Hunk of burnin' love heats up film festival
By SUSAN MORGAN
Anchorage Daily News
(Published: Friday, December 12, 2003)

Elvis, or a Canadian facsimile thereof, will be in the building this week for the Anchorage International Film Festival. Among 100 films to be shown during the 11 days of the festival, running through Dec. 21 will be "The Elvis Project," a film by producer Adam Green of Whitehorse, Yukon.

The documentary revolves around a man who claims to have been visited by aliens in the 1980s.
"(He believes) they gave him the conscious awareness of Elvis Presley," said Green, also the film's co-director. The man who believes he is the King eventually changed his name to Elvis A. Presley and performs wherever he gets the chance -- including on the street.

Not everyone is convinced he's the real deal.

"I think through the movie he shows how he's tried to deal with it. So it has a human rights feel to it," Green said.Green and other Yukoners organized a musical tour with the man and covered 1,400 miles in five days.

Local companies got in on the project: a fruit stand donated fruit for the tour, and a friend kicked in moose meat. The entire project was thrown into question the first night when the guitar player dislocated his finger in a fight. He had it fixed, though, and the 19-member crew plowed on. Green was there, filming all the while.

So, how does Presley sound these days, anyway?

"I'm never sure how to answer that question," Green said. "He's certainly not the Elvis of '77." Real deal or no, Elvis will be in Anchorage for several performances, including a gig with Joey Fender & the 55s, and to catch the Alaska premiere of the film, Green said. He might even elaborate on travails mentioned in the movie, including squabbles with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Hustler magazine.

Bringing unusual celluloid glimpses to Anchorage audiences is the goal of festival founder Tony Sheppard, himself an independent filmmaker. This year, his shout-out to the international film community re- sulted in 300 entries, down from 2003's 400-plus. Judges selected about one-third of those to be shown at two venues, the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts and the Alaska Experience Theatre, throughout the festival, which began with a preview Thursday. Awards will be given at the annual Golden Oosik ceremony Sunday, Dec. 14.

Other documentaries in contention this year include "Who is Albert Woo?" The film, directed by Hunt Hoe, explores stereotypes assigned to Asian men and asks searching questions such as
"Why are Asian men represented as strong, silent, cold and clinical?"

A strong entry in the documentary category is "The Burning Wall." Written and directed by Hava Kohav Beller, the film was described by the Village Voice as "a docu-history on the defunct German Democratic Republic ... (which) treads the timeline from the perspective of dissidents ... and their harassers at Stasi, the quasi-nation's massive surveillance agency."

Employing methods ranging from historical shots to interviews with those actually depicted, the film provides a horrifying glimpse at man's inhumanity, the building and eventual dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the toll of the battle to bring it down.

The Voice says, "On the surface, Beller's film is an acute primer on midcentury socialist statism gone inevitably screwy, but beneath it, there's something to be gleaned about the psychology of German nationhood." Other categories include Alaska films, short films, super-shorts, features and animation. For filmmaker Green, it's a chance to visit Alaska and show Elvis around a little bit. He said he's "very, very" happy with his first movie.

"I think we have a very interesting, cultlike film," he said. And he doesn't question Elvis' story. "You know, I like to give that respect to him. He whole-heartedly, 1,000 percent believes in it," Green said of his film's main character. "The whole thing is to tell his story. I'm not there to judge him."
Arts editor Susan Morgan can be reached at 257-4587 or smorgan@adn.com.