Last Day for We Still Live Here

Day 15 - Alexandria LA

Louisiana looked lovely and green from the plane, although there was no sign of a St. Patrick's Day celebration when I landed.  Different state, different country.  I was glad to be staying with a local couple, Dr. David Holcombe and his wife Nicole, and that they would transport me from the airport to their house and to the screening.  No more getting lost and trying to read my iPhone GPS while driving! 

Alexandria is an interesting town on the Red River that has seen better days.  Most of it was burned down during the Civil War, and when England Airforce Base closed in 1992, the town suffered again.  But there is a valiant core group working to revitalize the downtown, bringing artists, musicians and filmmakers to spice things up.  The Holcombes had worked hard to get the word out; getting a feature article in the local paper's arts section, and contacting several Native American tribes nearby.  As we arrived, I was pleased to see the small Black Box theater filling up; people seemed really excited about the film.


During the screening, I walked by the Red River and then explored the deserted streets of downtown Alexandria.  There were a lot of empty storefronts, some clothing stores, an Irish pub that wasn't especially lively, and then I happened upon the Tamp and Grind (what a name!), a funky little coffee house with a colorful bottle tree hanging outside.  The cafe was packed with friendly high school kids listening raptly to a talented young guitar player named Benjamin Richey.  He had lightning fingers and sang a raspy rendition of House of the Rising Sun just before I had to head back for the theater for the Q+A.


The discussion turned out to be one of the most emotional and engaging of the whole Southern Circuit tour.  One woman was almost in tears as she described growing up with the Aquinnah Wampanoag on Martha's Vineyard and her friends in the Vanderhoop family.  Several African Americans in the audience praised the film lavishly, reacting to the Wampanoag's story with deep compassion and admiration.  A young woman named Akeshia Singleton from the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians, wondered how her people could revive their language.  She said that her tribe has no speakers, but they do have a comprehensive dictionary that could help them get started.  I said, you need a Jessie, someone who has the passion and energy and smarts and stamina to make it happen, and maybe that person is you!  She certainly struck me as a person of passion and intelligence, and I hope she will decide to set out on this path.


This morning, I said good-bye to my hosts as they headed off to a day of Czech folk dancing in a nearby town - once again, you just can't make these things up!  The tour has been great, but now I am really looking forward to getting home tonight and seeing at last my beloved Charles and my crazy, much-loved Cassius.

Days 13 and 14 for We Still Live Here

DAY 13: Tybee Island

After a wild five days of driving through Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and back to North Carolina again, it was a huge relief to board the plane to Savannah, especially since I planned to stay at the beach on nearby Tybee Island with a whole day and night off.  

After a long nap at my sweet B+B, I wandered along the beach to the mouth of the Savannah River where it pours out through tidal marshlands into the sea.  The temperature was balmy, the beach not yet crowded with kids on spring break, as it would be soon.  

For dinner, I had delicious crab soup at AJ's Dockside Restaurant and watched the sun set over the marshes and the river tides.  Then back to the Beachside B+B to rest up before the next day's screening in Savannah.

DAY 14: SAVANNAH

College kids were converging on Tybee Island for their annual rite of spring as I drove past tidal flats and sparkling rivers into Savannah for my sound check at the beautifully restored Lucas Theater. After meeting my hosts Erin Muller and Meaghan Walsh Gerard and checking the projection and sound, I had a few hours to explore Savannah on my own.

 

Everyone had warned me that hordes of people were heading into town for St. Patrick's Day weekend.  Apparently St. Patrick's is bigger in Savannah than in New York City.  I puzzled over this, thinking about Scarlett O'Hara and wondering if Georgia was seriously Irish. Everything in town was green, even the fountains!  Cops were swarming everywhere too, in preparation, one of them told me, for the drunken revels soon to come.  

 Every screening has its surprises, and there were two great ones in Savannah.  One was a handsome 13 or 14 year old boy (I can never tell ages any more!) who asked the most probing questions during the Q+A, and later in the lobby told me that he absolutely loves the Latin language, is studying it in depth at a special school, and is seriously annoyed that Italians are not reviving Latin as a living language.  The other was a tall African American guy who turned out to be Jeremy Foreman, Executive Director of HandsOn Southeast Georgia who works with ITVS on their Community Cinema program.  He and I will be Skyping on Tuesday after a screening of We Still Live Here that he has organized at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro.  The film goes on and on!    

 

I would have liked to have stayed in Savannah longer, but no rest for the weary - next stop, Alexandria, Louisiana, for the tenth and last screening of the tour.

Day 11 and 12 for We Still Live Here

Day 11: Eastern Tennessee State University

I woke up in my brother Roger's sunny house to the sound of oatmeal boiling and the Big Pine Creek rushing along (he literally lives up the creek).  Worked for a while in a hopeless attempt to keep up with obligations, phone calls etc.  At noon we headed across the French Broad River for lunch and then to Hot Springs for a hike up Lover's Leap. Hiking along the Appalachian trail, I was pondering the fact that hundreds of miles north this same trail winds through Salisbury CT for 13 miles, passing less than a mile from my home in Lakeville.  Made me homesick for Charles and Cassius.

We had a good Thai dinner in Johnson City with film professor Shara Kay Lange and her husband Dan, both lovely and friendly and interesting folks that I wished I had had more time to get to know, then headed to the auditorium. The audience, a mix of students, professors, and people from the community, were really enthusiastic and engaged in the film and the issues it raises.  After the lively Q+A and a 90 minute drive, I was still wired when we arrived back at my brother's house to sleep.

Day 12: Cherokee and Western Carolina University

 We woke up to a rainy day in the mountains, drove down to Marshall for tea and emailing at actor/producer Tony Torn's Good Stuff Cafe, then headed out for a day of adventure.  First stop, Cherokee, the commercial and governmental center for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, looking forward to seeing the New Kituwah Cherokee language immersion school that we featured on the Our Mother Tongues

website, a companion site for We Still Live Here.  (Please visit www.OurMotherTongues.org).

We met Gill Jackson, director and one of the founders of New Kituwah, for lunch, then headed to the school.  There, all classes are taught in the Cherokee language, and English is not allowed.  We were thrilled and honored to be invited to visit the school.

These second grade students have been part of New Kituwah since they were babies when it was founded.  It was fun  to watch them engage with their teacher during a lesson about half notes, full notes, quarter notes, all in Cherokee.  New Kituwah has become a model school for many Native communities working to preserve and revitalize their languages.  The Wampanoag Language Reclamation Project, featured in We Still Live Here, is hoping to found an immersion school in 2015, where all subjects will be taught in Wampanoag.  Like New Kituwah, the plan is to begin with kindergarten and add a grade every year so that students can continue their education in their language as they move up through the grades.

Cherokee elder Myrtle Driver is translating Charlotte's Web into the Cherokee syllabary!  They are planning to record all of the voices and have already cast the roles according to the personalities the school's staff.  This should be a delightful addition to the curriculum.

We also met with Bo Lossie, a teacher at New Kituwah who is also featured on the  Our Mother Tongues Videos page, where he talks about discovering the true meaning of his grandfather's words.  Here he is holding a picture here of that same grandfather.

After our great visit to Cherokee, we headed down to our screening at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina.  We had a great dinner at Guadalupe's with our host Lorie Davis and with Tom Belt, Cherokee elder and language instructor at the WCU, and linguist Hartwell Francis, Director of the  with the two professors who teach the Cherokee Language Program there.  Then as we were pulling in to the University Center for the screening, there was Gill Jackson, come down to join us.  He is incredibly busy, so it was a terrific surprise to have him there.

We had a great screening and discussion, and a very comfortable night at our comparatively posh digs at the Chancellor's Guest House.  No rest for the weary though - we left at dawn the next morning for Asheville airport and my flight to Savannah.

Stay tuned for the next blog entry - screenings in Savannah, Georgia and Alexandria, Louisiana; then home at last to Charles and Cassius.

Day 10 for We Still Live Here

Day 10: Winder

After a good night's sleep at the Crenshaw Inn in Auburn, I drove through Atlanta to the little town of Winder, Georgia, for my afternoon screening there.  Winder struck me as a town that might have been on its way up before 2008, but is struggling now.  My host, Cultural Director Don Wildsmith (aptly named) is dedicated to revitalizing the town through a lively arts program.  He helped bring We Still Live Here and other Southern Circuit films to the beautiful Cultural Arts Center there.

Wonder of wonders, I found the Chatterrbox Cafe right there in Winder!   I always wondered where Garrison Keillor got that name for his Lake Woebegone tales, and now I know.

The audience was small but wildly enthusiastic and appreciative, and I was glad to have visited Winder and to have met Don and others who are so dedicated to bringing the arts to their community.

Looking at the pictures now, I can see how tired I was getting by this point in the journey.  I had driven through six states; Winder would be my sixth screening in nine days, with four more to go.   

After the screening,  I set out at 5pm on a three hour drive from Georgia through South and North Carolina to Asheville to meet my brother Roger for dinner.  I followed him home over the windy Appalachian mountain roads to stay at his home in Marshall, NC, with a night to rest up for my screening the next day 50 miles northwest  in Tennessee.

Day 9 for We Still Live Here

Day 9 began with mad blogging about the Montgomery march,  including editing video that I had mistakenly shot upside down on my iPhone, a whole new editing challenge.  Luckily I had my lovely room at the Lattice Inn to work in, and the kindly innkeeper Jim let me stay until I had finished.

I had a night off and a three hour drive from Montgomery to my next screening in Winder, GA, so arranged to stay in the university town of Auburn, Alabama, that night.  As I drove into town, demonstrators waved signs for Ron Paul at me, reminding me that the Alabama primary was happening very soon and that I could be within a few miles of one of the comical though frightening characters battling it out in the south: Newt, Rick, Mitt, and maybe Ron too.

Waling around town, I was assaulted by talking light poles issuing peremptory orders - WAIT!  WAIT!  WAIT! Beep Beep Beep.  They must have had movement sensors, as whenever I got within 50 feet of a crosswalk the orders began again.  I wondered if there had been an outbreak of kamikaze pedestrians or blind drivers or both; mostly I obeyed.

That night, after a fantastic dinner of salmon salad at the Amsterdam cafe, I noticed some musicians entering a funky little bookstore and went in to find out what was going on.  It turned out they were setting up to play, and since I love the dobro and pretty much any country or mountain music, I sat down to listen.  They were great!  Fantastic guy on drums and blues harp, awesome dobro player who was really fun to watch, great bass guitarist, a singer who thought he was cooler than he was, but, oh well. Even a trombone, an unusual addition to say the least!

Marching on the State Capitol

After a good night's sleep at the wonderful Lattice Inn, I headed to the State Capitol, arriving just as the first marchers were arriving.  The drizzling rain didn't seem to dampen the high spirits of the crowd.  Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson were up on stage to welcome them, and a gospel group rant out with an awe inspiring "I'm gonna let nobody turn me round..." as the crowd gathered.  How amazing to bear witness to this momentous day.



Later, Martin McCaffery, Director of the Capri Theater, also took me to see the Civil Rights Memorial, the Rosa Parks Museum, and Hank Williams' grave.  I was glad to see all of these, especially Maya Lin's awesome installation,  but my heart drew me back to the demonstration still going on downtown.  I returned there just in time to see Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, and many other leaders gather on the steps of the capitol and sing the iconic and still deeply meaningful, "We Shall Overcome".

- Anne Makepeace

Notes from Montgomery

On Day 7 of the Southern Circuit tour,  I pulled out of Montgomery airport in the early afternoon into pure gridlock. What was all the traffic at this hour?  I noticed groups of people walking along the road, many looking Hispanic or Native American, some carrying flags or banners.  They were converging on a big tent and thought, is this a pow wow?  How amazing!  

Then I noticed the signs and t-shirts that read, Stop HB 56, We are the 99, Proud to be Union, I Am a Man, We Are One.  I stopped and talked to a man named Samuel who told me that the people marching along the road had just walked all the way from Selma to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.'s march 47 years ago that day, and to protest the draconian Alabama anti-immigrant law HB 56, in particular its potentially devastating effect on voting rights.  Near the end of their march, they were gathering outside Montgomery to prepare for the march to the State Capital the next day.

To see the interview with Samuel, click the video above:

That night, as I screened We Still Live Here at the Capri Theater downtown, I thought about the marchers a few miles away, their heart and determination to honor Dr. King and to keep fighting for a better world.  At first these thoughts made what I was doing seem insignificant - screening a documentary to a few people - but my passion for this film and its story soon rose up  and replaced that feeling with a sense of history and purpose.  Aren't we all fighting for the same thing?  A more just world where the word freedom has deep personal meaning, where diversity is honored and valued and the many unique communities in our midst are appreciated and prized as part of the rich fabric of our country , and then I felt part of the marchers with their banners saying, We Are One.

Anne Makepeace Braves Tornado Warnings to Reach Thomasville Screening

Day 2

Day 2 of the Southern Circuit tour was not so rosy.  I arrived at Charleston Airport to discover that the plane I was supposed to fly out on had been hit by lightning and was delayed for maintenance.  I had a very tight connection in Charlotte for my flight to Tallahassee, where I was to rent a car and drive 45 minutes to an hour to Thomasville, Georgia, for my next screening.

While the very helpful US Air agent tried to help me figure out alternatives, the flight was canceled.  At first it seemed that I would never make it to my screening; US Air couldn't get me to Tallahasee until 10pm.  Lots of flights were canceled due to weather, so most were full or overbooked.  The agent finally found Delta flights that were scheduled to arrive in Tallahassee at 9pm, which wasn't much better.  Then I met Paul Thompson, a wizard Delta agent who spent about 20 minutes trying to outwit his computer and get me on earlier flights.  The computer kept saying no, and he kept at it - it was almost as exciting as a NASCAR race as he pounded the keys and exclaimed with hope and jubilation, then moaned with disappointment and tried again.  It was truly inspiring!  And he succeeded at last, getting me on flights through Atlanta scheduled to arrive at 4:38, which would get me to Thomasville in time.  I gave him a copy of We Still Live Here for his efforts; he was excited to learn that I was a documentary filmmaker and asked with great passion whether I would make a film about.... NASCAR!

The new flight was delayed a bit, and when I finally got to Atlanta I called my host, Bonnie Hayes, in Thomasville where I was supposed to have arrived hours earlier.  She told me that Thomasville was being pounded by torrential rains, and that they were under a  tornado warning!  She wasn't sure if the screening would go on; I said I would call her when I got to Tallahassee.

Which I finally did, at around 5pm.  Of course my bags didn't arrive with me, so sorting that out took some time.  Then the rental car they gave me was so confusing - no key!  everything computerized - that I had to drive back to National with my head out the window (couldn't figure out the wipers or defrost) for a tutorial.  I finally arrived in Thomasville for a great screening with about 20 hardy souls who had braved the rain and wind to get there, and had chosen my film over the Rose Queen Pageant that was going on just down the street!   I loved the old renovated high school building that is now the Thomasville Center fort the Arts and the projection was the best I had seen from a DVD.

I was too frazzled by the events of the day to take photos, so have none to show you for this crazy day, but again I was moved and impressed by the intelligence and variety of people there.  Two little girls who sat towards the front asked sweetly smart questions, and there was real passionate interest in the film's issues that made the Q+A stirring and engaging.


-Anne Makepeace

Anne Makepeace and "We Still Live Here" Head South

After a sweet sad goodbye to my husband Charles and my dog Cassius, I flew to Charleston to begin my Southern Circuit tour.

Charleston was balmy after the frozen north, and the wonderful old house where I stayed made me feel that i was really in the Old South.  I had a corner room just off this balcony.

Street life was lively, with lots of boutiques and shops and restaurants, though chains like Pottery Barn,  J Crew and Williams Sonoma  have begun to invade the beautiful southern architecture.

We had a wonderful screening at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art,  part of the College of Charleston.

Lizz Bissell and her fabulous interns helped with the screening and with selling DVDs

The audience was small - 60 or 70 people - but very enthusiastic with many smart and insightful questions.  I was grateful to all who came, as we were competing with the Food and Wine Festival, the Charleston Film Festival, and a ballet, and and this was the first day of Spring Break at the college.

After the screening we gathered in the lobby for delicious cupcakes and interesting conversation.  I was charmed by the diversity of the crowd - a beautiful young couple from Cuba, a Chippewa from Minnesota, a Ukrainian real estate agent and former filmmaker, and many more.  It was a great night.

A good time was had by all!