IFF '07 (jay's contribution)

The collaborative film debut of acclaimed stage director Peter A. Maritson and edgy, avant-garde cinematographer Eve Quick documents an existential journey in winter-dark northern Norway in TAKE A BUS TO ALTA (2006), the much-anticipated entry in this year’s Imaginary Film Festival. A young man, Nils, played in a dangerously disarming way by newcomer Collin Eric Peterson finds himself thousands of miles removed from friends, family and home in a strangely familiar, yet oddly unsettling place. His search for nourishment and human warmth at Christmastime becomes something quite unexpected.

The sinister issues of man’s inhumanity to man, and peace and conflict edge like knives into the mind of our protagonist as the dark and claustrophobic hours pass on a six-hour bus trip. Passenger interactions play out dramas that eerily reflect all that happens in our world in a larger sense. Are the images in the bus window ghostly apparitions, or simply reflections of other passengers . . . ? or both? The usually reclusive Director Maritson, in an uncharacteristically outspoken interview commented, “I was just so sick of that Hallmark Christmas crap that I felt compelled to bring my own vision to the iconic Christmas journey story.” In the end, our hero Nils, finds what he was looking for. But was he looking for what he finds?