Alaska

lt's quite usual to make a film for your final exam at the Amsterdam Film Academy. It is quite unusual for such a picture to win the Golden Calf for short films as Mike van Diem's Alaska did in 1989. Nothing In the film gives you the idea of a debut. Van Diem evidently knew exactly what he wanted to do, and he did it. lt is the tried old one-woman-two-men ­story again. She's married to the manager of a slaughterhouse; the lover, a poor Spanish Immigrant, works there. The picture tells of jealousy, deceit, violence and murder. The same facts are seen through the eyes of different people. The public is manipulated through logic and memory of the protagonists.