AIFF 2012: No Minors Were Kissed In Shouting Secrets

Korinna Sehringer's Shouting Secrets was an audience pleaser Sunday night.  It was the story of family gathering together when the mom has a stroke.  It's an oft told story that reunites everyone, tensions raised by dealing with the possibility of Mom's death, to pick old scabs in their relationships or to finally heal. 

Lots of secrets were shouted in and around the hospital.  The story was good, the pacing was good, the music was good. What makes this film special for me, is that the family is Native American, acting like any American family. This is a film about a family dealing with its issues.  The family just happens to be Native American. 

Here's Sehringer in video taken before and after the film was shown. (The title of the post gets explained in the video too.)





From my white perspective, I didn't see anything that I think might be offensive to Native Americans, but that said, for some Native Americans (or fill in any ethnic or religious group you want) just the fact that the movie was conceived and directed by someone from outside the group would be offensive, and there may well be problems I just missed.  But it had Native Americans in most of the roles and Sehringer said Native American feedback had been good.

This is just one more film festival example of good films, films often better than what gets distributed to theaters, that have to struggle to be seen.

It plays again Friday at 3pm at the Alaska Experience Theater.  Background note: It's hard for an interviewer who hasn't seen the film (and even for one who has) to ask questions of a director she hasn't already answered many times. The trick is for the film maker to try to sound like it's the first time. I talked to Korinna briefly on video before the showing. Then afterward she answered questions from the audience. Both cover similar ground. So I've just edited in a little of the pre-screening interview onto the after-screening Q&A.