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As the Las Cruces International Film Festival wrapped on Sunday, April 16, a feeling of satisfaction and togetherness filled participants and watchers.
“Each day was about living your dream and believing in yourself,” said organizer Ross Marks. “It was really an amazing exciting inspirational and uplifting time, from the opening night filmmakers (‘Land of Dreams’) speaking; Giancarlo (Esposito) was a motivational speaker (Thursday) as were Kevin Reynolds and the ‘Unity’ couple.”
The theme of the week revealed itself to be unity, he said, “…we saw that with the opening night film about a divided America.”
“Every year the theme evolves organically and what a wonderful theme we ended up with in this year’s festival,” Ross said. “This year’s was very clearly about unity and togetherness.”
The movie “State of the Unity” created by Nathaniel Paul Hoff and Jillian Ann Speece (who make up the band, The Bergamot) follows the couple on a journey of discovery as they travel all 50 states in an old car specifically to explore the concept of unity.
“My original idea was unity means everybody coming together, thinking the same thing, oneness of thought,” Speece said. “That changed when we started meeting Americans where they are at and I started listening. I asked them ‘what does unity mean to you?’ and I would give them a Sharpie and they would write on the car. I started reading the messages and listening to the people and realizing unity is not oneness of thought, it is actually in diversity that a democracy can peacefully exist.”
She said the film festival is an excellent example of the concept.
“Through art, music, community building activities we can move forward,” she said. “This film festival is bringing everyone together.”
Hoff said the thing that propelled the couple was coming from middle-class Indiana. The heart of the tour was learning about other cultures, other people.
“We had a long way to go from the start,” he said. “But I just want to learn to be open and understanding. So many times we were flipped with a perspective we didn’t know. By the end, we had experienced a lot of things we couldn’t put the right words to.”
Then they went on a seven-year journey of editing, revising, understanding and interpreting to put together a movie of the tour experience.
“It’s not about everybody coming together and saying we have to agree,” Hoff said. “This country has never been about that. We have to work together regardless of our differences.”
As the film festival’s special guest, Esposito spoke to New Mexico State University students at the ASNMSU Center for the Arts on Thursday, some of his words echoed the theme.
“We have to open our minds to understand that we are all in this together,” Esposito said. “I don’t pretend to understand all of those who are different than me, but some of us are shutting down the conversation before the conversation can be had. That to me is crazy. We are thinking there is no room to agree to disagree, so we are losing the respect we have for each other as human beings.
“I am going to lower my tone, open my ears, open my heart and say ‘I hear you.’ I may not agree with you but I respect that that may be your point of view. I am not going to hold that against you.”
Hoff and Speece took home the Grand Jury and Best Documentary Feature awards for the film festival. Esposito received this year’s Outstanding Achievement in Entertainment Award for his many years of meticulous work in the film industry.
