"Hipsters" had no sooner won the Golden Oosikar for best film at the Anchorage International Film Festival Sunday night when word came on Monday that it picked up another first place in France.
Anton Shagin, the lead actor in the musical -- known in Europe by its Russian title, "Stilyagi" -- won the prize for best actor at the first-ever Festival de Cinéma européen des Arcs or, in English, the European Cinema Festival in Les Arcs, France.
At Les Arcs prizes are awarded "on the basis of the movies' ability to blur the borders of individual countries and bring the people closer together despite language and other barriers." "Hipsters/Stilyagi" certainly succeeds on those terms.
For the record, the Les Arcs version of the Golden Oosikar is called La Flèche de cristal -- The Crystal Arrow. No word on what part of which bird the crystal feathers are plucked, but I was assured that the Oosikars are, indeed, plucked from the carcasses of male walruses.
Other observations from the ninth annual AIFF.
• Prices are going up. Rand Thornsley, the festival's president and program director, told the audience at the awards ceremony that this year's "$7 tickets are a thing of the past." Expenses have continued to balloon and, if the festival is to take the next step, it will take more money. My advice to the dedicated is to spring for an all-event pass.
• Best and worst of venues. The two Alaska Experience theaters are remarkably good for movie-viewing, maybe the best such facilities in the state. The larger one with its relatively enormous curved screen particularly impressed me, though the projection booth's physical projection into the seating is an odd thing. The smaller of the two spaces holds only 30 patrons, but for some movies that would be a crowd.
I didn't see anything at the Anchorage Museum, but one caller told me that the sound was problematic there. He said he couldn't understand a word of the documentary, "A Sea Change," which sounded as clear and beautiful as it looked at the Alaska Experience.
• Birthday boy. James Harkness, writer/producer/director of "The Birthday" actually celebrated his real birthday on Dec. 7, after the film's North American premiere. A small group of friends joined for cake and a champagne toast and round of "Happy Birthday" at the Spenard Roadhouse. Harkness was careful to note that it was his birthday in Australia -- which is a day ahead of Alaska.
"The Birthday" is an altogether lovely movie; but as a story closely adapted from a stage play, it lost some of its intimate power on the big screen. Audiences, and judges, went for films with more spectacle. The hometown audience voted "Dear Lemon Lima," starring Eagle River's Savanah Wiltfong, their runner-up for best feature. That might have been different if the festival were held in Adelaide.
• Where's Cedric? Another actor with Alaska roots, Cedric Sanders, who had the lead role in "The Least Among You," dutifully showed up for the screenings of the movie, then flew out of town. Not that he doesn't love us, we were told, but he had an appointment to try out for a plum role in the Broadway revival of August Wilson's play "Fences."
• Brains. The film festival was a great opportunity to see exquisite new film work (along with things that we won't be lining up to see again). Magnificent, painterly camera work; riveting acting; elegantly sculpted scripts; mind-blowing ideas; animation from the cutting edge; documentaries that filmmakers risked their lives to capture.
• So what did most people want to see? Well the biggest crowd, we were told, showed up for the late night screening of something called "Zombies of Mass Destruction." I'd never seen a zombie movie before, but I brought a couple of teenagers to help me navigate the complexities, including Leo, who is said to own 200 different zombie movies.
"What's your favorite?" I asked.
"In which genre?" he replied. "Zombie gore-fest, zombie comedy, zombie documentary..."
"Zombie documentary is a genre?"
Set in the Olympic Peninsula hamlet of Port Gamble, "Zombies of Mass Destruction" was clearly in the zombie comedy category, with some pretty funny material, a lot of predictable developments and several scenes that drew "eeews" from the crowd.
Leo gave it a 4 on the 1-10 Zombometer scale. The British vampire comedy, "Strigoi," had very little violence but a lot of intelligent humor and charm. Any zombie would have loved it -- because it was so very brainy.
'On the Ice' tryouts resume
Previous Golden Oosikar winner Andrew MacLean is still looking for Inuit actors to fill roles in his upcoming full-length version of "On the Ice," to be shot in Barrow in April. He and producer Cara Marcous will hold another round of tryouts from 4:30-8:30 p.m. on Jan. 2 and 3 at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art, 427 D St. They're interested in meeting any Inuit people from ages 17 to 75. Fluency in Inupiaq is not needed, since the movie will be in English, and neither is previous acting experience. "All actors in the movie will be paid," they promise.
For more information, go to www.ontheicethemovie.com or e-mail casting@ontheicethemovie.com.
Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.
By MIKE DUNHAM
mdunham@adn.com