Tracing Roots: from creating a film to making conversations

“Tracing Roots is a short but strong documentary, it never feels forced or contrived. It flows with ease and the soundtrack is fresh—nothing tinny or canned about it. In a world where there are hundreds of thousands of documentaries, many of which are substandard and get lost in the shuffle, Tracing Roots is one that viewers will enjoy remembering, and perhaps retell more as a memory than a movie. ”

— Anchorage Press

Dave Rubin spruce roots hat sketch

Showing a film and letting something that has been chewed on, often in solitude, out, generates a mixed palette of fright, excitement, and affirmation. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve been on this rollercoaster, the feelings, the worries and the hopes resonate and repeat. Then there are the moments,  when for example, a moderator at a screening says he is “breatheless,” as Joe Watkins did in Vancouver after the credits and before the question and answers started. Then the hours and weeks chewing and crafting, the doubts over choices made are eased and the hope that the work, will encourage something more are kindled once again.

We’ve shown Tracing Roots at public screenings in Ketchikan and Anchorage, at a small screenings in Gustavus and Klukwan , Alaska and at a conference in Vancouver.
This weekend we show the film in Sitka at the Coliseum Theater on Saturday, November 15th at 5:45 PM, reception to follow at Old Harbor Books.
Then comes Juneau and a screening and discussion at 360 North/Alaska PBS on Monday November 17th. The discussion will be filmed and shared with viewers in state, as a companion piece to “Tracing Roots.” when we air it.

On November 23rd we travel with Tracing Roots: A Weaver’s Journey to The Burke Museum in Seattle as part of the opening weekend of an exhibit called “Here and Now: Native Artists Inspired.”

We look forward to more screenings, to editing a DVD and jumping into distribution.

TRACING ROOTS: A master weaver’s journey to understand a spruce root hat found in a retreating glacier

We just completed the screening version of Tracing Roots
The film is a portrait, a mystery and a story of beauty and legacy,

Our First regional Premiere Screenings include:

Friday September 26th, 2014  at 6-7:30 PM
SE Discovery Center, Ketchikan Alaska

Sunday October 19th, 2014 at 2 PM
The Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, Anchorage, Alaska

Screenings in Vancouver, Sitka, Juneau, Fairbanks, at the the Haida Gwaii Museum and more are in the works.

“This remarkable film traces roots of differing kinds – natural tree roots collected and woven into exquisite baskets and hats, but also cultural roots of kinship traced across boundaries of time, space and generation.  This accessible and beautiful documentary, will stimulate discussion among students of all ages and from a wide variety of disciplines.”

-Julie Cruikshank,
Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of British Columbia.
Author, “Do Glacier’s Listen.”

Thanks to all participants and supporters. We’re still working on funding for outreach expenses, so contact us at artchangeinc@gmail.com if you want to help!

Read more here

What Should We Eat? Eating Alaska Continues to Provoke

Last night I showed the documentary, ‘Eating Alaska” to students from the University of San Francisco.

The students are in Sitka, AK for a two week environmental studies program. As they watched the 57 minute film, I reviewed the first draft of a user’s guide for Tracing Roots, a documentary we hope to finish and start sharing soon.

I’ve been at screenings and talks with Eating Alaska in high schools, on college campuses, at film festivals, local food and sustainability events, conferences of social scientists and environmental educators, plus public libraries from Nome to Warsaw. I pulled the plug on traveling to screenings after awhile (though a good offer to a fun place would be hard to turn down), feeling it was time to move on and wondering if I had more to say.

The credits came up. I looked away from my computer screen and my thoughts on retreating glaciers, intellectual property and cultural heritage, and wandered to the front of the room.

The discussion after the screening reminded me again of all the questions students and those not in the classroom have among other things about what they eat, about the choices we make as consumers in a changing environment about what we can do to make our homes, campuses and communities more environmentally friendly.

Some of the post screening questions and topics that came up, with a few of my responses in parenthesis:

“What should we eat?  (That is a huge question)”
“Are all GMOS bad? (Organic is much healthier. There are a lot of risks with GMOS….)”
“But how do we feed 7 billion people?”
“Do organics remind you of class warfare?/Is access to good food is a class issue? (Yes)”
“What if we all tried to live of the land? (Yes, that could be hard on resources).”
“Did you ever pull the trigger? (Would you?) ”
“If all of the transportation of food was green, without a negative carbon footprint/impact, what would eating local mean ?(community -culture-connection)”

OK. I’m not sure as a documentary filmmaker, who needs to stop writing and get in the house to vacuum pack some smoke salmon, I have many answers.

Fittingly, at the end of the evening, one student came up and thanked us for creating a film that didn’t point to a bad guy,  didn’t act like there were simple solutions and left her thinking.

The next Eating Alaska screening is Saturday August 9th at 7:30 pm in Talkeetna, Alaska, hosted by the Denali Arts Council.  Check out “What Sitka Eats” our tumblr blog created by Lucy Wang, an Artchange intern. We welcome submissions and invite other communities and campuses to replicate it.

Berry stained hands and some miscellaneous thoughts

I grew up in cities: Beijing, New Orleans, Houston, and the Chicago suburbs. For me, living off the land went as far as growing a single bean sprout in a yogurt container filled with soil bought from the local gardening store. Once a year, my family would go grapefruit picking in a orchard about an hour and a half away by car. So coming to Sitka, it’s been quite change to be in a small town where people pride themselves in being independent: fishing, gardening, harvesting beach asparagus, berry picking, and so on. Here are some of my adventures so far in Sitka.

1. Salmonberries

Here’s a close up of a salmonberry. They grow everywhere in Sitka. I have a love-hate relationship with them. By that, I mean I love them but they are so distracting. It takes me twice as long to get anywhere because I stop and eat a lot of salmonberries on the way. They’re not very good for making jam or pies though because they’re not so sweet.

2.  Beach Asparagus

Beach asparagus, (or Salicornia) is a lush, bright green plant that grows in saltwater. You harvest it during times of low tide when it’s above the water. Brooke and Paul (Alina, another intern’s host parents, check out her blog here!) took us up some mysterious water passage where we passed about twenty different islands to find their “secret” harvesting spot.

3. Seaweed

Alina and I went on a Sitka Conservation Society boat trip to this little island to see marine life on a low tide. There, I held a sea star. I touched a barnacle. I learned about the basalt rocks that made up the archipelago of islands only 600,000 years old. (They’re only babies in the geologic time scale). On the island, I kept seeing patches and patches of seaweed, bull kelp, and sea lettuce. I broke off a bit of some seaweed and tasted it. It tasted great (or at least edible) so Alina and I harvested some. I love the word harvest. It’s loaded with so much meaning. I think of farmers, the Native Alaskans, and on a grander scale, all humans. Our ancestors spent much of their day consumed with harvesting, cooking, and eating food. And now, here I am in Sitka, spending all day documenting the process of harvesting, cooking, and eating food, all while figuring out how to cook, grocery shop, and live on my own for the first time.

The pot of seaweed was pretty gross. There was a lot of salt water stuck in between the seaweed membranes which bursted as the water heated up. Mmm, salty sea soup. Anyway, it was way more trouble than I thought it would be to cook the seaweed. I had to wash each leaf about seven times to get rid of the sea mucus stuck on it. Then, I boiled the leaves, let them soak in water overnight to get some of the salt out. The next day, I washed them again. got rid of all the spiky thorns, and finally cut it up and made a seaweed salad. The seaweed salad was delicious, so I suppose it was worth it.