Lumina is the latest entry into the central Maine film festival calendar. Put together with the cooperation and support of the AFI (American Film Institute) Project 20/20 cross-cultural initiative, the Maine Film Center (the parent group for the Maine International Film Festival) has enlisted the support of several businesses, agencies, and individuals to put on a three-day, five-film minifestival. This was scheduled for the first weekend of spring vacation week (aka Patriot’s Day weekend in Maine and Massachusetts) in April. Spring is in full swing up and down the eastern seaboard, from Florida to Massachusetts, but not here in Maine. Here in Maine, the snow has melted, the temperatures have (mostly) lifted above the freezing point, the hours of sunlight have increased, and the advance scouts of vegetational renewal have appeared. Still the flowers, leaves, shorts, and halter tops are weeks away from being on full display. Some call April mud season, but it should more accurately (and somewhat more attractively) be referred to as spring-in-waiting. Even so, there are not a lot of compelling reasons for one to make Maine a tourist destination during spring-in-waiting season. There are hopes (at least at the Maine Office of Tourism) that this minifestival could grow into one such reason. The early eyeball evidence so far is that this didn’t happen. Like many new events, it is hard to break into the public consciousness, and, inevitably, there were a few missteps in getting the word out. The flip side of not having theaters full of festivalgoers is that there is an intimacy and accessibility to the filmmakers that might not otherwise be available. I hope this event will become a fixture on the central Maine cultural calendar. However, if you did not get to Lumina, these are the questions that you want answered: What did you miss, and should you try to see any of these films in the future?

Jody Lambert’s Of All the Things made a second appearance in central Maine, having appeared first at the Maine International Film Festival during its 2008 edition. This time we had the opportunity to meet and listen to the music of the film’s subject-Jody’s father, singer-songwriter Dennis Lambert. Music has a special place in so many lives. It defines eras, feelings, and relationships. The name Dennis Lambert probably does not mean a lot to most people, but the music that he wrote and then helped nurture as a record producer is very well known. I am tempted to add that this would be especially so if you came of age some time between the 1960s and the 1980s, but his hits are staples of classic rock, country, and soul. Amazingly, his music continues to touch lives and gain fans.

Though Dennis had performed widely as a youth, his most productive and successful work was behind-the-scenes. His solo album Bag and Things languished in record store bins everywhere except in the Philippines. There his romantic ballads reached iconic status as couples chose his music as their own theme songs and, in particular, made the song “Of All the Things” the unofficial wedding song of the Philippines. Pushed aside in the music business during the’80s to be replaced by younger record producers, Dennis moved into selling real estate in Boca Raton, Florida. However, a Filipino DJ and promoter began making pilgrimages and pitches in an effort to woo Dennis into performing in the Philippines. This film tells two related stories. One is the story of Dennis’s life in the music business and his role as a key collaborator with some of the elite performers in the many genres of popular music. The second is the story of his reawakening as a performer and rediscovering his passion for music when he finally says “yes” to going on tour in the Philippines. It is, however, not an altogether easy transformation from being an obscure middle-aged businessman in suburban Florida to being the “Mick Jagger” of the Philippines.

The film is an intimate portrait of a man trying to recover and hone a talent that had lain dormant for nearly twenty years while being confronted with a level of adulation that he had never before encountered. It is also a window into a most fertile period in popular music. There is a lot of terrific music, and it well illustrates that there are often stars in its creation that don’t get pictures on album covers. We had the twin privileges of listening to Dennis perform live at Mainely Brews pub in downtown Waterville after the film and also getting to know both he and his son Jody, since they attended the entire festival. The film provides a very genuine portrait of the man.

The collection of five short films that opened the second day of Lumina was entitled New Filmmaking from Maine. Collections of shorts are, inevitably, something of a hit-or-miss proposition. The pendulum of pleasure can swing back and forth as some make a spectacular impression, and others are endured like a trip to the dentist. Four of the shorts definitely tested my patience. The first three were by Georg Koszulski. All three were examples of nonnarrative, visual filmmaking. The first two were quite experimental in their imagery, and the third, “The Road to Katahdin,” presented a timeless journey by giving a patina of age to the film’s imagery of following a road leading to Maine’s Mount Katahdin. Mr. Koszulski was not present for the screening, so there was no opportunity to gain a fuller understanding of his intentions in making these films.

The fourth film, “sabertooth,” by Colin Capers also was experimental as it featured densely layered images-sometimes as many as forty layered on top of each other-as the audience contemplated human existence, the range of human experiences, evolution, or whatever else the film’s imagery elicited. Mr. Capers acknowledged that it could be viewed as a cinematic Rorschach test. The images were sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly, always thought provoking, and frequently maddening. It was a film that-in the words of one audience member-forced the audience to have to fight to keep watching and to keep trying to make it make sense.

The final film was Ryan Bennett’s “Rambling Round.” This was a short film that was intended to pique the interest of potential investors in a feature-length version. This was a film with actors, dialogue, and a recognizable-if somewhat elliptical-story, which makes it very much like what the typical filmgoer expects when arriving at a movie theater. This was a low-budget effort to make a Depression-era film, with footage shot over a long weekend. This means that the period has to be evoked with a fair degree of subtlety that isn’t needed when you can spend money for appropriate period costuming, hairstyles, set design, set decorations, locations, and vintage automobiles. The original intent was to make a straightforward linear narrative, but eventually it became clear that the way to make the footage into a more complete narrative was to flash back and forth in the story. The film’s jumping off point is the universal dilemma of choosing between seizing the moment to venture into the risky unknown and never taking a risk by staying put. This is not a great film, but it is engaging, and-considering the challenge of making something under the circumstances that Bennett, his cast, and his crew were encountering-it should do what it was intended to do. It displays the director’s talent for showcasing scenes that tell the story and his inventiveness in making it into something that feels complete (or nearly so). With any luck, it will help in getting his feature-length version off the ground.

Clearly, the centerpiece screening of the festival was Aron Gaudet’s The Way We Get By. It is a Maine-made film about a group of Mainers-mostly senior citizens-who have dedicated themselves to providing a heartfelt final farewell to America’s troops on their way to Iraq and Afghanistan and a warm grateful welcome to the troops on their initial arrival on American soil after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. These individuals are the troop greeters who meet outgoing and incoming troop flights in Bangor at the last and first in-country stop for most American military troop transport flights. Generally, Maine’s location as the nation’s most northeasterly state has not provided much advantage to the state, but for showing our appreciation for our young people’s military service, our concern for their well-being, and our joy for their safe return-Maine is ideally situated.

Yet the film does not bear a title like Cheering the Troops or Hospitality Bangor or Celebrating America’s Warriors. It is The Way We Get By, which places the focus less on the troops and more on the people who have undertaken this task of making sure that no troops arrive in Bangor feeling an indifferent or even hostile reception as has frequently been charged for those arriving back from Vietnam. The film focuses on three elderly Mainers: Bill Knight, Joan Gaudet, and Jerry Mundy. Each of these three is a unique individual who has his and her own perspective on why it is important to greet the troops, and each is facing their own struggle of being old in America. These are people who have lost spouses and friends, have health problems, need to change their lifestyle, and find that their families no longer need them the way they once did.

Aron Gaudet and his team have been able to elicit an openness and candor from the film’s subjects that is extraordinarily intimate. Yes, it probably does help that one of his subjects is his own mother. (Though filming one’s own family members doesn’t always work that way). The film shows not only how the troops respond to the greeters during their brief stops in Maine at all hours of the day and night but also how reaching out to the young men and women who serve in the military has changed the lives of these three older Americans. It aptly demonstrates how giving of one’s self to someone else gives as much or even more back to the one making the gift. For the three subjects, it has provided a sharpened sense of purpose at a time of their lives when there often seems little point in living.

These are three people who seem quite ordinary but who are truly wonderful to get to know. Another key contribution that this film makes is that it refrains from taking a political stand on the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, and, by doing so, it reminds us that the men and women who have served there belong to us regardless of whether or not we support the decision-making that resulted in their service there. “Supporting the troops” can and should transcend endorsement of the decision to go to war. The film’s screening was a special event with the director Aron Gaudet and cinematographer Dan Ferrigan as well as the film’s three “stars” in attendance. The film attracted a full house and was very well received even by those who had misgivings about the film owing to their personal opposition to the decision to invade Iraq. This is a special film-arguably the best film made in Maine in quite some time-that has the capacity to bind up wounds across generations and across the divide created by the war itself.

Alexandra (Sasha) Westmeier’s Alone in Four Walls is a simple, but devastating documentary about boys caught in the Russian correctional system for juvenile delinquents. The film is simple because most of the film is a series of “talking head” interviews with the boys as they talk about their lives, their crimes, and their aspirations. Interspliced with the interviews with the boys are interviews with some of their parents. This simple film structure is not an ideal technique for making a film, particularly when the subjects present their stories in the colorless, deadpan way that they do. However, the subject matter of lives in crisis, with little standing between the wayward boy and a life of crime, incarceration, and misery, makes for shockingly riveting film viewing, despite the shortcomings of the straightforward approach to filmmaking.

What we learn is that the juvenile offenders in Russia can only be incarcerated for a maximum of three years and that offenders “graduate” to adult prison at what some would call the tender age of fifteen. They are incarcerated for a variety of crimes, up to and including murder. The crimes are related to the audience matter-of-factly. It is, of course, disturbing to hear a child describe committing a murder or a robbery, but what is more disturbing is how the boys’ families have failed them. Troubled children-across many societies-frequently come from families that struggle with poverty, alcohol and other drugs, crime, and dysfunction. These are clearly factors contributing to the boys’ crimes. They come from poor families. Substance abuse is rampant in the homes, and often the boy was intoxicated at the time of his offense. The boy is not the only family member serving jail time nor is the offense that got him incarcerated an isolated incident. Often one or even both parents have left the household. Sadly, once the boy is scooped up by the authorities, the boy is almost completely abandoned. Letters from home are rare, and visits from parents happen with the equivalent frequency as sightings of Halley’s Comet.

Although the boys were eager to see the footage of their parents being interviewed, the parents were uniformly reluctant to watch their sons. The few parents that were interviewed did not seem unconcerned about their children but seemed to feel that they had nothing to offer the child imprisoned. The institution to which the boys are confined provides basic care and keeps the boys occupied with a regimen of exercises, chores, and schoolwork, but seemed to be unable or unwilling to fill the parenting void in the lives of their charges. It must, however, be noted that the director states that it was the filmmakers’ intention to focus exclusively on the boys and not interview (and hardly show) the institution’s staff. This deprives the audience of any appreciation of the institution’s sense of its own mission and the connection between the boys and the adults that run the institution. What we are told is that the institution has no counselors, no social workers, and-perhaps most problematic-no aftercare to help the boys reintegrate into society to become productive, law-abiding citizens. They are simply let loose to rejoin the unhealthy milieu from which they had been captured. Its absence is particularly glaring among boys that have a history of flouting society’s dictates for appropriate behavior.

There were a couple of questions that came to mind that were not addressed during the postscreening Q and A session. To what extent did the filmmaking process alter the behavior of the boys, especially if the director-a very attractive young woman-shot much of the footage herself and/or conducted the interviews? Considering her age and appearance, she certainly could have been seen as someone that many of the boys would be very eager to impress. The other question relates to the nearly complete and total abandonment of the boys by their families, which I have difficulty believing could be matched in its pervasiveness in the United State and lots of other countries. Is the families’ abject abdication of their imprisoned sons the result of Soviet undermining of family relationships in favor of loyalty to the state or a carry-over from living in a totalitarian society in which people routinely “disappeared” into the Soviet Gulag Archipelago or a combination of both? The film’s title comes from the opening sequence in which a series of tattoos-reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises-is shown, and their defiant meanings are explained. While this effectively grabs the audience’s attention and does hint at the inveterate criminal careers ahead of the film’s subjects, it plays no role in the remainder of the film. This is an almost artless film, and it leaves many questions unanswered, but it haunts the filmgoer for quite a long time.

Richie Mehta’s Amal is a fable about good and evil. It’s about a poor New Delhi autorickshaw driver (Rupinder Nagra), who lives a good and simple life. His goodness has touched the life of a famous, but deeply cynical Indian author. Impressed, the author decides on his deathbed to alter his will in favor of the of the obscure autorickshaw driver. Naturally, this doesn’t please the author’s children-particularly his son Vivek (Vik Sahay). Vivek, handsome and nattily attired, fairly oozes decadence with his posh English accent. Vivek desperately needs to inherit a substantial legacy to lift himself out of debt to his creditors that includes a New Delhi crime boss. The inheritance is on hold, however, to allow the author’s attorney time to locate Amal among the thousands of autorickshaw drivers working in New Delhi.

Amal, of course, is oblivious to the inheritance and is much more involved in wistfully admiring his beautiful customer Pooja (Koel Purie) while at the same time fending off his mother’s gentle nagging that he needs to find a wife. When a young girl steals Pooja’s purse and his hot pursuit leads to the young girl being struck by a car, Amal becomes the one taking responsibility for her medical care.

There’s a Dickensian quality to the film’s story with its intertwined characters and coincidences, though the setting is warm and sunny India instead of a harsh and gray London. The film is engaging as it chugs along maintaining a level of suspense for the film’s overriding questions: Will Amal get the millions bequeathed to him, or will Vivek find a way to frustrate his father’s dying wishes? Will Amal find love with Pooja, giving Amal’s mother the daughter-in-law that she desperately desires? Though the film unfolds with few true surprises, it does depart in a couple of key ways from how a Hollywood version of the same film might end up. Amal is a mildly exotic film that will provide amiable companionship for home viewing, especially on rainy day weekends.

Lumina closed with Throw Down Your Heart. Sascha Paladino is credited as the director, but the film might be referred to as “the Béla Fleck film” because Béla is the American musician who serves as the focal point for our musical odyssey across Africa. Béla is a banjoist in search of the gourdlike African musical instruments that may have been ancestors of the American banjo. He starts in Tanzania and then proceeds west across Africa to Uganda, Mali, and Gambia. Essentially, a film crew follows Fleck as he visits and performs with African performers.

While it is virtually impossible for Béla’s white face not to stand out amongst all of the black faces of the African performers, he allows the African performers to take center stage and then performs with them. He does not try to make the African music subservient to his music. The film will expose Western audiences to very rich musical traditions. The music of East Africa (Tanzania and Uganda) relies on thumb-harps and large-scale marimbas, and Béla’s banjo seemed to be swallowed up by the East African performers. My wife was struck by how it seemed to “take a village” to make music from the large marimbas, but Fleck also finds himself also immersed in village life in East Africa whereas the West African nations seemed to offer the amenities of hotels and recording studios much more frequently. Similarly, the West African performers seem to be much more the focus of a cult of celebrity.

There are two West African instruments that may have served as ancestor instruments for the banjo. One is the n’goni from Mali, and the other is the akonting from Gambia. These gourdlike instruments-used on slave ships to calm and comfort slaves on their journey to the New World-probably contributed to the development of the banjo though likely were not the direct forebears of the American instrument. Music is a particularly promiscuous art form as songs, sounds, and instruments are so readily shared that tracking how certain styles of music developed and evolved is an enormous challenge. It is clear that African influences are significant in the banjo’s development, but there are likely other influences as well. For many filmgoers, tracking the banjo’s development may prove to be far less interesting than having the opportunity to meet terrific African performers and hear some really fantastic music. This was certainly the draw that attracted Lumina’s second-best audience, and they were not disappointed.