American Studies
Women's Studies
Film Studies
SAMPLE RESPONSE AND A NOTE ON THE MEANING OF IMPACT
An e-mail from a public librarian below, provokes some thought on use and impact:
Festivals are fun, awards are great to mark getting through a project. However, it is school and community use, in whatever form, from clinics and churches to prisons and libraries is at the core of why I spend so much time scratching my head and trying to turn random ideas and issues into something a group can watch together.
"We showed Eating Alaska and we had 47 senior patrons come to the movie( for us this is a really good crowd. They thoroughly enjoyed the film. They commented about the breath taking scenery, the storyline and nutrition information. They especially liked the part with the children in the grocery store and learning about food labels- they said all schools should have an outing like this one."
Terri Campbell
Community Services/Adult Programming
Prospect Heights Public Library, Il
Ellen Frankenstein, on 03.26.10 @ 11:08AKT [link]
Monday, March 22nd
YOUTH PROGRAMS, QUESTIONS, STREAMING
URBAN GARDENING STUDENTS RESPOND TO EATING ALASKA
-Where does our food come from?
"What are the consequences of our current food system?
-Is it better to eat local or organic? To be a Vegan vs. Vegetarian vs. Omnivore?
-What can be learned from indigenous food practices?
-Could you actually kill an animal for its meat?
We made Eating Alaska to add to the conversation about how what we eat matters and connects us to the place we live. We wanted it to tie into efforts from community gardens and college campus efforts to promote sustainability to fossil fuel free days and electric car conversions that help us take care of our planet, our communities, families and ourselves.
Here is an example, from Austin Texas. We shared Eating Alaska with some participants in Urban Roots is a youth development program that uses sustainable agriculture as means to transform the lives of young people and increase the access of healthy food. On a 3.5 acre urban farm, the project brings together Austin youth ages 14-17 from diverse backgrounds to grow food, to serve people in need, and to gain valuable life, job, and leadership skills.
After the screening, one of the Urban Roots coordinators asked during the question and answer session, how do you talk with people about food choices?
The coordinator shared her experience of running into walls and defensiveness when she raised issues around food and making choices to eat more locally, more sustainably or just to eat good healthy food. Since I enjoy putting out questions, instead of attempting to provide answers, I turned to the students and asked them how being involved in their project had changed their thinking and the way they eat. They shared great stories of awareness and changes in their lives and their families by being involved in a program that connected to them to the source of their food. Seems like the answer to working with the walls is conversation, discussion, interaction, modeling, action. It all helps.
This is some response that also got passed on to us later:
"It was really great to see other kids. I was able to relate to this movie more because of the interviews they did with people my age. I was very interested in their lifestyle. How these teenagers are so accustomed to hunting. It would be like a different world to me."
Kayla, 16 years old, youth leader with Urban Roots
"It was cool that they used what they had. They ate what was near them.
What I thought was cool was how the main character and the other women were so strong. They survived in the forest for a long time. I don't usually see women doing that kind of stuff."
Mohammed, 15 years old, agriculture intern, Urban Roots
"It was amazing to see him harvesting sea cucumbers under water in freezing temperature."
Raymundo, 16 years old, agriculture intern, Urban Roots
EATING ALASKA ON NEW DAY DIGITAL
You can now look at Eating Alaska on-line!
This is a great option for previewing the film for a community screening, home viewing and for out of class assignments for students. This week a university student contacted us after he missed an screening in a Geography class. It was great to be able to send him to the site, where for a small fee he can stream the film on demand. School and Institutional use can be arranged too. Click here to go to Eating Alaska on New Day Digital.
Ellen Frankenstein, on 03.22.10 @ 10:59AKT [link]
Monday, March 8th
EATING ALASKA SCREENINGS FROM NATURAL FOOD COOPS TO OUTDOOR WOMEN WORKSHOPS
What does a Becoming an Outdoor Woman Workshop, teaching outdoor skills including hunting and fishing, have in common with a natural food coop?
In the next weeks a BOW workshop and a food coop are both showing the documentary, Eating Alaska (details below), but they have other things in common, things I might not have thought about before I set off to make and show this documentary about looking for the "right thing" to eat.
My quest in Eating Alaska was partially sparked by the realization some of my female friends in Alaska, hunted, trapped and fished, without men in the lead or even in tow. It struck me that breaking stereotypes of gender roles is one matter. Having the skills do these activities, however, is less about image and more about motivation and action. I first heard of a national program called Becoming an Outdoor Woman as we made the film. It is in an educational program created to encourage women to be comfortable and more aware of the outdoor world and to break down the barriers to being active, be it dipnetting for salmon in Alaska or turkey hunting in Indiana.
In a symposium, organizers found out this:
"Two thirds of the barriers listed related to the fact that once they got there, most women didn't know what to do outdoors - they didn't learn from their parents as youngsters, or didn't belong to outdoor groups as a child. And when they reached adulthood, they often found that their life partner wasn't the perfect teacher of outdoor skills."
Today, about 46 states, eight provinces, and at least two other countries offer BOW workshops, and more than 20,000 women attend events every year. In the upcoming workshop in Chickaloon, Alaska (not far from our former governor Sarah Palin's home town of Wasila) students have a chance to learn to tie knots, be safe with firearms, hone tracking and animal sign skills, make snow caves and survive in the cold and use a chain saw and to have fun and camaraderie too.
Cu to another scene, from an exterior with women lined up, arms outstretched, bow string pulled, arrows aimed at the targets, to a cozy interior, past a display of organic spray free apples and potatoes, a peanut butter grinder, fair trade dark chocolate bars and bins of lentils and granola, to a room with folding chairs and a screen. The viewers who come to the film series sponsored by Food Co-ops, like the Eureka Co-op Community Kitchen, might not be interested in field dressing a moose, or fishing through a hole in the ice, but like the women who are gaining outdoors skills. They are encouraging a connection to food and environment that crosses hunters and gatherers, be they ones with a bow and compass, or a smart car and cloth bags.
This next coop to screen the film, the North Coast Co-op, is in northern California. The website tells us they offer good food without artificial ingredients, using organic or natural ingredients whenever possible. The democratic, volunteer, member-owned food coop movement started in the 1970's. The rise of bigger stores selling organic foods and the use of "natural" on lots of labels, might be a challenge to coops, but there are still lots around and plenty devoted members from coast to coast. They are showing films like Eating Alaska, Fresh and the World According to Monsanto to educate people to be more active in food choices and how what you eat impacts out health and the health of the planet,
In this era of waking up to the horrors of the industrial food system, frightening reports on the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, record unemployment, not to mention high rates of obesity and diabetes, how do we find comfort and health? It seems all the more important to be involved in activities that encourage well-being, self-sufficiency and connection to the source of our food and to try to cut our carbon footprint. Knowing where you food comes from, who "cut up my meat," as a teen in Kotzebue says in the film, may not end a war, or make a huge dent in the realm of climate change, but it is ownership and step in taking responsibility for what is around us. I have to say, listing both of these screenings in the same month reminds me of common aspirations, that I hope in some way can outweigh what feels at times like so much divisiveness, and a whole lot of negativity and apathy.
Eating Alaska Screenings Ahead
Winter BOW (Becoming an Outdoors Woman) Workshop, Chickaloon, AK
Alaska Fish and Game BOW
March 12-14, 2010
Don't Buy Food from Strangers Film Series
Tuesdays, March 16,
Akron Main Library Auditorium
(60 S. Main Street, Akron 44326)
6-9 p.m.
Hosted by Countryside Conservancy
Food System Film Festival, Michigan State University,
Saturday, March 20
Movies and Munchies in the Eureka Coop Community Kitchen
Friday March 26, 12 & 6 PM
4th & B street
More News
Want to see Eating Alaska on-line?
Coming very soon for a small fee you can have a 90 day stream, with customized options for institutions. Check it out at New Day Digital.
The Sitka Local Foods Network and Eating Alaska both received a magazine mention in an article about food sustainability in Alaska. Click here to see the article and read about the network, http://sitkalocalfoodsnetwork.org/.
Ellen Frankenstein, on 03.08.10 @ 19:38AKT [link]
