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This May Be the Last Time | Director Sterlin Harjo
This May Be the Last Time Attention, our audience’s and our own — it’s a valued commodity these days. We struggle to command our audience’s attention, for them to discover our work and then, once they’ve discovered it, to actually focus on it. Meanwhile, we struggle to focus our own attention, to fight our society’s weapons of mass distraction so we can not just see our work to completion but fully discover the meanings within it. What role does attention play in your work? Can you discuss an instance where you thought about some aspect of attention when it came to your film? Please feel free to take this question in any direction you choose.
Getting people to pay attention to a style of singing that was born in the 1800’s seems like a daunting task. Today, if you can’t find the music on Spotify it’s so easy to overlook. My film is about songs… songs that were slowly brought to Oklahoma on the Trail of tears… literally by foot. People actually died bringing these songs from Florida, Alabama, and Georgia. For that alone I think they are worth our attention. The most beautiful thing is to watch someone watch the film: it’s as if their eyes and ears can’t move. The singing wraps them up in the warmth of history and the beauty of survival. Their attention never wavering.
[PREMIERE SCREENING: January 19 at 2:30 pm – Prospector Square Theatre, Park City]
