For the past decade, the annual Mother Tongue Film Festival has showcased films and filmmakers from around the world, celebrating cultural and linguistic revitalization and highlighting the crucial role languages play in our daily lives. To commemorate ten years of Mother Tongue, this year the festival spans ten days: four days of in-person screenings in Washington, D.C., followed by six days of online programming featuring films that have been screened in previous years.
I attended the opening night of the festival at the National Museum of the American Indian, where the Rasmuson Theater filled with people who experienced Cree filmmaker Tasha Hubbard’s feature-length documentary Singing Back the Buffalo. It was a profound experience to view the film in person with so many people, including the Zotigh Singers, who performed a welcome song, and Hubbard herself, who participated in a candid and insightful Q&A afterward. The audience laughed, gasped, and sighed together in the theater, making it a truly shared experience.
But as I took to my phone on the Metro ride home to tell my friends they should find and watch this documentary on their own, the special opportunity provided by the virtual portion of the festival became clear to me. The films featured online, each available for twenty-four hours, will be accessible to a much larger audience. While that audience may not be in a room together, viewers can immediately share their experiences of these films with their friends, families, and communities, regardless of geography. With this in mind, I was excited to interview some of the filmmakers whose work is featured in the virtual festival.
These filmmakers drew inspiration in different ways, but that inspiration always linked back to their own cultures. In making Blackbird, a short narrative film about two Solomon Islander siblings who were kidnapped in the late 1800s to work on a sugar cane plantation in Queensland, Amie Batalibasi was inspired by her Solomon Islands ancestors and a desire to share history that is not well known even in Australia, despite the country’s long and sometimes troubled relationship with the islands.
“I wanted to acknowledge the tens of thousands of Pacific Islanders who were brought to Australia to work in the sugar cane, sacrificing identity, family, connection and culture,” Batalibasi said. “I wanted to remember those who lost their lives as a result of coming here. More than twenty-five percent of Islanders died—the highest mortality rate of any immigrant group to come to Australia, ever. This history sent ripple effects throughout the Pacific, and that is still being seen and felt today.”
Historical education, though, is not Batalibasi’s only goal. In the many cultures of the Solomon Islands, she explained, storytelling is foundational. She sees Blackbird as an invitation to the audience to “share in story.”
“My favorite thing is sitting in my village and sharing stories with my family over a hot tea in tropical weather,” Batalibasi said. “What people take away is theirs to keep and/or share. I’m grateful to have heard from audiences around the world who have connected with the film. It’s a beautiful thing when someone comes up to me to share how they feel, the tears they shed, even the anger they feel to learn about this history.”
As she works to uplift fellow Solomon Islander voices, she hopes to see the industry change into a place where she can finally make a feature-length version of Blackbird. “I’m looking for a producer who trusts that I can tell this story and an industry that will embrace it. It’s been ten years and I’m ready.”
Māori filmmaker Becs Arahanga’s Hinekura was a chance to explore her long-held fascination with “our menstrual practices, or lack thereof.” She learned as a teenager how Māori precolonial menstrual practices share similarities with Indigenous American cultures in how they honor menstruation and consider tribe members who were menstruating to hold an important role. In the short film, a Māori girl in 1600s Aotearoa (New Zealand) goes on a traditional, transformational, empowering journey upon experiencing her first menses.
“In our culture, women are spiritual leaders and have a powerful connection to nature,” Arahanga shared via email. “I was told, some traditions, such as those of the Ojibwe tribe, would include spiritual retreats and ceremonies, where first-time menstruators learnt about responsibility and importance from community elders, as well as having time to reflect and connect with nature. The inspiration for Hinekura came from wanting to explore that further, and the character of Hine just kind of revealed herself.”
She hopes that the themes of Hinekura resonate with teenagers who watch the film and help them reject the idea that “menstruation is just something we must endure. Our bleeds are sacred and meaningful.” An important part of this message is shown through male characters in the film, who embrace the power and sacredness of menstruation alongside Hine. “I would love for people to learn more about their own coming-of-age practices and to either reignite or start their own traditions and practices for our young people.”
“We are in a very interesting time of humanity and of humanities normalization of dehumanization,” she continued. “Connection and belonging, I believe, is crucial in helping to battle this, and bring us all back to what is true and good: it is people, it is people, it is people.”
Eris Qian is a filmmaker who was born in Nanjing, China, whose first language is Mandarin. Her father’s family, though, was from a rural village in the northern part of the province, and his parents only spoke their local dialect, creating a “silent gap” between Qian and her grandparents.
“I never thought much of it—until I moved to the U.S. for college and realized how much of my heritage I had never fully understood,” Qian said. “Meeting American-born Chinese friends who never had the privilege of learning their parents’ mother tongue deepened my reflection.” These shared migrant experiences became the inspiration for her film Mother Tongue, which centers on a second-generation Chinese American woman whose mother, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, loses the ability to speak English, leaving mother and daughter without a common language.
Although she drew inspiration from shared experiences, Qian cautions against viewing her film as representation of a broad “Chinese culture.”
“Contrary to popular belief, Chinese culture is not monogamous, but quite the opposite,” she said. “Chinese migration has spanned thousands of years, driven by war, natural disasters, and the pursuit of opportunity—often shaped by major historical events. This long history of movement has made Chinese culture remarkably diverse, with a strong diasporic identity.”
Still, the foundational theme of Mother Tongue is one she hopes resonates with any audience: “That love transcends time and space, while we grieve the generational loss of our heritage.”
These filmmakers each came away from the production of their films with special memories. For Qian, a massive snowstorm hit on the first day of production for Mother Tongue. “While we managed to send the cast and most of the crew back from the blizzard-trapped upstate, me and a few core crew members stayed overnight at the senior home we shot at. They were really kind to provide rooms for each of us, and it really warmed our hearts,” she said.
The weather made memories for Arahanga on the set of Hinekura as well.
“You’ll notice when Hine first arrives back to the village, it’s wet and muddy. Well, it was actually horrendous.” Continuous rain made it difficult to film what were supposed to be much larger scenes than made it into the film, she explained. “Rivers were flooded, mud up to our knees, perched on the side of a hill. We only managed to shoot four scenes over two days. But it looked amazing, and we still managed to patch together some semblance of story with the small amount we managed to get in the can.”
She also emphasized her love for the cast members, whom she felt fit perfectly into their roles, adding, “The whole process was a spiritual journey, and I was very grateful for it all.”
For Batalibasi, shooting Blackbird provided a chance to connect with the Indigenous community in their filming location. “Beautiful South Sea Islanders and First Nations community welcomed our cast and crew on Yuwibara country (Mackay, Queensland) where we filmed,” she said. “Many were extras on our film. Elders came to show us how the cane is cut by hand. We stood together on the lands where this history happened, as ancestors of those who came here, telling this story. It was something I’ll never forget.”
Blackbird will be available through the virtual Mother Tongue Film Festival on Wednesday, February 26. Hinekura and Mother Tongue will be available on Friday, February 28.
Rebecca L. West is a digital public history intern at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and a graduate student at George Mason University. Interviews were edited for length and clarity.
