Documentary explores 1935 Colony project

September 6, 2005

JOEL DAVIDSON/Frontiersman reporter

PALMER - After studying for 11 years and conducting more than 100 interviews with original colonists and their families, 52-year-old San Francisco resident Joan Juster knows more about the 1935 Matanuska Colony project than even most old-timers.

She is well acquainted with dozens of those men and women who first carved a life in the New Deal-era Matanuska Colony - a community she has meticulously studied for more than a fifth of her life.

Juster and her business partner Paul Hill first heard of the Colony project in 1994, while visiting friend Bill Fox and his colonist grandmother, Irene Benson. Benson's tales of adventure and survival mesmerized and inspired both Juster and Hill.

"We thought someone should do a documentary of this place," Juster said Monday at the Colony Inn in Palmer. "Then a light went on and we decided to go ahead and do it."

In 1994, Juster quit her day job as a special projects coordinator at the San Francisco Opera and poured her energy into writing grant applications. Hill works for Industrial Light & Magic, a special effects company, and is a producer of public-service announcements for nonprofit groups. They combined their respective skills and established their own film company, Juster Hill Productions.

From 1994 to 2002, Juster and Hill spent untold hours sitting in living rooms or around dinner tables, listening as aging colonists reached back into their memories to recount a little-known slice of American history.

Juster said she has read historical documents, books and boxes full of official government files that record the technical history of the Colony project. The personal tales, however, could only be told through the voice of the original colonists themselves, and that's exactly what she and Hill have attempted to capture.

Juster said she couldn't have started soon enough.

"Every month, the original colonists are dying," she said, while adding that only seven of the 29 colonists she's interviewed are still alive.

"We knew we couldn't wait long to come up here to get those stories," Juster said. "The original colonists were in their 80s and 90s - there was no time to waste."

At this year's Alaska State Fair, Juster showed interview clips and out-takes from many of those interviews, which are too numerous to include in a two-hour movie.

Within the next year, Juster said she hopes to complete a feature-length documentary of the lives and times of Matanuska colonists and their families.

The rough-cut version of the movie, "Alaska Far Away," was first finished in 2002, the year it showed at the Alaska State Fair. Since then, however, the project has stalled due to a lack of funding.

In 2006, though, Juster hopes to finally put the project to bed. It will take about $200,000 more to finish recording a soundtrack, secure archival permission and edit a final cut, but Juster said the necessary grants might finally arrive.

The ultimate goal is to eventually sell the film to PBS and show it at film festivals around the country.

Juster is betting that the film's local subject matter will carry national appeal.

From the disappearance of America's frontier, to carving a modern American community from near total wilderness, Juster believes the history of the Matanuska Colony will resonate with historians, students and filmgoers alike.

If all goes as planned, Juster hopes next year, after 12 years in the making, the lights will finally go down someplace in the Mat-Su and the final version of "Alaska Far Away" will premier at its source.

"Neither of us thought it would take this long," Juster said, "but we don't regret it for a moment. This has been worth it."

Contact Joel Davidson at

352-2266 or joel.davidson@

frontiersman.com.