Two-line Poems for New Years

Four months of sadness 

enough to move 

just one more step 

up the hill past the creek 

where they threw two suitcases 

out a car window 

planting blue and yellow 

weeds in clay 

or a story 

in these tired eyes 

still looking up 

to see the moon. 

Pacing herself 

a metronome 

sounds 

the floor 

of her bog 

of a body 

cattails tickling

an ear 

where that 

conch shell 

flows 

red whispers 

to the sea.

Milk of Sorrow and the Gardens Part III

Milk of Sorrow and Gardens, Part III

The wall and gates, however, limit this garden to only the rich white colonizers and lock out 

Fausta’s indigenous family members and their impoverished community. As if responding to 

this exploitation, Fausta’s nose bleeds when she encounters her mistress Aida. In her servant’s 

alcove, she sings to hide her fear as she cuts off potato growth. The estate garden seems to 

usurp her own inner garden in this scene. Yet, when Fausta encounters and joins forces with 

the estate gardener, Noé (Efraín Solís), she discovers a way to bridge her community’s 

constructed garden and her own inner garden with the fecundity of Aida’s oasis. An initial 

connection occurs when shots of a colorful wedding in the desolate Lima hills are juxtaposed 

with images of a shattered piano disrupting Aida’s garden. In Lima’s desolate landscape, 

ornate clothing and violet tents transform into flowers erupting out of the desert. But Aida’s 

paradise is disrupted by the broken piano thrust from a window into the foliage below. In 

both scenes, the garden and machine merge, highlighting the similarity between the two 

spaces.

But it is Fausta’s relationship with Noé that moves her to a middle place that allows both 

human and nonhuman nature to blossom. Aida and her garden highlight the war and 

exploitation Fausta and her mother attempt to escape in Lima. Fausta’s uncle’s family 

shows us an artificial garden built for the colonized. But Noé and Fausta integrate 

nonhuman nature in the wasteland outside Aida’s walls. Although Aida claims watering 

her garden “calms her,” she exploits Fausta, stealing her mermaid song and breaking 

a promise to give Fausta the pearls they collect from a broken necklace. She remains 

locked away, even throwing Fausta out of her car after a concert. Noé on the other hand, 

offers her comfort and security, not only by escorting her home (from a distance) but 

by teaching her to cultivate plants, a skill she gained first from a village vegetable garden 

before their forced move to Lima. As Noé explains, “plants tell the truth about people,” 

and the flowers she chooses tell him she needs comforting. Together they burn the piano, 

as if resisting the machine. And instead of “bleeding roses” from her nose, Fausta holds 

a gardenia in her mouth. When she asks him why he plants everything but potatoes in 

the garden, Noé explains that potatoes are cheap and flourish little.

When Fausta finally begs to have the potato removed, she and Noé gain access to that more 

verdant middle place. After stealing back the pearls she earned, Fausta faints at the estate 

gate where Noé finds her and carries her to the clinic for the removal. With the pearls in 

her possession, Fausta can transport her mother away from Lima and reunite her with the 

natural world she was forced to leave behind. In a dramatic turn, Fausta carries her mother 

across a beach and leaves her close to the ocean where she sings as the sea takes her mother 

home. Fausta has now become part of a larger biotic community, a middle place where 

thriving traditional parks, bright-colored constructed gardens, and her own potato can thrive. 

As a symbol of this middle place, Noé leaves a flower on her porch, a blooming potato plant.

Milk of Sorrow Part II

A doctor’s visit to treat the bloody nose broaches a second garden, a vining potato Fausta has inserted to shield her from men and the trauma her mother suffered. The uncle insists they are there only to treat her chronic bleeding and fainting episodes, and claims they are a product of her “milk of sorrow,” a horrific side effect of the terrorism into which Fausta was born. But the doctor notes only the potato, which has now inflamed Fausta’s vagina. If the potato grows, the doctor explains, roots will protrude. The uncle worries about harvesting potatoes and insists Fausta’s only ailment is the milk of sorrow. And Fausta argues the potato is not meant as a contraceptive but as a rape deterrent. Fausta is becoming a garden, but to avoid infection, the potato should be removed. Then Fausta can escape the trauma of her mother’s rape and death and consequently more effectively represent a middle place like that Adamson asserts.

Fausta’s attempt to bury her mother in her home village outside Lima reveals the third garden in the film: a traditional imperialist garden behind enormous gates walling out Lima and the arid mountains surrounding it. When her uncle gives Fausta only until his daughter’s wedding to bury her mother in her village, Fausta must find funds to transport the corpse. As New York Timescritic Jeannette Catsoulis explains, the film “explores the possibility of female empowerment in a culture suffocated by superstition and poverty.” If she fails to collect the needed money, Fausta’s mother will be buried in the backyard, in a grave her uncle transforms into a makeshift swimming pool. After investigating alternatives, including taking the body on a bus, Fausta accepts a job as a servant for a wealthy musician. When Fausta enters the estate, she leaves the noise and desolation of Lima behind her. Inside the estate’s gates is a green paradise full of trees and flowers. This literal garden aligns with a parting song Fausta sang to her mother’s corpse as they preserved it. For Fausta, her mother will be “picking flowers in heaven.” In the estate garden, Fausta can pick them on Earth.

2018 in Pictures

The Milk of Sorrow (2009) and the Power of the Garden, Part I

The Milk of Sorrow and the Power of the Garden, Part 1

Directed by Claudia Llosa, the Peruvian drama The Milk of Sorrow (2009) illustrates at least three versions of the 

garden growing out of classism, racism, and a bloody civil war. Centered on young daughter Fausta’s (Magaly Solier) 

struggle to cope with her mother’s death and the memories of war she leaves behind, The Milk of Sorrow draws on 

musical and visual poetry of gardens to reveal conflicts between Fausta’s impoverished indigenous Lima, Peru 

community and the white upper-class inner-city fortress where she works as a servant. 

Ultimately, Fausta reconciles these conflicting views, negotiating a solution that promotes a middle ground like that 

Adamson proposes. The brightly colored artificial garden Fausta’s family creates may contrast greatly with the walled 

paradise inside Fausta’s employer Aida’s (Susi Sánchez) gates, but the garden growing inside Fausta (both literally 

and figuratively) serves as a bridge between their conflicting ideologies.

The first “garden” introduced in the film breaks the mournful singing and tragic death that open the film. Fausta’s 

mother shares her terrifying story on her deathbed, singing of the rapes she endured during Peru’s dirty war between 

Maoist guerrillas and government security forces in the 1980s and the cursed outcome for Fausta. Fausta has fed on 

her mother’s “milk of sorrow” and must feel her trauma even after her mother’s death. As critic Rick Vecchio explains, 

“tens of thousands of Andean Indians did flee to Lima in the 1980s and 1990s to escape political violence… [and] 

helped to shape the rich tapestry of Peru’s culture and form the character of its society.” 

When Fausta’s mother passes “like a dead bird,” however, the film reveals the colorful constructed garden outside 

Fausta’s uncle’s house. Although surrounded by barren mountains, Fausta’s cousin is trying on a wedding dress in 

their dusty yard, and the brightly dressed family sits around an outdoor table looking like flowers bursting out of the 

desert hills of their blue painted barrio. When Fausta appears, her nose begins to bleed, and a close-up of the blood 

seems to bud like a rose.This first garden provides color that combats the colorless traumas of war and gender and 

racial oppression.

Embarras Valley Film Festival Winners!

Documentary Film and Video Award Winners

First Place: Emily McNeill, Artist in Progress

Artist on Vimeo

Second Place: Miller Bradford, Submersion 

Submersion on YouTube

Fictional Film and Video Award Winners:

First Place: Ashley Cai, Hermes

Second Place: Alyce Rogers, Adam

2018 Embarras Valley Film Festival Student Film Selections to View in Lumpkin Auditorium on November 28 from 3-4:30

2018 EVFF Student Film Selections

Directions:Vote for your top 3. Circle the three films you liked the most and, if you’d like, number them 1-3, with 1 being first place, 2 begin second, and 3 being third place.

Documentaries:

Madelyn by Mackensie Archibald [YouTube, EIU Student, 3.03] ______________

Monica Genta by Elazia Key [EIU Student, 2.43] _______________

Change is Coming by Ajan Patel [2.42] ______________________

Submersion by Miller Maahnes [6.35] __________________

ISalsa by Sandra Lena [7.00] __________________

One Story at a Time by Nathan Legger [5.13] ________________

Love, Olivia by Olivia Walker [5.29] ____________________

Artist in Progress by Emily McNeill [High School, 6.44] ____________________

Fictional Films:

The Button by Woody Hamilton [7.46] ___________________

Maybe Next Time? By Taylor Moore [2.09] __________________

The Lights are on But Nobody’s Home by Ethan Stephens [6.56]   ________________

Adam by Alyce Rogers [High School, 8.11] __________________

The Thrill of the Chase by Mike Sano [3.45] ___________________

Hermes by Ashley Cal [2.38] ____________________

Lilith by Nicole McBride [4.10] __________________

Misaligned by Weiyang Ben Wu [High School, 6.05] ____________________

Embarras Valley Film Festival at Eastern Illinois University on November 28!

Research Across Multiple Media at Eastern Illinois University

Research Across Multiple Media

To simply describe Robin Murray as an English professor at Eastern Illinois University is to overlook the broad range of interests and expertise she brings to EIU in additional areas like film studies and women's studies. In particular, a good deal of her writing centers around the subject of ecology and the way ecological matters are addressed in various media.

EIU Innovate Podcast

Dean Hendrickson discusses monsters, zombies, Clint Eastwood and Bambi, among other topics with Dr. Robin Murray, professor of English, Film Studies and Women's Studies on EIU Innovate. Dr. Murray is the author of 6 books and over 40 articles, many of which examine the interaction between the environment and film. She also is the Director of the Eastern Illinois University's Writing Project, a National Writing Project Site:

Podcast on Sound Cloud

EVFF Accepting Student Films!

Embarras Valley 

Film Festival 

Short Student Film Festival

Eastern Illinois University

Submit through Film Freeway: Film Freeway Submission Site

Embarras Valley Film Festival Call for Student Submissions

Deadline: November 18, 2018 
Festival: October 28, 2017

We are looking for short films of high artistic quality made by student filmmakers. Preference will be made for filmmakers from the Central Illinois area and high school students.

The EVFF is a yearly event honoring a person or theme relevant to the Embarras Valley, which encompasses much of East Central Illinois. This year’s festival highlights the horror and thriller film in Illinois.

Submission Guidelines: 
• Films should be short: no more than 10 minutes in length. 
• Entries should be labeled with: 
1. your name, 
2. address, 
3. email address, 
4. the title of your film, 
5. and a 2-3 sentence synopsis.

For more information about the festival visit 
www.eiu.edu/~evff 
or email rlmurray@eiu.edu

There is no submission fee for this student film festival. 

Awards & Prizes

Small monetary awards will be provided for first, second, and third place winners.

Rules & Terms

We are looking for short films/videos of high artistic quality made by student filmmakers, including promos, documentary shorts, and fictional films of any genre. 
Preference will be made for student filmmakers from Eastern Illinois University, the Central Illinois area, and Illinois high school students.

Submission Guidelines: 
• Films should be short: under 10 minutes in length. 
• Entries should be labeled with: 
1. your name, 
2. address, 
3. email address, 
4. the title of your film, 
5. and a 2-3 sentence synopsis.

For more information about the festival visit 
www.eiu.edu/~evff 
or email rlmurray@eiu.edu

There is no submission fee for this student film festival. 

Film Genre Activity for Incoming Freshmen

1. What kind of movies or TV shows are these?
2. How do you know?
3. What elements separate films of this sub-genre from other types of films or media? Other horror films or media?
4. What do these films or media tell you about the qualities of this sub-genre?
5. How do you account for the differences among these film/media?
6. How well received would a film be if it deviated too greatly from your expectations for that sub-genre? For example, how would audience members react if they went to a movie billed as a comedy, and the film did not have a happy ending?
7. How important are audience expectations? How much should writers consider their audience(s), when they are beginning to write?
8. How does knowing a text’s genre help you as a reader?

• First think of a favorite movie and consider where you might find it on Netflix, if it were not a new release: It could be categorized as a comedy, a romantic comedy, an action/adventure film, a drama, a horror film, or a science fiction/fantasy film. It might also be an animated film/children's film, a documentary, or a classic or a foreign film, etc.

• Once you determine the category heading under which the movie would be placed in the store, you can get together with peers who have favorite films in the same category and begin analyzing the characteristics films in your category share—plus ones that seem unique to your particular film.

• In groups arranged by genre, or movie category, answer questions like the following to outline the characteristics of your movie's genre:

1. What is the setting (time and place) of the film like?
2. What is the plot like? Is there a happy ending? Is there an indication that a sequel might be possible? Are there recurring storylines?
3. What are the characters like? Are there stock characters? If so, what are they like? Are the characters well developed? Or is the movie more driven by the plot or story?
4. What kind of special effects are there in the movie? What purpose do they serve?
5. How does the cinematography contribute to the film and its content?

Our Ecocinema Research (Book Publications): Ecocinema and Media Website