ALASKA
With the help of our friends at Circumpolar Expeditions, our Alaska expedition continues to take shape. We have a very ambitious agenda that may ultimately require more than one trip!
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We estimate 5 to 6 weeks for the entire expedition, but the weather, which is notoriously difficult to predict in Alaska, will be a major factor in determining what we can and cannot do. This becomes even more pronounced if we have to start or finish in winter rather than the end of this summer. Something as simple as an unexpected storm could easily leave us trapped in a single location for a week or more. We will often be flying on local mail or supply planes, so this is not a matter of catching the next commercial flight out!
Our search for new ways of thinking about America will take us first to the Russian province of Chukotka in the Beringia Ethnic Preserve. This preserve, which extends into the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve in Alaska, is the result of a unique partnership with the Russian government and the U.S. National Park Service to study and preserve as much as possible of the languages and ways of living practiced by the nomadic people of ancient Beringia, the first migrants into America. We will travel to Russia through Nome, spending time with native people on Little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait and in and around the Land Bridge Preserve before heading north to the shrinking Arctic Ice Cap. We want to learn more about the frozen history of the greater Arctic region during the era of the land bridge, partly for historical perspective, partly because it is highly relevant for our current times.
You can find more details about this exciting adventure in our Projects section, and we will continue to post updates and additional details here in the days and weeks ahead. Using Twitter and our new Facebook commenting, we look forward to your feedback, insights and anecdotes about the areas we will travel through.
CHILE
Our amazing super-indy movie from Argentina, Pablo and Virginia go to Luján, (see Projects section for details and trailer) continues to generate publicity and favorable reviews. In the June edition of El Amante, Argentina's leading journal of cinema, critic Diego Trertola offers a brilliant analysis of the movie's ironic juxtaposition of modern devotion to romantic kitsch and traditional religious devotion.
Adding to our excitement about the film, Director Lilian Ivachow is in Santiago, Chile this weekend, where Pablo and Virginia is being given a prominent screening at the //B2 Cine Festival. In Santiago, Lilian is once again doing Q&A after the screening as an invited special guest of the Festival directors!
