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The Documentary Film
Producers
and Crew
Program
Preview
The
Alaskan Perspective
On
Location
Filming
History
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The Alaskan
Perspective
Filming in Alaska poses an
interesting set of problems for any film crew. What to do
when the mosquitoes are so thick they block the shot? What
to do when the Bering Sea fog obliterates everything? How
close does one go to a calving glacier, or a Kodiak
bear?
But if Alaska poses challenges
for a film crew, it also serves up a feast, and not just
because of its scenery. The people of Alaska have such a
range of stories to tell; those of us who live in other
places were truly fascinated by their accounts of life along
this beautiful coast.
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 Vernon
Byrd
Ornithologist, Bering Sea
"I think having a group of scientists
aboard and people that recorded things in a careful
way was what made the Harriman Expedition so
outstanding. I think I'm learning in the short time
I've been working with questions about change in
the Bering Sea, which has been about the last
thirty years or so, that anything that was
carefully recorded has become quite valuable now,
in retrospect. Because we're so interested in what
changes have occurred where you don't have a very
long consecutive record, it only goes back to sea
birds in the Bering Sea to about the mid 1970s. So
expeditions like the Harriman really stand out as
records that you can go back to and really see what
was going on at that time."
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 Perry
Eaton
Former Director, Alaska Native Heritage
Center
"We, as Native Alaskans, are continuously
examined. You know, the standard joke in Anaktuvuk
Pass, which is an Inupiat community off the coast
up on the Slope, the average family is a mother and
a father, at least two living grandparents, six
kids, about twelve dogs and one anthropologist.
Every generation of anthropologists are, quote,
more sensitive than the last. But it remains the
occupation of observation. And that will never
change. I don't think there was a lot of resentment
at the time for people coming in and asking the
questions. Just as there's not a lot of resentment
today. The resentment happens in the next
generation about that SOB that looked at
grandpa."
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 Kathy
Frost
Marine Mammologist, Prince William
Sound
"The kind of research they did was the
underpinning of what we do today. A lot of the
stuff was the same. They'd take an animal, they'd
weigh it, they'd measure it, they'd make good
descriptive notes of its age, its sex, its
condition. All of those sorts of things. And the
fundamental difference here is we're using high
tech satellite link radios. We're using
electrocardiograms in the field. Very computer
intensive. We're running electrocardiograms right
here on the ship, running the data piece straight
into a live computer. There's a lot that wasn't
possible a hundred years ago."
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 Jay
Hammond
Former Governor of Alaska
"I think Alaska's the center of conflict
over development more than any other state because
of two types of people that are attracted to
Alaska. On the one hand you have those who are
seeking new economic horizons that find virtually
everything is owned or has been done by somebody
else elsewhere. And they see new grounds to plow up
here. And some have done very well financially. On
the other hand, you have another group of folk who
come up here seeking to escape from the
environmental degradation that they feel has
occurred elsewhere and wish to visit an untrammeled
wilderness. Those two groups of people are bound to
come into conflict; step on each others' toes as
they do frequently here."
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 Byron
Mallott
CEO, Alaska Permanent Fund
"Someone from the ship the George
Elder at the time, a family member, an
anthropologist or a naturalist, a Muir, a Burroughs
or a Dall or Harriman himself, either a young
Averell or Edward, could very easily have picked an
eagle feather up off of the beach in Disenchantment
Bay and maybe felt some of the same connection to
the place that the feather makes me feel here. That
it is a place of wilderness. That somehow it is
timeless because eagles are there. And that is
timeless. It probably feels the same way in 1999 to
me as it did to my people and to the people on the
expedition in 1899. And to be able to hold a
feather today that in 1899 could of caused people
of the expedition and my own people to feel the
same way is a powerful connection."
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 Robbie
Melovidov
Community Leader and Fur Seal Harvester, St.
Paul, Pribilofs, Alaska
"What we're doing is a subsistence fur seal
harvest to carry on the culture within our
community and try to pass it on to the generations
that are coming up. My father and my grandfather
and all the way down the generations for many
generations participated in the fur seal harvest.
As a young boy my father brought me out here and
put it in my heart. And so every year I have to do
this. And it's a kind of thing where I can't be any
place else in the world. It's just a feeling that I
have with the connection with our culture and with
the environment and with our people as Aleuts. And
I have my son out there right now. I'm teaching all
the different aspects of our operation. And he eats
seal meat and I cook it for him. And I use the old
recipes and it's very satisfying to me to realize
that probably at this point, if I wasn't to be
around anymore, I know for a fact that my son will
carry this on for years to come."
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 Dean
Rand
Captain, Discovery Voyages Company, Prince
William Sound
"It seems as though in the rest of America,
the push is to buy open land to protect it. In
Alaska it's the other way around. My fear is that
in Alaska the short term non-visionary economic
planning is going to mean that pristine wilderness
environments like Prince William Sound will be
over-exploited. There'll be lodges coming in.
There'll be more and more tour boats. There'll be
more gawkers. There'll be more and more operators
like myself. It's going to take away from that
wilderness quality. That feeling that wow, I'm out
here walking where no one's ever walked
before."
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 Irene
Shields
Tlingit Native, Cape Fox Researcher
"Our Tlingit people are losing language
very fast. There are only a few elders who can
speak Tlingit. I feel that it's very important that
we keep our culture alive and strong. But there are
not too many younger people who can speak the
Tlingit language. And the songs and dances, the
stories are being lost."
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