Bethel is the venue for the U.S. premiere of a documentary about Mennonite immigration from Russia to North America.
Kauffman Museum is sponsoring the screening of Where the Cottonwoods Grow, a full-length (77 minutes) documentary by Dale Hildebrand, June 1 at 3 p.m. in Krehbiel Auditorium in Luyken Fine Arts Center.
Unlike most film screenings at Bethel, there is an admission charge: $15 for adults, $10 for children and youth age 6-16. Tickets are available online at https://kauffmanmuseum.org/event/film-premiere-where-the-cottonwoods-grow/, in Thresher Shop in Schultz Student Center Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-5 p.m. (in person or by calling 316-284-5205), or at the door.
The film marks the closing of Kauffman Museum’s special exhibit “Unlocking the Past: Immigrant Artifacts & the Stories They Tell.” The exhibit will have special extended hours of 1:30-6 p.m. on June 1.
In 1874, thousands of Mennonites made their way from Imperial Russia, many from what is now Ukraine and Poland, to settle in the Great Plains of the United States and Canada.
Their descendants live in Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, and western Canada, comprising the largest ethnoreligious group in southern Manitoba, from which Hildebrand comes.
He grew up on a farm near the small town of Halbstadt, Manitoba. He has been working as a film-maker for decades, and wanting to tell the Mennonite story almost as long.
As the 150th anniversary of migration approached, he and his older sister, Eleanor Chornoby, began co-writing the script for a documentary, which Hildebrand then directed and produced.
In Where the Cottonwoods Grow, Chornoby appears as a woman reading from diaries about the 1874 journey to a group of other women working on a quilt. The story unfolds as the patches are sewn.
The film employs computer-generated imagery (CGI) to recreate the 1874 grasslands of Ukraine, western Canada and the U.S. Midwest, and the steamships that brought immigrants across the Atlantic and then up the Red River.
Local, non-professional actors from Altona, Gretna, Steinbach and Winkler appear in the film, which is narrated by professional Canadian actor Paul Gross.
It includes the Mennonites’ interaction with the Métis, the indigenous people already living in southern Manitoba.
Hildebrand says both groups were “caught in the cross-hairs of colonization and nation-building,” and that he tried to show the positive relationships without whitewashing the negative.
The film features scenes and interviews on location at historic sites in southern Manitoba such as the housebarn and herdsman’s house at the Friesen Interpretive Centre in Neubergthal, Lower Fort Garry, and the Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach. Interviews in the film include Mennonite archivist Conrad Stoesz and Chief Ogima Peter YellowQuill.
Following the screening at Bethel, there will be an in-person talkback session with Chornoboy and her husband, Larry Chornoboy, the film’s executive producer.
Regular Kauffman Museum hours are Tues.-Fri. 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 1:30-4:30 p.m., closed Mondays and major holidays. Admission to the special exhibit, “Unlocking the Past: Immigrant Artifacts & the Stories They Tell,” and permanent exhibits – “Of Land and People,” “Mirror of the Martyrs” and “Mennonite Immigrant Furniture” – is $5 for adults, $3 for children ages 6-16, and free to Kauffman Museum members and children under 6. The museum store is open during regular museum hours. See kauffmanmuseum.org or the museum Facebook page for more information.
