By Donna Lednicky | Director of Marketing and Development
In 2015, in partnership with the Luang Prabang Film Festival, we undertook an exciting project to film and share folk tales from three distinct ethnic communities of northern Laos: Tai Lue, Hmong, and Kmhmu.
We recognize that traditional folktales and legends are part of an oral tradition and the stories are oftenheld in the memories of elders. Also, women are important bearers of these cultural memories, but their voices are not often heard outside of their own communities. The Women and Folktales project reached out to ethnic communities anddocumented 19 traditional stories as told by women elders.
In January 2015 the filming began in small villages in Luang Prabang province. Seven women shared their stories with us and were filmed by a team of professional filmmakers.
Most of the women storytellers, like Meh Thao Tee, learned the stories when they were children. They began telling stories years ago when their own children were born. Meh Thao Deng says she told stories to all of her children, but now the children in the village do not want to listen because there is a television for them to watch.
Some women and men who heard the stories when they were young, do not remember them to tell their own children. In the village of Ban Khok Wa, 60 year old, Meh Thao Vah Lao did not tell stories for 8 years after her son and husband died. Now, since our team asked her to tell stories, her son asks her to tell stories to him every day.
To date, 19 folk tales have been recorded, edited, translated into Lao and English, and presented at the Luang Prabang Film Festival in December 2015. Three stories, one from each community, have been made into short animations.
Our plans for 2016 include posting all 22 videos online with both Lao and English subtitles, creating DVDs for distribution to schools, showing the films at TAEC, and sharing the animations with primary school children as part of the TAEC Educational Outreach programme.
We are proud of our work on the Women and Folktales project and look forward to sharing more news with you about the availability of these stories in 2016. Thank you again for all of your support, which enables us to take on special projects like this to empower ethnic minority communities and celebrate cultural diversity in Laos.
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