Massay draws national film festival, outdoor enthusiasts

PALMER — It’s no secret that Mat-Su College’s Glenn Massay Theater is quickly becoming a hot spot for entertainment.

As appropriate for a college, the theater also creates opportunities for education.

On Friday, Nov. 6, those two roles came together when the Alaska Center for the Environment (ACE) hosted the Telluride Mountainfilm Festival, one of the longest running film festivals in the country. ACE staff selected 12 films from 61 available for the tour based on entertainment and educational value, as well as relevancy.

“We picked films that are really applicable to some of our conservation needs in Alaska and that reflect the recreational interests of the public,” said ACE employee Amy O’Connor by phone before the event.

Content ranged from a night ride down the slopes of Alyeska in an LED light suit (essentially pure eye candy) to the tale of two best friends from a dog’s perspective, to the “Pink Helmet Posse,” a group of three skateboarding 6-year-old girls trying to prove they can do anything boys can do.

The six-minute “Xboundary,” created by Alaskan filmmaker Ryan Peterson, was one of the more educational, detailing the effects of mining in British Columbia on Alaska’s salmon streams and rivers.

Few festival-goers seemed to have come for environmental impact statements made in some of the films, but all seemed willing to listen.

Wasilla residents Jim and Joanne MacClellan said they hadn’t heard of ACE or Telluride before reading a blurb in the Frontiersman. They decided to come to the event for a little vicarious living.

“We like to watch outdoor activities — we can’t really participate anymore, but we want to participate, and maybe this can give us a taste of that,” Joanne MacClellan said a the theater.

Similarly, Palmer women Maud Edmonds and Christal Houghtelling — a hair and make-up artist and a photographer, respectively — said they were just looking for “a girls’ night out,” but were ready for anything.

“I’m in the point of my life where I want to be a little more adventurous,” Edmonds said. “This might be inspiring, you never know.”

And just the fact that they were at a film festival in Palmer, she said, was significant.

“It’s Palmer and we get to go to film fests — I mean, how wonderful it is that we can do stuff like this in the Valley?”

O’Connor said this isn’t the first time a national film festival has come to the Mat-Su. Envision Mat-Su (for which O’Connor is also a board member) hosted the California-based “Wild and Scenic” fest last year and the year before at the Palmer Depot.

“It worked,” she said, but didn’t afford quite the same experience as the Massay — that much was evident by one audience member’s comment that the newer facility is “kind of fancy.”

Plus, hosting the festival at the Massay supports local art, the university system and “what’s happening in the Valley,” O’Connor said.

Valley Mountain Bikers and Hikers (VMBAH) board member Lorene Lynn, who attended the event with her son James and husband Larry, said contributing financially to an organization like VMBAH or ACE is part of the reason she goes to film festivals. Having worked for ACE in the past, James and Lorene Lynn vouched for its cause.

“ACE always has their eye on good environmental issues,” she said. “They put their money to good use.”

Current ACE volunteer and elementary school teacher Erik Pierson said part of the reason the organization continues to choose the documentary film fest format is that it’s a necessity of the times.

“With people’s shortening attention spans, people are more apt to watch something versus reading about it,” he said.

Colony High School sophomore Kyrstyn Kelly with Alaska Youth for Environmental Action, a sub-group of ACE, agreed.

“It’s easier for someone to watch a video and see how things connect,” she said. “Some people just ignore numbers (statistics), but when you listen to how they affect you, you can realize how those numbers are really scary.”

Kelly said that can apply to how much a glacier recedes, how many fish swim a certain river or how much a trail erodes in a given amount of time, for example.

Though Kelly was doubtful that some of her classmates even realize there’s a recycling center in the Valley, for example, ticket sales at the festival showed more than a few people are being reached through ACE, the Massay, and Telluride. The theater sold 310 tickets for Friday night’s festival, and while that’s not a full house for the Massay (there are 512 seats), it’s not bad for an event that came to most people via word of mouth.

For more information on future events and discussion of environmental issues, visit akcenter.org or find Alaska Center for the Environment on Facebook.

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.