Dogs, mushers, trails . . . ACTION!

Filmmaker captures highs, lows of running the Iditarod

‘‘Iditarod … A Far Distant Place’’ will premiere in Alaska at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art. Bouvrie, Plettner and, possibly, Williams will attend. Cost is $5 per person.

By SANDI GERJEVIC
Daily News reporter

About 1 o’clock in the morning, Mike Nosko emerges from the darkened Iditarod Trail, a frost-stiffened, down-coated wilderness traveler. He guides his sled dogs to a halt, and as camera lights find his face, an Iditarod checkpoint volunteer asks his name.

Nosko responds, eyes fixed absently. When asked if he’ll be staying long, the musher shakes his head no and then says yes. As he begins his checkpoint chores, Nosko moves with the slow-motion resignation of the long-distance musher.

The scene is one of the best in a new documentary film, ‘‘Iditarod … A Far Distant Place’’ by Alice Dungan Bouvrie, to premiere in Alaska on Wednesday at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art.

Bouvrie, an independent filmmaker from the Boston area, has been drawn to such diverse subjects as the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident and Boston au pairs. She tackled the Iditarod in 1997, sparked by a Siberian husky named Kenzie.

Bouvrie knew nothing of huskies but acquired Kenzie a few years ago at the request of her teenage son, Lukas. The boy’s hankering for the animal would lead him to raise and race sled dogs on the New England mushing circuit. In the summer of 1996, Lukas, then 16, came north to hire on as a handler for Nosko. Her son’s experience intrigued Bouvrie, who came to visit the following summer.

‘‘When I went up there, I was so impressed with the … organization of the kennel and how clean it was and especially the relationship that Mike had with his dogs,’’ Bouvrie said.

In her career, Bouvrie, 49, has worked as a director’s assistant on feature films like ‘‘The Witches of Eastwick’’ and ‘‘Field of Dreams.’’ She’s rubbed elbows with stars like Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon and Kevin Costner. In Alaska, however, the first time she had a chance to meet well-known musher Susan Butcher, she shrank away in shyness.

‘‘I saw her, but I just couldn’t bring myself to go up and meet her,’’ Bouvrie said. ‘‘I’d never been so excited in my life to meet anybody as I was to meet Iditarod mushers.’’

Bouvrie, a part-time student of intercultural relations at Lesley College in Cambridge, Mass., was intrigued by the Native legacy of sled dogs, by the historic aspects of the race and by the ‘‘poetic’’ and dependent relationship between dogs and humans. That men and women compete equally in the race impressed her. So did a lack of emphasis on age.

‘‘You can be young and strong and muscle the sled around and go (without) sleep more easily,’’ she said. ‘‘But the people who are winning are people who are experienced, wise mushers. And I just love that.’’

While visiting Nosko in Wasilla that first summer, Bouvrie rushed into Anchorage and rented a video camera to get shots of the musher at work. She intended to provide Nosko and his wife, Tracey, a promotional film about their kennel. But not long after, while attending a film conference in New York City, Bouvrie was amazed by how people responded when she talked about the Iditarod.

‘‘Everybody’s eyes would just light up,’’ she said. ‘‘Heads turned. The more I talked about it, the more it started to sound great.’’

Preproduction for a documentary began that fall. At first, the film was to be about just Nosko, but it evolved into an on-the-trail story of three Iditarod mushers – Nosko, Mike Williams and Lynda Plettner. Williams, a popular Native musher, is known for his efforts to promote sobriety. Plettner is an upbeat, experienced racer and trainer from Willow. In the 1998 race, all three hoped to place in the money.

During five trips to Alaska, Bouvrie and a cameraman banked training runs, vet checks and background interviews. Getting permission to film the mushers while they raced was more difficult.

‘‘We agreed ahead I would find the right time to approach them,’’ she said. ‘‘It was clear, sometimes, it wasn’t the right time.’’

Bouvrie hired a pilot to touch down ahead of her subjects at selected checkpoints. After a while, she felt the three began to look forward to seeing a familiar face.

‘‘After long lonely hours on the trail, in a way, I think it was comforting to them to see me again and again and again,’’ she said.

From her kennel in Big Lake, Plettner said she has seen the film and is pleased with Bouvrie’s work.

‘‘Mushing is hardly ever shown from the happy camping aspect, you know?’’ she said. ‘‘The filming is always of the winners. … (Bouvrie) did a very good job of showing how this is a family thing. These are our animals. These are our pets. We’re dog mushers. It’s a lifestyle.’’

Plettner, 48, is a bright spot in the film, a perfect triangle point to Williams and Nosko.

‘‘She just chirps her way right up the trail,’’ Bouvrie said.

Plettner has raced in eight Iditarods but says this year will be her last. Her husband, Dan Govoni, whom Plettner married in Bouvrie’s film, has his own Iditarod ambitions, and Plettner will step back to help.

While Nosko was agreeable to the film, he later told Bouvrie he probably would not consent to such a project again. In 1998, when injuries and mistakes caused the Wasilla musher to drop several dogs, Bouvrie captured his frustration and disappointment on film.

In one scene, Nosko phones his wife from Unalakleet to tell her he intends to scratch. To get the shot, Bouvrie asked Nosko if she and her partner, cameraman Tom Curran, could film just five minutes of his conversation to get a closing scene for his race. Then they would leave him in privacy, they told him. He agreed.

‘‘I just thought he’d sit there on the phone and shoot the breeze until we left,’’ Bouvrie said.

While the camera rolls, however, Nosko painfully delivers his news. The moment is difficult to watch, both because it’s private and because Nosko has been characterized as a hard-driving musher with a dream of winning the Iditarod. As a kid, when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, Nosko’s answer was: ‘‘In Alaska.’’

Another strong scene in the film is when Williams takes an impromptu testimonial along the trail – a villager describes how alcohol nearly destroyed his life. Williams, a trained counselor, listens intently. Affirmations like this happen all the way to Nome, said the musher. Last week, Williams was en route to Big Lake with dogs to train for this year’s Iditarod, which starts Saturday.

Williams’ own story is a haunting one. In the film, he describes how each of his six brothers died alcohol-related deaths. His 1998 run was particularly poignant – he said he carried the spirit of his daughter with him in his sled. Timatheen, who often made honorary Iditarod starts with Williams in Anchorage, died in a four-wheeler accident at age 9.

Williams called Bouvrie’s film moving.

‘‘It’s kind of emotional on my part because of my own personal life,’’ he said.

‘‘Iditarod’’ cost about $200,000 to make. Bouvrie had no major backers and worked on a shoestring, piecing together a budget through fund-raisers, donations and grants. Even her hometown, Visalia, Calif., chipped in.

Back in suburban Boston, Bouvrie lives in a second-floor apartment. On the Iditarod Trail, she slept on the floor of a high-school gym, in a vacant office building, in a city hall and in a hut at Rainy Pass with seven men and no running water. In Akiak, Williams’ home, she found seal oil delicious and polished off several helpings. She was grateful for the generosity she encountered in the Bush, a willingness to offer rides and loan vehicles.

The filmmaker’s low-key approach and two-person budget worked well, she said, allowing her to gather interviews without hubbub.

‘‘Iditarod,’’ completed this winter, is narrated by an old acquaintance, Susan Sarandon. After learning that Williams listens to tape recordings of Gwich’in fiddler Bill Stevens on the trail, Bouvrie included Stevens and Alaska flute player Tim Crawford in the soundtrack.

In Mushing magazine this month, reviewer Leonard Kamerling called Bouvrie’s film inspiring and deeply felt.

‘‘I feel that no other film or media story has come close to revealing the true nature and spirit of the race the way this film does,’’ Kamerling wrote.

The documentary will be part of the New Filmmakers series presented by the New York Film Archive in April. It is to receive an award for best cinematography at the upcoming New England Film Festival and will be shown at the New Haven (Conn.) Film Festival this spring. Following the Anchorage premiere, Alaskans can see ‘‘Iditarod’’ at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Schaible Auditorium on Friday. Meanwhile, Bouvrie has signed with a distributor, who is exploring a television market. Eventually, copies of the film will go on sale in Alaska, she said.

Bouvrie isn’t sure how Outside audiences will react to her work, which is highly favorable toward the race and its mushers. She avoided controversy, specifically criticism of the race by animal-rights groups.

‘‘I didn’t really intend to address that issue,’’ Bouvrie said. ‘‘What I wanted to do as a documentarian was tell the story of the three mushers. … My own feeling? I saw only inordinate respect from mushers (toward dogs). I tried to document what I saw.’’

For Bouvrie, a measure of her film’s success is the ease with which it has attracted attention in the film business. She credits the mystique of the north and curiosity about the race.

‘‘I haven’t had to work too hard to get people to be interested in my film,’’ she said.

* Reporter Sandi Gerjevic can be reached at sgerjevic@adn.com.