Welsh Events in Colorado, Articles, and Mythic Themes
Written and compiled by Edie Stone, Boulder, Colorado.
For information about the Colorado Welsh Society, visit www.ColoradoWelshSociety.org
The pages here offer background information and cultural or mythic
themes related to the events offered by the CWS.
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Eldra, a Welsh Film of Love,
Prejudice, and the Gypsy Harp Tradition
The Colorado Welsh Society invites you to a showing of the
award-winning film Eldra, a story from the childhood of one of the last
great Gypsy/Romani harpists in Wales. The film features music composed
and played on the triple harp by Robin Huw Bowen, who learned
traditional harp tunes from Eldra and has carried on this ancient
tradition.
The showing is at 2 pm on February 20, at the Bemis Public Library,
6014 South Datura Street, Littleton, 80120. This event is free and open
to the public.
For more information, contact sam.kuntz@comcast.net
or 303.886.0632.
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BACKGROUND INFORMATION on Eldra the
harpist, and Eldra, the film.
NOTE FROM EDIE:
I saw Eldra at Welsh Heritage
Week in 2005, which was held in Golden,
Colorado that year. We had the delightful experience of not only
viewing the film, but an opportunity to listen to the beautiful music
(and bad jokes) of Robin Huw Bowen. Bowen is the premier player of the
triple harp in the world today.
Bowen studied with Eldra Roberts Jarman and he has carried into the
modern world the traditional music that she knew and preserved. Eldra
was from a very musical family of Gypsies/Romany in North Wales. Her
grandfather, an aunt, and 9 of 10 uncles were prize-winning
professional harpists.
My experience of the film is that it captures the sweetness of first
love, and also exposes racial and religious prejudice that is both
local and universal.
Eldra won at the previous year's Moondance International Film Festival
in Boulder, Colorado.
For anyone in Denver or the Front Range of Colorado: The Colorado Welsh
Society is offering a showing of Eldra
on February 20th, 2010, at 2:00
pm at the Bemis Public Library, 6014 South Datura Street,
Littleton, 80120. This event is free and open to the public. Newcomers
will have a chance to discuss any questions with members of the Welsh
Society. www.ColoradoWelshSociety.org
==============================
REVIEWS
Note: There were a couple of negative reviews, from viewers expecting
more darkness and complexity from this family film. But viewers
familiar with Welsh culture loved it. Read on ...
REVIEWS
from The Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342324/
User
Reviews
Beautifully,
well crafted film, reminiscent of old wales, 29 January 2007
Author: amayes-1
from caerwys, north wales
I absolutely
adored this movie. The setting and style of the film is very
reminiscent of my time growing up in rural north wales. I found the
film very believable, my mother and sister also watched Eldra, and we
all commented on how 'welsh' it was. The ruralness came across
wonderfully, and the choices welsh families had in that era, were well
thought out. Eldra's family obviously come across as very Romany Pagan,
and it's this which causes the conflict between them and their
neighbours, this is not unheard of still to this day. It's only when
Eldra befriended a local, we find that both communities and cultures
could come together, if this is allowed to blossom. Maybe more folk
should watch this movie! I highly recommend it, and as a non welsh
speaker (okay, apart from the odd word here and there), i found the
subtitles just fabulous!
A
miniature masterpiece, 29 January 2007
Author:
philipdavies from United Kingdom
The
matter-of-fact acceptance by the Romani of the wonderful truths of
their traditional beliefs is beautifully played out, in this miniature
masterpiece, against the equal hatred and fascination of the settled
modern community which surrounds them, under the looming industrial
backdrop of the slate-tips of Bethesda, in nineteen-thirties North
Wales.
The excellent
ensemble of Welsh actors have completely identified with this
nostalgic, yet still relevant, glimpse of a famous harpist's girlhood.
This Eldra of the title is beautifully realised by the young Iona
Jones, in a performance of simple honesty. John Ogwen's grandfather
('Taid') is noteworthy as a gently feral goblin of a man who comes and
goes like the fitful promptings of a race memory. The creative sympathy
of Robat's (Gareth Wyn Roberts) encounter with these strange and exotic
folk reveals the strength of a fine soul, already secure in his
diminutive frame, and provides moreover a tragic contrast with the
fearful aggression of his siblings, already wholly identified with an
Americanised culture of capitalism and cheap sensation. The contrast
with the gentle family relationship which Eldra's people seem to
maintain with the whole of creation could hardly be greater.
Indeed, it is a
shock to see Robat's brothers, in one scene, force him to play a
despised 'Indian' to their fearful lynch-minded 'cowboys' in order to
punish his race-treason. It should, however, be noted that the implied
critique is probably more pertinent to the unformed characters of young
lads, than intended as any wider sociological observation of the adult
world which they inhabit: The quarrymen were generally a rather
civilised lot, and it is perhaps the absence of any fuller presentation
of their cultural background that limits this film. Lord Penrhyn is
also perhaps too much of an old-fashioned top-hatted Marxist caricature.
It is of course
possible to see this simplistic view of the dominant 'Gorja' culture as
a representation of little Eldra's still unquestioning acceptance of
her own people's mythic rendering of the shifting cultural and
historical scenes around them in terms of their own ancient experience:
Fascinating it is to see how she naturally recasts the 'Castle' of Lord
Penrhyn in terms of the vanished feudal world of kings and peasants.
This vital mythology is not a game to her, as 'Cowboys and indians' is
only a game for the local lads - however revealing it may be to the
observer. It flows from the childhood of the race, rather than from the
latest Cowboy film at the local cinema.
The great
strength of the film is, in fact, its location of 'fairyland' in the
most powerful intuitions of our common human nature, and in its ability
to show how the simple goodness of such a natural world is equally
accessible to the two children, who befriend each other across the
great cultural divide which so troubles the relations of their
respective peoples.
This naturalism
in the presentation of childhood puts this film into the same
distinguished class as 'Fairy tale: a true story', that wonderful
meditation on private childhood and public trauma in an England bereft
of all certainties by the Great War. By the same token, 'Eldra' also
stands as a quiet reproach to the rootless and empty biopic 'Miss
Potter', which touches on its themes only to falsify them by the sort
of frenetic dramatisation more suited to such barbarisms of shallow
wish fulfilment as are enacted in American shoot-'em-ups; for be it
ever so genteel, 'Miss Potter' is just the kind of film to perpetrate
unthinking formulaic violence on an innocent subject! 'Miss Potter',
with its intrusive animations, presents a Beatrix Potter who is to be
understood and justified as a precursor of Walt Disney; 'Eldra'
presents a child of nature, to be understood on her own terms, and in
her own time. Eldra's animal companions - the fox and the owl - are
themselves. Like an icon, the Welsh film extends its reality out into
the world, from where it came. The big-production feature draws us into
a manufactured make-believe masquerading as reality, and traps us in
its world of airless contrivance.
Perhaps the most
abiding image of 'Miss Potter' is her young brother impaling another
moth for his collection, whilst crying 'Die, you devil.' The film has
stirrings of an uneasy conscience.
Eldra's Brown
Owl seems to fly off through the artificial night which supervenes
after the final credits at the end of the Welsh film, magically
transforming that impenetrable silence with one surprising cry. The
'smaller' film clearly has a grasp of something far grander than the
posturings and muggings of the mainstream offering.
You only need
see the natural face of Iona Jones and then the mannered and grotesque
over-acting of Renee Zellweger, for comparison, to know instantly which
is the greater film.
Fantastic
Social Portrayal..., 26 June 2006
Author:
david-gregory5-1 from United Kingdom
An excellent
film showing life in Gwynedd during the 1930's.
Despite other
comments, this was how Gypsy families were treated during this period
in the area, and the Lord of the Manor was boorish, and the
relationship (or rather lack of) between the Lord and the people of
Bethesda still creates bitterness from the latter today.
This is one of
the better lighter Welsh language movies, and ideal for a Sunday
afternoon movie. If you cannot speak Welsh, I suggest you look for a
Subtitled copy, as it is well worth watching.
An excellent
portrayal of 1930's life in Bethesda, and fantastic scenic filmography
too. Well worth watching if you are studying Welsh history, or just
love beautifully shot films.
Return to http://www.ediestone.com/welshpages.html
for more Welsh Events, and Articles by Edie Stone.
Visit http://www.coloradowelshsociety.org/
for information on the Colorado Welsh Society.