Celebrating native language through film
By hola | Published | No Comments
In its fourth year, The Mother Tongue Film Festival showcased dozens of films and filmmakers, who celebrate cultural and linguistic diversity around the world.
The festival highlights the importance of the thousands of Mother Tongues (also known as indigenous or native languages) that are still spoken worldwide today, though many are in serious decline, as fewer and fewer people continue speaking these age-old native tongues.
“The Mother Tongues Film Festival is a platform for filmmakers and helps reconnect and revitalize communities. The project is a labor of love- everyone is deeply committed to demonstrating the power of cultural diversity,” Joshua Belle, director of the Smithsonian’s Recovering Voices Program and a festival co-planner, told the audience on opening night.
In just four days, the 34 films screened gave D.C. audiences glimpses of native cultures and languages from 22 different countries. Since its inception in 2016, this free festival has opened each February 21, coinciding with International Mother Language Day. This year, it ran from Feb. 21 through 24 at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and other Washington, D.C. locations.
On the penultimate night, Hola Cultura caught the Mexican feature film “In Times of Rain” at the National Museum of the American Indian. Set both in a bustling Mexico City and the deep green mountains of Oaxaca, the film contrasts the impenetrable silences of the forest with the sounds of the city.
The film tells the story of Soledad, a well-known healer in her small Indigenous town, who lives with her grandson José. Soledad’s daughter, Adele, left many years earlier to find work in Mexico City, with the promise of returning for José. One day unexpectedly, Adele phones Soledad to tell her mother that she plans to marry and would like José to join her in Mexico City.
With her grandson’s impending departure, Soledad continues her quotidian routines unsure of her future without him.
—Isabelle Orozco
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