Telling Stories that Haunt the Imagination

 Niblack Arts Lecture Series Brings Filmmaker Lavinia Currier to Foxcroft

It’s about the stories you choose to tell. That was the theme at the heart of Lavinia Currier’s remarks to students Wednesday at the final event of her two-day visit to Foxcroft School. Currier, a local filmmaker and environmentalist brought to Foxcroft by the Helen Cudahy Niblack ’42 Arts Lecture Series, Tuesday had shared a meal with 10 lucky students and screened her film, OKA!, to a capacity crowd of about 350 in the School’s Student/Athletic Center. After the screening, Currier fielded questions from students and others. At each event, she returned again and again to storytelling, and the importance of stories.
One of the goals of the Niblack series is to provide an artist with the opportunity to share her artistic journey in a comfortable and familiar setting, creating space for an exchange of ideas that just might inspire a Foxcroft girl or two to chase her own artistic dreams. A group of students that included aspiring filmmakers and screenwriters, artists and actors, a few environmentalists, and even a future medical doctor joined Currier for dinner, and the filmmaker’s natural graciousness and interest in her dinner companions’ dreams meant it wasn’t long before that goal was being met.

The girls peppered Currier with questions, and a lively conversation blossomed. Topics ranged from the state of the independent film industry, the need for doctors and other volunteers in the Central African Republic to address easily curable diseases that afflict the pygmy tribes, the kinds of challenges she and her crew faced during filming, how Foxcroft supports the girls’ creative endeavors, and how technology is changing the way people interact with media.

A short stroll across campus brought Currier to Engelhard Gymnasium, which was filled with the entire Foxcroft community and nearly 150 individuals from Middleburg and environs drawn to the screening of OKA! Head of School Mary Lou Leipheimer introduced Currier, who briefly introduced the film. “One of the charms of the film,” she said, “is the Bayaka themselves … They have something to teach us. We have so much and are often so unhappy. They have so little and yet are so happy. So this is something that struck me. I think the film talks about that as well as the environmental issues.”

OKA! tells a fictionalized story based on the memoir of Louis Sarno, an ethnomusicologist who lives among the Bayaka pygmies of the Central African Republic documenting their music and musical instruments. It is part fable, part adventure, and part mystery, with generous doses of humor and magic thrown in. A “docu-fable” as Currier called it. The enrapturing story and stunning cinematography transported the audience to the tropical rainforest of the Congo River Basin where logging and poaching are threatening pygmies and villages that, until recently, had been virtually untouched by modern civilization. As the credits rolled, a rousing round of applause sprang up as “Directed by Lavinia Currier” scrolled across the screen.

Following the film, Currier invited questions and was asked what actions she would have the audience take to effect change for the Bayaka people and African rainforest. She thanked the questioner, adding, “You make a film and you hope it will change the world. But the world stays the same.”

Currier had some practical advice too. “The first thing is to consume less. We all know this, but it is really hard to do it,” she said. “And also, right now in Africa, central Africa in particular, is facing a crisis of wildlife crime. That is something we can do something about. Support the groups that are fighting that. If we want any animal living wild on the planet we have to stop that. . . And, it’s urgent. It’s something that can’t wait.”
On Wednesday, Currier returned to campus for an armchair chat with the community. She returned to the theme of storytelling as she described how OKA! came to be. “It’s almost like the story grabs you at a certain point as a filmmaker,” she explained. “You cast around. You think what story do you want to tell? And then some story keeps nagging at you. This story kept coming back.”

Currier encouraged the girls to pay attention to “what things come into your imagination when you’re daydreaming, or when you’re sleeping, or when you’re searching for a subject for a paper. Be conscious of what those stories are, and let them take root. Because they probably tell you something about yourselves, what you care about, what you choose.”

The Foxcroft community is certainly grateful that the OKA! story nagged at Lavinia Currier – and that she chose to share it with us.

OKA! has been screened at film festivals and private showings over the past two years; Currier hopes to make it available on Netflix soon. Watch for it!
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An all-girls boarding and day school in Northern Virginia, Foxcroft prepares young women in grades 9-12 for success in college and in life. Our outstanding academic program offers challenging courses, including Advanced Placement classes and an innovative STEM program. Our premiere equestrian program is nationally recognized, and our athletic teams have won conference and state championships. Experience the best in girls' boarding schools: visit Foxcroft.