IWFF review

A lion limping after catching its paw in a trap. An elephant wounded by a gunshot wound. Felled teak wood trees leaking sap. While this feature-length film doesn’t shy away from showing the ecological effects of poaching, that is not where its main attention lies. There are plenty of sweeping drone shots of jungle-filled canyons, wide waterways and hazy plains — but the featured character in On the Front Line isn’t the landscape, or even the wildlife. It’s the people working to protect it. These are the rangers of the nearly one-million-acre Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique, and their job is to stand between the wilderness and “this human madness,” as one ranger puts it in the film’s opening scene.

Leaders in the park are recruiting more rangers, and cameras follow along as the new recruits are put through a two-week recruitment process that looks more like boot camp. They run, climb and carry heavy loads. Some of the applicants are women, the first time in park history they’ll be allowed to try to become rangers.

Poaching has killed a third of the lions in the park, according to conservationists. Wire traps litter the landscape, catching any animal unlucky enough to wander into their path. But the film acknowledges that illegal hunting, just like conservation, is a deeply human activity. The rangers nod to the economic reasons a person might turn to crime without validating the act itself.

The black market for poached trees and animal products is largely driven by economies and buyers outside Mozambique, but it’s the locals who are pitted against one another. During recruitment, a ranger asks an applicant what he would do if he came across his father poaching in the park. In fact, former poachers are permitted to become rangers, as a gesture towards rehabilitation — if their motives for applying are believed to be pure. On the Front Line mourns the nature that has already been lost, but also celebrates the people dedicating their lives to protecting it.

Not a part of the 2020 Virtual festival, will be scheduled for future IWFF Presents 2020 monthly screenings at The Roxy Theater.

On the Front Lines: The Rangers of Gorongosa National Park was originally published in The Missoula Tempo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

IWWF review

Taxidermy is often a punchline. And you can see why. It’s the process of preserving a dead animal in a way that makes it look alive, and that sits firmly at the intersection of dark and funny — the kind of thing that produces uncomfortable laughter and maybe an eyeroll.

What Stuffed reveals, like any good documentary, is that a lot of taxidermists are in on the joke, and that there’s vastly more to their world than, as Eddie Izzard says, stuffing animals with sand.

Gorgeously shot, the feature-length doc introduces us to a big handful of taxidermists, immediately revealing how varied and strange and cool the industry is. We meet museum curators, abstract artists, big game specialists, a traditional rural hunter, and even a rogue taxidermist who sews together shit like ravens and cats into mythological creatures.

Even from the title, you enter the story thinking that you’re about to laugh at some taxidermists. But within 10 minutes of seeing the tools, skill, and heart that go into each creature, you don’t need any more convincing that it’s an art.

“Wow, the front leg placement really helps the narrative of the baby zebra’s birth,” you’ll hear yourself thinking halfway through the movie, not for a moment remembering that this was supposed to be weird.

Of course, it’s certainly weird. But that’s not at all the point. Overshadowing the weirdness is the art and history of taxidermy and diorama — and the fascinating stories, both of the taxidermists themselves and of their pieces. Just for example, you might not have thought that taxidermy served much of a purpose past displaying hunting trophies or decorating steakhouses. But in truth, it was vital to biologists’ study of animals, and it populates our museums, teaching important lessons about conservation. It’s also been widely used in art and fashion during its history (the entire movie is worth watching for its look at Victorian taxidermy, which is wild).

It would have been easy to make a film that characterizes taxidermists as strange outsiders who revel in bringing corpses back to life. Stuffed doesn’t shy away from the dark side, but it also does the harder job of showing us why taxidermy has endured (beyond chemical preservation) and how taxidermists are just like us: they love creating, they love storytelling, they love connection, they love nature. And they are supremely good at what they do. You’ll leave the movie feeling happier, more knowledgeable, more connected with the world, and kind of wanting to stuff a muskrat with sand.

Accessible through AmazonPrime, view in the spirit of IWFF April 18–25.

Stuffed was originally published in The Missoula Tempo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

IWFF review

There are currently few things more needed than escapist entertainment — a vacation from the couch. Take us away to somewhere sunny, seaside… and swarming with crabs? Realm of the Robber, a gorgeously shot journey to a tiny island in the Indian Ocean, is perfect for all you cooped-up adventurers tired of watching “The Office” reruns.

Realm of the Robber explores the fascinating variety of native creatures sprawled across the preciously named Christmas Island, so-called for the sea captain William Mynors day of discovery. And, no, the “robber” of the title isn’t likely to stick up a bank. The enormous coconut crab is more prone to scuttling through the tropical landscape in search of its favorite food. (No points for guessing what that is.)

Narrator Colin Solman does a fine job with the voiceover, if never quite reaching the pinnacle highs of “Planet Earth”s David Attenborough. He carries the appropriate whimsy during scenes showcasing the clumsy nature of dozens of red crabs migrating through a golf course’s fairway. The doc’s more downer moments get the gravity they deserve, sprinkled throughout to remind us that Mother Nature isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.

And let’s be real, there are a lot of those scenes. There’s the plight of a young booby — shut up, it’s a bird — as it struggles to free itself from the clutches of the island’s homegrown murder tree. The pisonia’s barbed seeds serve as a nightmare deathtrap for any winged creature hoping to fly. A (human) forest ranger provides a genuinely touching show of emotion over the coconut crab roadkill littering the tiny community’s roads.

But fear not; the film never lingers on a gloomy spirit. How could it with underwater visions of coral reefs that would fit right into any scene in Finding Nemo? Realm of the Robber ends up unexpectedly soothing, finishing with the hopeful tale of a new generation of multi-legged arthropods. In a climate steeped in apprehension, one thing is certain: crabs gotta coconut.

There are few things more needed currently than escapist entertainment — a vacation from the couch. was originally published in The Missoula Tempo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For centuries wolves have served as the villains in some of our most popular fairy tales. Their depiction as snarling, ravenous beasts spoke to Europeans’ most primal fears, and helped to fuel the species’ extirpation in North America as white settlers sought to bend the environment to their will. The successful reintroduction of the grey wolf in the Northern Rockies in the 1990s began to slowly shift the collective understanding of their true nature and ecological significance. But as directors Alex Goetz and Justin Grubb reveal, old stereotypes aren’t easily reversed.

Resilience: Story of the American Red Wolf is a conservation roller coaster ride that many Montanans will have a hard time believing, one that focuses on an often forgotten distinct species whose numbers in the wild now hover around 30. The 20th century dealt the red wolves of the American Southeast one bad hand after another, with efforts to bring the species back from extinction unraveling in the face of historic human fear. Goetz and Grubb quickly and seamlessly document this checkered past, ushering the viewer into a present that’s as tenuous as it is hopeful.

In doing so, the duo also shed light on an impossible bit of irony. The very captive breeding and reintroduction effort that pulled the red wolf from extinction in the wild inspired the federal government’s work to return grey wolves in Yellowstone National Park. However, while Montanans are now surrounded by a robust and delisted wolf population, the red wolves of North Carolina are once more in a perilous situation. It’s this irony that prompts the subjects of Goetz and Grubb’s film to wonder what more can be done for red wolves, and whether a western success can help improve an eastern struggle.

Accessible for free April 18–25.

Correction: This story was updated to say that the red wolf is considered a “distinct species.”

Resilience: Story of the American Red Wolf was originally published in The Missoula Tempo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sometimes we move to a tropical place and get stuck there, either by a global pandemic or by the collapse of the land bridge between present-day Venezuela and the islands of Trinidad and Tobago. Those are the most common options, I am sure, though I’ve also been avoiding most news lately.

What I am less sure about is survival. Nothing is certain in paradise, as seen through the gorgeous photography and compelling vignettes of After the Flood. This film offers audiences in our existentially complicated times a vacation into a world where death is just as certain as whatever plebeian trash you would worry about in a barren grocery store. On this vacation, you can be an oilbird.

Oilbirds are cute, nocturnal avians dwelling in caves like bats. They navigate through echolocation whiskers. As an oilbird, your long whiskers could mirror the horror of the world back to you solely through a luxury we can no longer afford: touch. Oilbirds live in nests of their own shit. They have no need for toilet paper. They get their name from how fatty their chicks are. In simpler times, people would spit the chicks on sticks and light them up for torches. Those babies would burn forever.

Oh yes, this film is full of that special brand of violence only found in the wild, so you can rule out showing this doc to your children. Be prepared for tears and long conversations about how many leatherback turtle young actually do survive the beach massacres they are born into. Your children will probably not believe your soothing logic. The special night-time cameras used to film the carnage catch every small, flailing flipper in high definition.

Trinidad and Tobago is a beautiful and cruel place. Perhaps that is what makes the islands perfect for our planet’s most ruthless non-simian inhabitants, birds. In my time in paradise, I can tell you two things about birds: they fuck, but they don’t give a fuck. Enter the Bird Party at the end of our hot, coughing, flooding world. Eat of the sweet palm fruit as they do, lay your eggs, and shit all over your neighbor species trying to survive after being cut off from mainland South America — sheltering in place for hundreds of years. It’s been thousands in the case of further Tobago, and this party is still going. Bird Party won’t kill you, it’ll make you stronger in paradise.

Bird Party was originally published in The Missoula Tempo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Loneliness is universal. As humans, we may feel its grip in those last moments before sleep, in a long drive across open prairie, in the dim glow of a bar crowded with strangers, or, most recently, in the quarantined confines of our homes. And when we do, sometimes we reach out. It might be by sending a digital howl to a friend or family member from our phones in a bid for companionship. It might be a community howl, like the one at 8 p.m. each night that fills the Missoula valley as a show of support for first responders and healthcare workers. For a grey wolf in British Columbia, that howl is innate, echoing across the dark waters of an archipelago, a vocal manifestation of the effects of prolonged solitude.

That grey wolf’s name is Takaya, and for seven years he’s lived alone on a small island off the coast of Victoria, with only the constant presence of conservation photographer Cheryl Alexander for company. This is the story that directors Andre Barro, Gaby Bastyra and Martin Williams set out to tell in Takaya: Lone Wolf, using Alexander’s quest for answers about Takaya to unravel the wolf’s many mysteries. Alexander becomes the viewer’s guide to all things wolf, interviewing experts from Idaho and Yellowstone National Park to better understand Takaya’s origins, his distinctive behaviors, and why he’s chosen to remain in isolation for so long.

On March 24, 2020, just a few weeks before this festival screening, Takaya was shot and killed by a hunter. This documentary is a story that anticipates Takaya’s fate, though it doesn’t know it yet. Its exploration of isolation is what ultimately makes Takaya so relatable. The life he’s chosen is not an easy one, and his presence becomes a point of contention and fear in the nearby Victoria community. Yet even as he refuses to leave his island, Takaya’s howls from the rocky shore seem to indicate a desire for something more. When Alexander finally consults a researcher specializing in wolf vocalization, the answer she gets confirms her deepest suspicions, and transforms Takaya: Lone Wolf into an unexpectedly and undeniably human tale.

Screening during a special online featured event on April 23, accessible to Virtual Passholders.

Takaya: Lone Wolf was originally published in The Missoula Tempo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Recently, Missoula City Council was handed a heavy stack of housing policy recommendations to review, with the goal to move forward with developing a robust housing policy for our city. They are expected to vote to approve these recommendations and begin working to implement them June 24th. I’m writing because the policy recommendations are skewed heavily in the direction of developer incentives that have proven largely ineffective in other Montana communities, and require years to evaluate. These types of incentives failed when Bozeman and Whitefish tried them. We don’t have the luxury of time to wait and see if the incentives work and then change course before this crisis will overwhelm our community. The problem in Missoula is more urgent than most people realize. A University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research study from 2018 reported that when median wages are compared to median home prices, Missoula housing is already less affordable than Denver, Seattle, Portland and Miami. I believe that now is our last chance to add some important regulatory pieces to the policy recommendations.

I am hoping our City Council will act courageously to enact policies that will stop the displacement of working people, and the worsening cost-of-living stresses that are making wage-earning Missoulians question whether they’re welcome here anymore. I believe there would be a measurable impact on housing attainability for working people if the City and the Missoula Redevelopment Agency were to enact 1) a mandatory inclusionary zoning policy and 2) a policy that requires Tax Increment Finance Districts to set aside a certain percentage of their funds for development of permanently affordable housing.

Mandatory inclusionary zoning is a policy that municipalities can develop that requires projects over a certain size to include some affordable homes. The policy can relate to both rentals and home ownership units. Imagine what our stock of attainable housing would look like right now if inclusionary zoning had been in place before the Sawmill District and Roam Apartments started development: If we had just a 10 percent affordability requirement— the affordability levels of which could be decided upon by our City staff based on data we already have — about 120 affordable units could be added to the rental and homeownership stock. Our City could decide what the parameters are. The reality today is that market rate developers came into town to develop the Roam Apartments, received Tax Increment Financing with no affordability strings attached, and the building now sits downtown with only 69 percentof units rented (according to the whiteboard in their lobby). Under inclusionary zoning, if developers choose not to develop affordable units, they pay a fee that goes into a housing trust fund that can be used to develop attainable housing somewhere else in the city.

My opinions on this subject are informed by my work as a member of the Housing Steering Committee and as the director of Trust Montana and part-time employee of the North-Missoula CDC. The latter organizations both maintain permanently affordable housing with the Community Land Trust model. CLTs are effective at providing workforce home ownership opportunity in Missoula: if you see a home in Missoula selling for less than $180,000 in 2019, the chances are extremely high that it is one of the homes North-Missoula CDC developed and maintains as affordable. Trust Montana is now tasked with taking that success statewide.

One of the most compelling reasons inclusionary zoning is necessary at this point is that Missoula renters and potential buyers are not just competing with other local wage-earners for housing. Our home prices are based on what people from out of state can afford. As one Whitefish City Councilperson stated about their decision to enact mandatory inclusionary zoning two weeks ago: “The business model of land developers does not cater to the local workforce. The market has created this issue and it’s time to regulate it.”

There is a misconception that placing requirements on developers would only be useful in the case of subdivisions. I believe our City Council should feel empowered to create a community-driven policy that does not rely on sprawl, but instead can focus inward and upward.

I was one of about two people on the Steering Committee that does not (read: cannot afford to) own a home in my town — and I have two good jobs. Anecdotally, I’m aware that there are stacks of pre-qualification letters at our local banks for families that can afford a home for $190,000 to $250,000, and there are no homes for them to buy. Those people are stuck in rentals and are unable to build equity. Those of us who are trapped in the rental market contribute to low rental vacancy rates, which means landlords can keep raising rents.

I have immense respect for the City staff that navigated this housing policy process. They have been trying to balance everyone’s needs while finding ways to make sure more affordable housing is developed in this rapidly-growing city. I appreciate that they listened to many of my concerns and ideas while I served on the Steering Committee and added provisions for supporting CLT development.

My hope for City Council is that they will do their own research, take a hard look at Whitefish and Bozeman, and end up with the conclusion that we must enact mandatory inclusionary zoning. If we don’t act now, I believe our incentive-based programs will under-perform to a point where we are forced to enact a mandatory policy in a few years. By then the development boom may have passed us by, and with no requirements on developers to ensure equitable development, our city will be owned by the people from out of state who can afford the property here.

I understand the concern that requiring developers to include affordable units might raise the prices of other housing — but honestly, we’re already at a point where Missoulians are priced out. I don’t accept the idea that market rate prices rising is an unavoidable consequence of an inclusionary zoning program — we have strong minds at the City level that are capable of the math problems involved in creating good policy. Fear of unintended consequences is fair, but there are also consequences to not acting immediately to do everything we can to fix this crisis. I’d rather see us try to make a regulatory change that benefits working Missoulians, and then have to readjust it, than give up before we start. We are already at the point where our homes are not affordable for people who earn Missoula wages. So what do we care if prices rise on the properties Seattle residents are purchasing here and farming out as Airbnbs? Seattle workers earn good wages and can afford the price increase.

Our City Council representatives can take a serious look at enacting mandatory inclusionary zoning and an MRA set-aside for workforce housing — before the vote on June 24th.

Housing in Missoula, MT: Who is it For? was originally published in The Missoula Tempo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Record Review: Poverty Porn, ‘Pop Violence’

Spoiler: It’s no frills, old-timey punk shit (and that’s a good thing)

“The Class is Pain 101,” Elias Kotteas quipped, as Casey Jones, in 1990's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

And, in the case of their new EP, Pop Violence, Poverty Porn (FKA: Deadbeats) are your instructors, and it’s already mid-terms. Clocking in at just over 15 minutes, the PP crew wastes no time, pull no punches and mince not one god-damn word. Aaah…content warning? If you want to feel like there’s any hope at all for this beleaguered, flaming mudball planet, or if you want to feel like people are basically good, then Pop Violence isn’t your album and Poverty Porn isn’t your band.

With that said, though, they just might be if you’ve had a bad day at your menial job and a corruptly and poorly managed university in your over-idyllicized mountain town, and headlines of racist politicians’ continued breathing are making you feel like throwing a few right hooks. Yes, well, in that case, consider Poverty Porn, consider Pop Violence.

Nothing on the Missoula three-piece’s second EP is a reinvented wheel; it’s no frills, old-timey punk shit. And, as punk rock continues to microfragment itself, it’s increasingly rare to talk about it without some qualifier…crust-, pop-, skate-, folk-, art- and so on, ad nauseum. Not so with Poverty Porn, who have been billing themselves, tongues in cheeks, as “Missoula’s Worst Bluegrass Band” for a little over three years. They might actually be Missoula’s best bluegrass band, because they don’t play bluegrass.

Pop Violence was recorded and mixed quickly, giving it a distinctly low-fi feel, which is spot-on. While lead vocalist/guitarist, Kyle Davenport’s lyrical content on several songs may bypass some listeners’ ears (long-standing in-jokes about Missoula’s most infamous crust punk and his exhibitionist tendencies on “Mid 20’s Punk Rock Asshole,” or references to “eeling” the worst thing to come out of Billings on “VIP Tickets”) some of it will sound all too familiar to all too many of us (blacking out and alienating friends on “Late Date” or wanting to burn the worst elements of Trump’s America to the ground on “Goodnight Alt-Right”).

While their last EP was basically just straight-up punk rock, played fast and furious, um, this one is too! But there are a couple nice little funk-inspired fills by bassist/vocalist, Anthony Lozada, and drummer, Michael English. Also, Davenport and Lozada can be heard yelling “skrrt skrrt!” before a couple songs, which should please Keith Martinez, if no one else.

For my part, I enjoyed the 15 minutes I spent with Poverty Porn. If gritty, outspoken, aggressive punk rock isn’t your thing, then Pop Violence probably won’t be either. But if you’re down with a little of the rough-and-tumble, give it a shot.

Poverty Porn — “Pop Violence” was originally published in The Missoula Tempo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Record Review: Pale People, ‘Absent Friends’

I’ll lay it out up top: Pale People are babes of Missoula’s own bosom. And they’re really good.

There’s a moment in any Dungeons & Dragons campaign when it becomes a “good” game. I call it the “Roundtable Moment.” It starts out as a silly idea to use the silliest excuse to do what you’d do on any given Friday anyway — get drunk with friends in someone’s living room and act like a bunch of dipshits. Before long, though, between the dick jokes and self-aware geek-in-a-locker references, you start getting amped when you roll a 20 on the dice. All of the sudden, those 4 or 5 pieces of paper, thinned by erasers and stained with buffalo sauce aren’t just “Eeli Chennault, Glim ‘Nanfoodle’ Zook, Randal Greycastle, Dorim Secondsword and Osborne Mudbreeze” anymore. No, no. They are now, “our heroes.”

When the Roundtable Moment occurs, you keep it to yourself. But it hits you. Hard. And it hits you good! All of the sudden, gameplay feels faster, more bracing, and it actually does feel like you’re on an adventure.

That feeling is pretty similar to the one I had for the vast majority of Pale People’s latest full length, Absent Friends. This album sees the band lighting a fuse on one helluva good time, precisely and deftly. Like turning surgery into a party.

This album sees the band lighting a fuse on one helluva good time, precisely and deftly. Like turning surgery into a party.

I don’t know what to call their genre, per se; it’s sorta like post-MacGowan Pogues if they swapped out one or two beers for one or two pieces of classic literature. My metaphor is apt, though, because it sounds a bit like bookworms with an excuse to cut loose (this is a VERY GOOD thing). Playful Shakespeare references are all over for anyone who wants them, but you need never have peeked ‘neath The Bard’s hosiery to enjoy Absent Friends. This record is fun, witty, rousing and energizing. You may get a little lost in the plodding wander of the last few songs, but the first ten thirteenths of the album makes it all way more than worth it. And, if that doesn’t impress you enough, the band recorded the last track (and title track), start to finish, in just one take.

Do yourself a favor: gird your loins and give Absent Friends a listen — it actually does feel like you’re on an adventure.

Watch Pale People’s new music video, for their new song, “Night Atlas.”

Adventures in Audiophonic Sound was originally published in The Missoula Tempo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.