Spread the word about Cloquet-filmed ‘Older Than America’

Talk about it

Films are perhaps the greatest vehicles for grabbing the modern attention span. And sometimes, a film based on a true story or historical event is one of the only ways people learn about the past.

Far too often, we live in the here and now, focused on what the current picture shows us. We don’t know, or don’t care, about what came before, and what led us to the current picture.

The film “Older Than America” compels us to look at a part of the past, our past here in Minnesota, that we may not want to see.

It’s a part that everyone should see, however.

The film revolves around the lasting impact of Indian boarding schools – which closed their doors in Minnesota as recently as the 1970s – on survivors and their descendants.

It’s not pretty, but learning about that part of history explained a lot to Georgina Lightning, who wrote, directed and starred in the film. Her father, who was forced into a boarding school, eventually died by suicide.

Fond du Lac Reservation officials felt the film’s topic was so important that they called Lightning immediately after reading the request to shoot on the reservation.

As Lightning was told when talking to Fond du Lac Reservation officials about making the movie here, “There isn’t one person who hasn’t felt the impact of Indian boarding schools.”

The Cloquet film screenings on Thursday evening were sold out and hundreds of people were turned away, which means a great deal of area people are interested in the film.

Now Lightning will work the film festival circuit in hopes of finding a major distributor to release it in theaters across the country.

If you weren’t able to get a seat for the Cloquet screenings, you can find much information about the film online. Clips can be seen at www.olderthanamerica.com, YouTube and MySpace.

Sign up to be a friend of the film at the MySpace page of the film’s production company, Tribal Alliance.

If you were one of the lucky few who got to view the film in Cloquet, tell everyone about the experience. Be the buzz that brings history to light so, as Lightning says, everyone can heal and move forward.

Lisa Baumann

Tags: older, than, america, cloquet, movie