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NECC's
Foreign Film Festival
Mark Palermo, NECC Professor
(04/04/07)
April 7 marks the tenth anniversary
of the Northern Essex Foreign Film Festival, which
my wife and I started with the help of the former dean of
the Lawrence campus, Kathy Rodger. The idea behind it was
simple. Provide community college students a social
experience that they miss because they dont live on
a university campus. And do something to build community,
because a community college should be more than just a
vocational and educational resource, but a cultural
presence as well.
Building community. What exactly does that mean? Most
young people nowadays have no clue. One student asked me
the following question: Why should I attend a film
festival if I can rent the DVD and watch it in the
privacy of my own home? He obviously doesnt
get it. His generation has never known a time without
electronic messaging, video games, email and Internet.
They communicate through machines. They live mostly in
standardized suburban communities, hermetically sealed
off from the experiences-both good and bad- that
characterized the human interactions of the old ethnic
neighborhoods. In Lawrence, where I grew up in the
1950s and 60s, my generation was the
last to know their old-world grandparents, most of
whom were born in 19th century Europe.
One of my grandmothers, for example, was a Lithuanian
babushka, and I still remember the delicious black
peasant bread she would bake in her kitchen. And from the
Italian side of my family, I remember my
grandfather making his own wine in the basement of his
three-decker. Looking back on experiences like these,
which I took for granted at the time, I feel enriched to
have had these connections to people. But kids nowadays
are confused about what a community is, who they are. Too
often unconnected to others, their time and energy are
displaced by Internet and television where nothing has
context. Some actually believe the Internet is their
community.
Something is isolating about modern life in America- and
perhaps all industrialized countries. Unless people
actively seek and build relationships, they can easily
become isolated . So welcome to the era of private
entertainment, where people are more adept at
communicating with and being entertained by machines than
with other people. Even the ultimate human contact of
real sex is being displaced by the pornography industry,
whose worldwide revenues hit 97 billion dollars last
year, most of it made on the Internet.
A bestseller came out a few years ago called Bowling
Alone, by Robert Putnam. Bowling was always a
fun sport, which few people took too seriously, and
practiced to have a fun night out with others. But
an unprecedented trend has emerged in recent years in the
bowling industry in which people have started coming to
bowling alleys alone. The author uses this phenomenon as
a metaphor for disengagement with community, the
inhibition of collective participation in
society or what he calls the erosion of social
capital.
I was reminded what social capital is when my
mother-in-law was staying with us a couple of summers
ago. My wife is Latin American, as is her mother. And
when her mother got sick, a continuing parade of her
friends came to our door to bring food, flowers, to
visit, to inquire if they could help her. It
continued every day until she was well again. Latin
Americans so often have a finely developed sense of
community, possibly because their governments do so
little for them, except by default to leave them alone.
So people must form associations and build relationships
to resolve problems. We Americans used to do that here,
but we dont anymore.
For most of human history, there was the family circle,
and its extensions of kinship and the larger social
group- all reinforced by codes, obligations and rituals.
People of yesteryear had no choice but to form
communities or find themselves abandoned to nature. Thats
the way it was, but buried within the complexities
of todays mass society, one of our deepest
needs is still for community and connection with others.
So where does the film festival come in? We wont
change the world anytime soon by holding film
festivals. But to build community where there was
none, means to start where you are. A cultural
renaissance has been emerging in Lawrence for the
past dozen or so years. The Taoist sage, Lao-tse, said,
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a
single step.
The NECC Foreign Film Festival takes place on Saturday
nights (April 7, 14 and 21) at the Amesbury St. campus in
Lawrence, across from the John Buckley Parking Garage.
Screenings start at 8 oçlock. All films subtitled.
Admission is free. Parking is free with security on site.
The event is open to the public. For information on
films, go to the website. http://neccfilm fest.tripod.com
Mark Palermo is a professor at Northern Essex Community
College in Haverhill. You can email him at markpalermo@lycos.com.
*Send your questions comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com
The March 2007 Edition
of the Valley Patriot
The Valley Patriot is a Monthly
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