Alaska Far Away: The New Deal Pioneers of the Matanuska Colony
Wisconsin's Own
(USA, 2007, 91 mins)
digital video
Wisconsin Premiere
Directed By: Paul Hill,
Joan Juster
writer: James H. Fox, Joan Juster, Mark Lipman, Paul Hill
cinematographer: Carisa Kaplan
sound editor: Chris Gridley
picture editor: Mark Lipman
producer: Paul Hill, Joan Juster
sound mixer: Bob Edwards
technical advisor: David James
music: Richard Koldwyn
narration: Peter Coyote
“This country sure looks like Minnesota. Except for the mountains.” In 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration offered 200 struggling families from northern Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota the promise of life in a new farming colony in Alaska. Leaving behind everyone they knew, they traveled by train and by boat to the Matanuska Valley, to a town not yet constructed. In the months that followed, they struggled against the land and the cold, against isolation, economic hardship and debt. Alaska Far Away tells the story of a hardy group of Midwestern farmers who held their own, and captured the nation’s imagination. In the words of the surviving colonists and their descendants, “Being Finnish, we used the word ‘sissu,’ which you can’t really define in English. But the nearest we can come to it is, ‘Never give up.’ We had lots of sissu.” Winner, Jury Prize, 2008 Wisconsin Film Festival.
Paul Hill (director, writer, producer), Joan Juster (director, writer, producer), Arnold Alanen scheduled to attend.
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