Wednesday, April 8, 2009 8:13 PM CDT
Amish parents to UK documentary producer: 'Skip town'
By NATHANIEL WEST, Staff Writer
nwest@jg-tc.com
ARCOLA — Some Amish residents in the Arthur and Arcola areas are recommending a British film producer look elsewhere for participants in a documentary series contrasting Amish values with modern trappings, because the filmmaker’s goals are essentially impossible to achieve, said an official with the Illinois Amish Interpretive Center in Arcola.
Amber Kauffman, director of the center, received numerous phone calls and met with several Amish people concerned about a producer from London-based Keo Films who is seeking to fly a half-dozen Amish youths to England for a documentary about Amish culture.
“Their advice to me was tell this guy to skip town because he’s not going to get what he’s looking for anyway,” Kauffman said.
Toby Forrester-Paton, assistant producer for Keo Films, said the film series — which was commissioned by a major U.K. television station — would be a documentary, not a reality show. Consequently, filmmakers want the “best representatives” of the Amish community, he said.
Producers hope to recruit six Amish youths at the point of their lives that the Amish call “Rumspringa,” who would stay with English families for about six weeks this summer. The documentary series would offer a “very valuable counterpoint to our modern society, which is increasingly defined by fractured communities, self-obsessed individuals and rampant consumerism,” Forrester-Paton said previously.
During Rumspringa, Amish youths are allowed greater freedoms and are not yet under the authority of the Amish church, according to the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown (Pa.) College.
But Kauffman said the Amish residents with whom she spoke about the Keo Films project believe any local youths in Rumspringa who are “leaning toward joining the church” would not violate Amish rules against being filmed or flying in airplanes.
“Any individual who truly is wanting to join the church is not going to participate in a program like this,” said Kauffman, adding that Amish parents also told her, “Our youth here don’t have any desire to go against the rules of the church, even when they are in the Rumspringa.”
Forrester-Paton reiterated that he and other producers will proceed on the project regardless, but they still would rather not resort to recruiting young people who have already left the Amish church.
“I can appreciate the position of some members of the Amish community,” said Forrester-Paton. “Nevertheless, we’re going to continue working really hard to produce a sensitive documentary about the Amish culture and beliefs.
“We’re still very committed to doing whatever we can to put together a series that will represent an authentic and truthful picture of the Amish.”
Kauffman said some residents suggested Forrester-Paton try a larger Amish community elsewhere. “What he’s looking for he can’t actually get,” she said.
“The ethics of the film project will be compromised because he’s not going to actually get what he’s looking for.”
Forrester-Paton said he will remain in the Arthur and Arcola areas for another few days. He can be reached at 330-601-6812.
(The newspaper listed an incorrect cell phone number for Forrester-Paton in a previous article.)
Contact Nathaniel West at nwest@jg-tc.com or 238-6860.
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just watching wrote on Apr 8, 2009 11:14 AM: