Arts & Culture

Confused about all the upcoming elections this fall? Want to know more about the voting process?

Go to the Voter Registration Rally Thursday in Juneau.

It’s part of the nationwide Native Vote Action Week, with a number of events being held in Alaska to increase voter turnout.

Juneau’s is sponsored by Tlingit and Haida Central Council and Sealaska. It will be held at Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall.

Organizer Nicole Hallingstad says it’s open to all Juneau residents, but the primary goal is to increase the number of Alaska Natives who vote.

While 70 percent of Sealaska shareholders over age 18 living in the state are registered, that doesn’t mean they actually vote.

“We hope to increase the understanding in the Alaska Native population that your vote literally is the source of our collective strength,” Hallingstad says.

People who need to register to vote, update their current registration, or want to learn more about the election process should attend, she says. Many people never register, and many others register but never go to the polls, because voting is an unfamiliar process.

“So we’ll actually have standing ballot booths that are exactly like those you’d see at any balloting station,” Hallingstad days. “People can get a mock ballot. They can get familiar with the process of showing their ID, casting their ballot and going through the act of electing to try to increase familiarity, reduce some of the fear or uncertainty around that process, and get people more comfortable with voting.”

The Voter Registration Rally is from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday at Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall on Willoughby Avenue.

Seventy years ago this Nov. 13, the Navy warship U.S.S. Juneau was lost in the battle for Guadalcanal.

The city of Juneau will commemorate that anniversary with a series of community activities leading up to a solemn memorial on the waterfront.

The U.S.S. Juneau Remembrance Planning Committee will hold two public meetings this week to plan for those activities.

Assembly member Randy Wanamaker is coordinating the events.

“We want it to be a community event, by the community, for the community,” he says.

Wanamaker hopes local schools, libraries, museums, service clubs and other community organizations will participate

“What we see is a series of community activities at various times and locations leading up to the actual anniversary on the 13th of November, so people have an opportunity to go to an activity at a time and a place that works for them, because not everybody would be able to dome to a single large event,” he says.

The U.S.S. Juneau public planning meetings are Thursday from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Mendenhall Valley Library. Friday’s meeting is noon to 1:30 pm at the Downtown Library.

Former Alaska First Lady Ermalee Hickel is the honorary statewide chair of the capital city’s whale sculpture fundraising campaign.

The citizen’s committee has raised nearly $350,000 toward the $2.3 million project, a life-size bronze breaching humpback whale to be sculpted by Skip Wallen in recognition of the 50th anniversary of Alaska statehood. Committee chairwoman Kathy Ruddy says Hickel, who lives in Anchorage, will give the project some statewide reach.

“Having people upstate learn what we’re trying to do. A capital awareness campaign,” Ruddy says.

The whale has been donated to the City and Borough, which has agreed to locate and maintain it on city property.

The Juneau Assembly Committee of the Whole this week approved the final sculpture location. Once planned for busy Marine Park, the 27-foot whale will be part of the proposed maritime park near the Douglas Bridge.

Ruddy calls it an optimal location.

“As you’re coming up the channel you’ll be able to see it,” she says. “You won’t be able to see it from Egan Drive, but Skip Wallen was always concerned about road noise in the first place, because he wants this to be an extraordinary experience where you see this whale and fountain, and in your mind you see a live whale breaching out of the water, which many of us have seen, but not everyone, so we’re eager to create that experience.”

The project is still about a year from completion. The committee is holding a fundraising dinner and auction Friday evening at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center.

The ten 6-foot resin whales’ tails that have been seen around Juneau this summer will be auctioned and the proceeds will go to the project.

With everywhere from Maine to Louisiana having played the role of Alaska on the big screen, Juneau is appearing on the silver screen for the first time in 13 years.

Wildlike, the story of a troubled young girl, spotlights Alaska as what producer Schuyler Weiss calls the “healing element.”

“Rather than Alaska as a kind of adversary or something to be conquered, Alaska is the salve in this movie,” Weiss said. “It’s a character in its own right. And for our two leads, a teenage girl and an older man, they come to Alaska seeking something and they might not even know what it is.”

Production Weekly describes the movie as the story of a young girl sent to Alaska by her struggling mother.

[box]The story of Mackenzie, a troubled but daring teenage girl sent by her struggling mother to live with her uncle in Juneau, Alaska. At first he is a supportive caretaker and friend, but the relationship is not what it seems and Mackenzie must run away. Trying to make her way back to Seattle to find her absent mother, Mackenzie only winds up deeper in the Alaskan interior. With no one else to turn to, she shadows a loner backpacker, Bartlett, an unlikely father figure with scars of his own.-Production Weekly [/box] Director Frank Hall Green said the crew filmed across Alaska in Anchorage, Portage, Whittier, Palmer, the Denali Highway, Matanuska Glacier, along the Glenallen Highway, George Parks Highway, on the Alaska Marine Highway System boats MV Kennicott and MV Malaspina, and McKinley Village and Denali National Park

Weiss emphasizes the importance of Alaska as a place of reflection.

“We’ve tried to capture that side of Alaska and I think that’s what, when we speak to real people, especially transplants, that’s what they say. They thought ‘we’ll just be here for a few months,’ and twenty years go by. It’s that quality we’re trying to tap into,” Weiss said.

The crew had local help with that aspect. While the number of the people working on the project varied depending on what they were doing, there were ten full-time Alaskan crew members on the crew of 23 total production workers.

“We have all these local Alaskans saying ‘actually, it would be better if you went this route,’ and we’ve taken their advice at almost every turn and it’s been well worth it,” producer Julie Christeas said.

Writer and director Frank Hall Green originally conceived the idea for the film while visiting Alaska.

“It was always going to have to be here. He dreamed of it here. We’re not shooting Canada for Alaska. We’re not shooting Seattle for Alaska,” Christeas said.

Producer Joe Stephans added that the crew actually used Alaska for Seattle in one scene. He calls it a little payback.

In the film, Juneau serves as Mackenzie’s introduction to Alaska.

“It’s her gateway to Alaska. We found Juneau to be the most cinematic of cities with the ever changing weather against the landscape,” Weiss said.

The film crew spent a week and a half shooting around Juneau with scenes at Cope Park, the Breakwater Inn, and the Juneau Airport. Filming also included a shoot at Mendenhall Glacier that resulted in an up close experience with the wildlife.

“The script supervisor looked up and saw a bear. She looked down at her script and saw there wasn’t supposed to be a bear,” Stephans said. “She looked up again and just said ‘bear.’”

Stephans said that park officials were on top of things and cleared the cast and crew out while the mother and two cubs wandered through the set.

“Every single day there is something new and just when you’ve seen what you think will be your single take home memory of the shoot, something else happens and that’s just a daily occurrence,” said Weiss.

Production finished on Sept. 6 with filming aboard the AMHS ferry Malaspina while it was docked in Juneau.

Juneau last saw time on the big screen with the 1999 film Limbo.

“We’re not necessarily on the movie map yet, but hopefully things will change,” said Elizabeth Arnette, with the Juneau Convention & Visitors Bureau.

The film has applied for the Alaska Film Production Incentive Program, which the producers give credit to for being able to shoot in Alaska.

“It encouraged us to come here and find crew that lived here, worked here and has resources here,” Christeas said.

The film, from Tandem Pictures and Green Machine Film is expected to be released in 2013. You can follow the film-making process on Wildlike’s Facebook page and see behind the scenes photos from scouting through the wrap up.

The University of Alaska Southeast has received a $50,000 memorial gift from the estate of Emma G. Widmark, given in the name of her father Dr. Alfred E. Widmark.

UAS Director of Development and Alumni Relations Lynne Johnson says the gift will be used to permanently endow the university’s Alaska Native and Rural Student Center.

“The center provides help registering for classes, they give them career counseling, they make sure academically that they’re taking the right classes. I think it’s one of our strengths here,” Johnson says.

The donation is believed to be just the second memorial gift given to UAS since the school was established.

Alfred Widmark was a Tlingit, born in Haines in 1904. He served in the Alaska State Legislature from 1961 to 1962. He also served as Mayor of Klawock, President of the Alaska Native Brotherhood Grand Camp, and as an executive committee member of both the Grand Camp and the Tlingit & Haida Central Council. He was an ANB representative to and vice president of the National Congress of American Indians and a member of the Sealaska Corporation board of directors.

Widmark received an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from the University of Alaska Southeast in 1979.

Emma Widmark passed away in 2008.

The Alaska State Museum is seeking entries for its biennial exhibition of Alaska photography.

The museum says in a news release that its Alaska Positive series encourages photography as an art form in the state.

The deadline for entries is Sept. 22. The exhibition will be juried by Portland photographer Holly Andres.

There will be a $300 Juror’s Choice Award and two $150 Awards of Recognition. Other photos will be selected for honorable mention. The exhibit will be shown at the museum and tour the state.

The competition is open to Alaska residents.

Photographers can find more details and the entry form here.