SLEEP FURIOUSLY/Austin Film Society

I wanted this film to go on for a week!  Have you ever sat in a dark theater feeling so sad that you knew something was going to end?  This is how I felt about this documentary from Wales about what goes on in the small town of Trefeurig.  Much of what I'm about to say about this film has me in debt to Jim Kolmar the Guest Curator, a Welshman himself.  (Adorable too I might add.) This film is described as a "rigorously observed  ode" to this tiny Welsh community.  The filmmaker, Gideon Koppel, uses his camera as a microscope to bring us moments in people's lives and surroundings that are visual and aural  masterpieces (birthing of pigs and calves; movements of sheep; sounds of farm equipment, teens using glowsticks, elderly women baking for each other and reminiscing, dogs barking).  My favorite theme throughout is the mobile lending library with a man who brings all kinds of books to all kinds of characters.  People in this exquisite film LOVE their animals and are so kind.  It made me ponder about a life filled with the routine of daily living without a lot of external stimuli.  When an older woman (who teaches ceramics to children, has a beloved owl she has stuffed upon it's death ) asks the mobile librarian if he has a book about computers for idiots one can sense the turning of a tide.

As a good film does, it made me ponder my own life.  Those afternoons I am by myself listening to music and cooking or baking are an essential part of my existence.  But there is always a pull to "do something."  This is a film where people are content to keep the "do something" familiar and loved and routine.

It was a gift to wake up this morning and read Jim Kolmar's program notes.  I learned that Gideon Koppel was born to Jewish Hungarian artists in Liverpool where he was rejected and bullied for being "different."  The family moved to this tiny Welsh town where his "otherness" was not emphasized as he immersed himself into the landscape.  His parents fit in as well, and felt comfortable in this environment.  And so a lesson in the Jewish diaspora was a perfect birthday gift brought to me today by the Austin Film Society.  AFS has had a hand in softening the cultural divide I have felt in my own diaspora.