Posted June 17, 2008 - 7:42pm by Betsy J. Blosser
When you are out on a shoot, how many languages do you use? Yesterday, the BECA 580 class, doing a video for the women's weaving collective, Trama Textiles, in Quetzaltenango, was out on a shoot. We were in the town of San MartÃn de Sacapeques, interviewing women who had lost husbands in Guatemala's civil war. Picture 23 women, dressed in brightly colored huipiles (or blouses woven in traditional patterns), surrounded by squirmy kids. The women spoke to each other in the Mayan language, Ma'am. We spoke to them in Spanish. Most of the production team spoke to each other in English. And the camera person and audio person spoke to each other in their native Japanese! (Of the 11 of us from BECA, two are traveling on Japanese passports; one person carries a Philippine passport; one person was born in Turkey but carries a Swedish passport, and the rest have U.S. passports. The production director was born in the U.S., but was raised in Mexico, so she is able to speak in her native Spanish with the women from the collective.) So anyway, next time you are on a shoot, count the number of languages used. See if you can break our record!
