Lingua Mater a journey through the voices of the world
The documentary film “Lingua Mater” by the Friulian director Massimo Garlatti-Costa was presented today in the church of San Francesco in Udine, within the Vicino/Lontano festival. The result of six years of research in Europe, Africa and South America, the film is an intimate and choral journey into the emotions and linguistic identities of people, to discover their mother tongues, a fragile and vital heritage of every community. Through testimonies collected in different geographical and cultural contexts, Lingua Mater tells how minority languages – often neglected or threatened – can preserve universal values and offer contemporary interpretations of the sense of belonging, love, work, faith and solidarity.
“ The mother tongue is the first sound a child learns to know, it represents the origin and belonging of an individual and a people in every part of the world – reports the director -. It is a principle of universal diversity. The documentary follows the trade routes of the gigantic ships that ply the seas and oceans, connecting ports and peoples ”.
Through the use of the container, in fact, one of the physical symbols of commercial globalization, the story synthetically transmits information and data, amplifying the viewer's awareness of the serious danger that languages (minor and otherwise) are facing in this historical moment. " The documentary, and the project in a broader sense, by telling the life, joys and difficulties of less widespread languages, spoken by 200 people or by millions, aims to inspire in viewers an open mind, rediscovery of roots and valorization of cultural and linguistic heritage, with an eye to the present and the future - specifies Garlatti Costa -. Through testimonies in the mother tongue on universal themes such as friendship, work, love, faith and solidarity, the aim is to overturn the idea that local languages are not suitable for expressing contemporary concepts ". Like a wanderer, the documentary will travel along ancient paths, telling how a Friulian farmer can share values and experiences with a Basque farmer, or how a Slovenian woman lives the same urgency to pass on her own language as a Franco-Provençal speaker in Puglia. A journey into authenticity and the true sense of belonging to a living and precious heritage.
The film documents the struggle of the Occitan community in Spain, France and Italy to defend their mother tongue, in very different cultural and political contexts. It then narrates the battle of the Friulian priests who ask for the recognition of the missal and the liturgical celebration in their mother tongue. The documentary then moves to Catalonia, where it addresses the issue of the Catalan language in the current difficult political context, and then arrives in Africa, where it explores tribal languages on a journey that goes from Togo, to Kenya, to Senegal, to Nigeria. The journey ends in Buenos Aires, in a very small but active community of Friulians who try to keep their language and culture alive.
“Lingua Mater” is co-produced by the production company Belka Media and Raja Films and directed by Massimo Garlatti-Costa. It was supported by the association LEM- Italia, Lingue dell'Europa e del Mediterraneo, the Audiovisual Fund of Fvg, the Film Commission of Fvg, the University of Girona, the University of Udine, the Autonomous Region of Fvg and the support of numerous national and international universities: Université Paris Sorbonne, Université de Paris, Université Bordeaux Montaigne, University of Teramo, the Federico II University of Naples, the Research Centre on the Basque Language and Texts IKER, the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme of Bordeaux, Odellum, Observatory of the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, the Société savante plurilingue et interdisciplinaire POCLANDE.
İl Friuli
