It has been a while since MIFF has ended and I still have my notes on the final day to finish. Speaking of unfinished business, the first film of the day was The Language of America and that certainly qualifies as that for me. Some of you may recall that during the winter of 2006 I broke my ankle. This event disrupted many things in my life including my ability to attend the winter film series we call MIFF in the Morning. One of the film showing that year was Waterville filmmaker Ben Levine’s then work-in-progress The Language of America. So seeing this film finishes some business from 2006.

One could make a case that The Language of America might be more accurately titled The Languages of America (I have purposely underlined and increased the font size of the “s” at the end of “languages” because this is about the many tribes of Native Americans that each have their own tribal language). The loss of a language or—perhaps more accurately the suppression of particular languages—is a recurring theme in Mr. Levine’s work as is the effort to recover languages threatened with such loss. His earlier film Reveil: Waking Up French addressed these same issues among French-Canadian immigrants and their descendants. Levine’s underlying theme borrows from Rene Descartes’ famous dictum that is translated into English as “I think therefore I am” by contending that “I speak therefore I am.” Is the use of a language an essential part of one’s cultural inheritance? The film begins with a single Native American family in Maine trying to raise their son so that he learns and fluently speaks his tribe’s language that only a relative handful of people continue to speak. This goes fairly well until the daycare provider that was using the tribal language ceases operation and the child is placed in a daycare setting in which English is used. The challenge of being able to maintain an island of only tribal language in the sea of English that is today’s Maine to reinforce the development of the tribal language is extraordinarily daunting. The film places this couple’s struggle within a larger context, but one that is still relatively small considering that it reflects competition between cultures and the use of language is one major element of that cultural competition. The problem faced by the couple trying to pass a minority language to their son is as old as whenever humans first became aware that other humans spoke a language different from their own. The larger context Levine uses is New England beginning with the conflict between the English settlers and the Native American tribes that had been living here when they arrived. The Arthur Penn film Little Big Man showed the genocidal actions carried out by the US Cavalry against the Native American tribes of the Great Plains in the latter half of the 19^th century, but the story of racism and genocide against Native Americans began—in New England—much earlier pretty much as soon as the settlers got off the Mayflower. For the current generation of Native Americans who have long been marginalized, impoverished, and persecuted, finding a means to celebrate who they are has been difficult. Retaining and expressing themselves in their own language certainly would seem to be fulfilling that function for many of the Native Americans featured in the film. The film does not answer the question of how best to balance the right of a minority to express their separateness through their own language and the dominant culture’s desire to create an integrated society with a common means of communication. I don’t know the answer, but conflict over this issue continues to fester in a number of places around the world. The film does offer Native Americans a means of celebrating who they are as Native Americans and for the non-Native American it offers a window into what life is like being on the losing side in history. As a film about a neglected part of American history and about long-festering conflicts over the use and suppression of languages, the film provides a very useful service. The film also provides a measure of hope regarding engagement on this issue as one Native American linguist shared that it was through working with the man who had served as her mentor that she had learned not to hate white people for how her people had been treated. This could provide an opportunity for reconciliation between two cultures and two peoples that have an awful lot of painful history between them. It must be noted that the film overlooks the broader contexts for these cultural and language conflicts and the film does not address the broader relationship between European settlers and Native Americans except for the ones in New England involving English colonists and a handful of tribes. It might have helped to provide the additional context of language and cultural expression for Native Americans outside New England and in other parts of the Americas colonized by Europeans other than the English.

My favorite film at MIFF was Wedding Song (original title: Le chant des mariées). It was the last film I saw before casting my ballot for audience favorite and I saw it the day after seeing War Against the Weak. Karin Albou’s film is about two teenaged girls—Nour (Olympe Borval) is a Muslim and Myriam (Lizzie Brocheré) is a Sephardic Jew—who have been best friends growing up in Tunisia during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Whatever tensions may have then existed between these two groups, they become exacerbated during the Nazi occupation of Tunisia as the Nazis seek to use their own antipathy toward Jews as a wedge to divide neighbors Muslim from Jew even if neither is desirable in the eyes of Nazis. Despite the girls’ long friendship they are not immune to the forces swirling around them. Yet they share so much even though their differing cultural expectations and family situations precludes for one what is granted to the other. Nour is kept at home and is unable to follow her friend to school to learn about the wider world. Myriam’s mother Tita (Albou) is forced to arrange a marriage for Myriam to a well-to-do middle-aged doctor. Myriam is reluctant to wed her older fiancé and is jealous that Nour is engaged to a handsome cousin her own age with whom she is in love. Yet the eager bride’s wedding is on hold because her fiancé has no job while the reluctant one is on an unimpeded collision course with matrimony. This is a slice-of-life film showing each of the girls trying to negotiate her way to adulthood in a world that will seem exotic and timeless even as the ravages of Europe’s great conflagration spill over and threaten it with irrevocable disruption, if not destruction. The focal point of their experience is the women’s hammam or bathhouse that is suffused with intimacy and sensuality. Laurent Brunet’s camera does not shy away from this women’s realm and refuge. It never leers, but it is alive with the same curiosity and desire as its two young protagonists. Filmgoers who are ill at ease with onscreen nudity would be well-advised to avoid this film. The acting is solid throughout and deeply committed to what many actors would flee. This film took me to a time (1943) and place (Tunisia) and deeply into the lives of two young women where I had never been. This is what earned it my choice as audience favorite.

Well, we have finally reached the last film—the closing night film—of the festival: Dirt! The Movie. There are probably some who—disgusted by films featuring nudity, sexuality, and bad language—consider most of the commercial film output to appropriately be called Dirt! The Movie. Despite the D-word, this is an upbeat, inspiring, and informative film with hardly anything that normally would be considered objectionable by the general public. There are two groups that may take exception to the film. This could be a difficult film to swallow for those whose worldview revels in the countless shades of gray in human experience because this film openly expresses a pervasively cheerful evangelism for its subject. The other group objecting to the film would be those who profit from systematically abusing what this film celebrates. This is a documentary about something that not only is neglected by most inhabitants of our amazing orb, it is regularly disrespected, taken-for-granted, and abused. The film is inspired by William Bryant Logan’s book Dirt, The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth and that title probably provides a measure of the reverence and elation the film seeks to impart for what is our terra firma. The film brandishes some hyperbole that seems rather over-the-top (e.g., the infinite abundance of species to be found in just a little bit of soil), but—whether this can be fully substantiated scientifically or whether the eagerness to counteract the accumulated disdain from the dawn of humanity got the best of them—the case for the value of and the need to take better care of just plain dirt is quite compellingly made. For those who engage in industrial or agricultural practices that sacrifice the productivity and the rejuvenation of the soil for lucrative short-term profits, this film threatens their wealth and privilege just like the biblical story of the mighty trumpets knocking down the walls of Jericho. Filmmakers Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow clearly hope that film audiences will en masse become disciples for dirt and take an active role in encouraging sound and effective soil policies that support its critical role in producing our food and enriching our lives.

The 2009 Maine International Film Festival has come to an end. It was a very good festival with lots of pleasant memories—both inside the screenings and out. Hopefully, these notes have provided some useful information about the films in the festival and will encourage you to seek them out to see for yourself. Best wishes and enjoy the movies!