Good Example Of Movie Review On The Language You Cry In

“The language you cry in” is a title derived from the African chieftain of Mary Moran tribe which says that “you can identify a person’s tribe by the language they cry in”. “The language you cry in” is a unique film that displays the path very few African Americans get to experience, that is, being able to trace ones history to the pre-slavery era. This remarkable film pieces clues together to bring the story to a superb conclusion. An African American family tracks its history to the pre-slavery period through a recorded song. This ancient funeral song was sung by Amelia Dawley, who was a slave in Georgia, in the Gullah dialect or Mende language. The song was first discovered in 1931 by a music scholar in Georgia. It was the longest song ever sang by an American even though it is written in an Africa dialect (Toepke &Serrano, 1998).
The story sets out in 1970 when the song is rediscovered by ethnomusicologist Cynthia Schmidt and Joseph Opala, a professional anthropologist who travelled to Sierra Leone to find out the history of the song. “The language you cry in” is a story which uncovers the tribe from which the song was composed, rituals and the ceremonies associated with the song. Furthermore, Schmidt and Opala discovered that the song still feature in the United States. Moran, kept the singing tradition that had been handed down to her next family generation. This film portrayed Moran being united with the West African tribe where the song originated. Therefore, Mary and her family traced their history and homeland owing to a song recorded in the 1930s in the United States (Toepke &Serrano, 1998).
“The language you cry in” is a dramatic discovery that documents the research struggle in a vivid manner. The film travels from America to Sierra Leone and back, offering incredible poignancy and triumph. African Americans have retained their links with their African past even through the horrors of slavery, the middle passage and segregation. African-American men and women have a non-history which is displayed in “the language you cry in”. The film shows the important benefits of multi-disciplinary research. “The language you cry in” illuminates the contribution media technology is making in uniting the African Diaspora.

References

The Language You Cry In. Dir. Alvaro Toepke and Angel Serrano. California Newsreel, 1998. Film.