On a giant screen in Cronin Auditorium, opening clips of “Alaskan Nets” show stretches of water, dense forest, mountains, boats, and fishing shacks, painting a scene of isolation and hardship. Throughout the shots is the sound of rhythmic pounding. This is Metlakatla on Annette Island, the only Native American reserve remaining in Alaska, with a population of around 1,500 and wet and windy weather year-round. The people’s livelihood is in the sea, fishing and diving for sea cucumbers, occupations fraught with life-threatening situations. And the pounding is the sound of a basketball.
“Alaskan Nets” is the creation of Jeff Harasimowicz, a 2003 graduate of Bromfield, who came to Harvard June 17 to show the film, sponsored by the Harvard Schools Trust to benefit Bromfield athletics and Fivesparks cultural center.
Harasimowicz spoke briefly before the film to say what a surreal feeling it was to be showing a documentary he had directed, edited, and produced back in the very auditorium where he had performed in plays as a student, seeing teachers he had and community members he knew. In turn, the vibe in the audience was a shared our “small-town-boy-makes-good” excitement.
A dual focus
The film captures the dual focus of Metlakatla, commercial fishing and the high school basketball team, and the pressures and conflicts they present for the young men of the community. They feel a responsibility to help their families earn a livelihood in fishing and to become divers, where the real money is, and many are often truant from school or drop out completely. At the same time, the high school basketball team, the Chiefs, has always been the source of hope and pride for the community. Basketball is in their blood. The young men feel the burdens of expectations and dangers. Both suicide, sometimes more than one in a family, and death in a diving accident are the all-too-common shared griefs of the community. A scene of a row of white crosses on a hillside brings that point home.
“Alaskan Nets” follows the lives of two young men, Danny and DJ, and their basketball coach from the start of the season in October to the state championship in March 2018. The team had not won a state title since 1984, though they came in second in just the previous season. That loss was devastating to the whole town. Danny is a senior, the star player, with a mature, even-keeled personality. DJ, a junior, is an insecure, angry young man who is very much in the shadow of Danny and vents his frustration in inappropriate ways. The coach has enormous patience with DJ but at the same time warns him he needs to change his attitude.
It’s not just DJ—the team isn’t working well together. The coach keeps urging them to be nicer to one another, to play like a family, to really want the win. It’s difficult to know what the young men are feeling; not expressing their emotions seems the best way they can cope with the extreme pressures of their lives. It’s as if they can’t get excited and show optimism because they don’t trust that something bad won’t happen.The coach is under pressure too, but he handles the expectations and abusive comments of some parents with equanimity. He loves his players, and he tells them so.
Just before the playoffs for the state championship, AJ, a recent star basketball player and a young man beloved in the town, dies in a diving accident. There is a somber procession of boats that accompanies his casket on a “last ride home.” His death becomes an added incentive for the team—they need something positive to balance this latest grief. To the loud beat of “Watch Me,” we see a frenzy of plays, back and forth down the court, scoring shots seesawing between the teams in the first playoff game. A victory for the Chiefs and then another and then on to the finals. The teams are evenly matched, and again music accompanies the sound of feet and the bouncing of the ball. The audience in Cronin (around 120 people) is on edge, and, along with the crowd on the screen in Alaska, erupts into clapping as the Chiefs make a final basket to win the championship.
‘What happens, happens’
The film was followed by a discussion between Harasimowicz and Danny Eisenberg, Bromfield Class of 2010 and Harvard Press movie reviewer (among other things), who had planned to be in Harvard but whose flight from Denver was canceled and who appeared by way of Zoom. To Eisenberg’s observations and questions about the genre of documentary, Harasimowicz talked about its unpredictability: “You never know what you’ll get. What happens, happens.” Luckily, they won the final game. He had originally thought Danny would be the main focus in the film, but it turned out to be DJ, who was much more complicated and interesting to follow.
From the start, Harasimowicz knew about the pressure on the team to win the championship, but he said he had no idea of the day-to-day pressures the kids were under.
Eisenberg asked how Harasimowicz had gained the islanders’ trust, and he replied that the people had welcomed him, and over the year and a half he was on and off the island, they got to know him and included him in family events. This trust is obvious in the film; there is never a sense that anyone is acting a part or pretending things are different from what they are. AJ’s father is open about his grief and also his happiness in the team’s victory; the principal of the high school speaks honestly of the frustrations of keeping the young men in school; a teacher makes no effort to hide her constant worry about the dangers the boys encounter in diving; and a wife and mother says, weeping, “It’s hard to sit here and wait for them to come back.”
A promise kept
Eisenberg commented that there were places in the film, notably in the interviews, where we are aware of a filmmaker, but mostly not. He asked Harasimowicz if it was hard, as a first-time filmmaker, to be objective and not put his “fingerprint” on the film. Harasimowicz acknowledged that it was hard to be removed, “but the film speaks for itself.” In asking for permission to film from the Tribal Council, he said he had promised, “I won’t film anything that isn’t true.”
In response to Eisenberg’s question about how the community responded to the film, Harasimowicz said that as soon as COVID restrictions allowed, he brought equipment to the island and rigged up a theater for showings of the film to small groups at a time. “It was so nerve-wracking to show it,” he said. AJ’s dad wanted to see it alone and after it, he told Harasimowicz, “It was awesome.” “Danny and DJ cried,” Harasimowicz said. “It was so moving to be there with them, watching.”
One Harvard audience member—a filmmaker himself—complimented Harasimowicz on a particularly effective shot of two players from opposing teams diving for the ball and ending up sprawled out together on the floor. “I didn’t take that,” said Harasimowicz, adding that he thinks a cameraman must have laid his camera on the floor and it just happened to catch that amazing shot. It is one of many in the 400 hours of footage that got saved for the final two-hour film.
Another astute audience member spotted Jeff’s father, Dr. Paul Harasimowicz, an orthopedic surgeon associated with Nashoba Valley Medical Center. In the semifinal game, one of the Chiefs, Christian, suffers a painful knee injury. He, of course, wants to continue to play, but he worries if doing so will wreck his knee completely. Dr. Harasimowicz, who happened to be out visiting Jeff, is called in for his opinion, and the cameo appearance made the cut.
Metlakatla and Harvard: Differences outweigh similarities
A member of the audience had observed earlier that she was struck by the similarities between Metlakatla and Harvard, and Harasimowicz had acknowledged that in some ways it is the story of hundreds of small towns across the country. But at the end, he pointed out how unique Metlakatla’s story is. The pressure to become a diver is great, and being a diver means putting your life on the line every time you go down. And the pressure to play basketball and bring pride to the town is part of every young man’s DNA. All their relatives have played basketball—how could they not? But what if they’re not good enough? Add to that the isolation, the often bleak weather, the limited options, the high rate of suicide. These kids grow up around tragedy; they’re used to death. They have a quiet steeliness. They’re just kids, but they’ve lost their innocence. “Really, quite unlike Harvard,” Harasimowicz concluded, visibly affected as he talked with admiration and empathy about the lives of the young men of Metlakatla that he has captured so movingly in “Alaskan Nets.”
“Alaskan Nets” is available for streaming.
