By Lynn Buske, Film Festival Organizer
The theme for this year’s film festival was “Community”. The films were selected by the host locations based on what films were recent, relevant to Eau Claire, available, and around the issues JONAH is connected to. All the films were so inspiring and well made! They revealed the PEOPLE in our community. What watching all these films together taught me about real community is:
- Community is HOME, in more than a physical sense..
- Community means we are all interconnected – what affects one affects the rest of us. It’s a network, a web. We can’t always see the interdependence but it is very much a reality!
- Community is EACH MEMBER of the community. Even people we can’t see are in my community.
- Identity is related to someone’s sense of belonging in community and their sense of HOME. Community is that fundamental – it shapes people’s very sense of identity. That means our actions affect others’ definition of self. (let that sink in)
- Relationships are absolutely key to people’s ability to feel home, know identity, have belonging and community, and for any of us to heal. Whether those relationships are healthy, unhealthy, or non-existent determine these things.
- I can never assume to know anything about someone else in the community or how I might be tied to them.
- History doesn’t go away if we don’t look at it. “Not everything we face can be changed but nothing can be changed without being faced.” – quote from the film ‘Bad Faith’.
This year’s festival was about more than films. It was about seeing what’s often hidden in order to help us understand ‘community’. It was ultimately about the space for incredible and needed conversations with each other to reach that understanding. I valued every discussion and learned something from every person who contributed to the conversation. That was healing for all of us! Below I dig into these political (political defined as “of the people”) learnings.
The Hidden Fabric of Community
Real Community is about the feeling of HOME. I never thought about this before, because I never had to. Home is more than a place to live and it is more than the feeling you have in that place, it is a sense of safety, belonging, connection, identity, and validation. There are too many members of our community who aren’t experiencing the sense of real community because they aren’t experiencing those factors. And when members of the community aren’t experiencing community – are we really a community to begin with?
In the Hmong film Being Hmong Means Being Free, the individuals interviewed each shared repeatedly they “have no home in this country”. They may have a place to live but never feel at home. They fight to keep their culture but it is impossible for it to be the same when they are away from the land of their ancestors. This land doesn’t provide what their traditions are used to, they do not feel welcome by others here, and certainly don’t feel validated for their way of being. Many Hmong give up their identity to belong here. They give up identity to survive. When they seek to fit in they lose a part of themselves.
“Is this how all immigrants and refugees feel?” I wondered to myself.
Everyone experiences fear, grief, anger around the IDEA of loss of identity. The film Dialogue Lab: America really revealed this as varying backgrounds got together to get to know each other better. But there is privilege in being able to protect that identity, a privilege that some have no choice but to give up their identity and values just to survive.
Another film that touched on this was Bad River, in which members of the Bad River Tribe share their fight to protect their land and water. The American Indians in the film shared learned feelings of shame for who they are, loss of their culture, and generational pain, and their strength and commitment to protect the future.
“We are all part of the same community, but not all of us are seen,” is a quote from Breaking Silence.
From layoffs to cultural loss, many are experiencing struggle in silence. The film Breaking Silence highlighted folks in the population who are hearing impaired and the barriers they face because people don’t understand their needs. When a deaf man’s daughter was incarcerated and he went to visit her, he saw that there’s a large population of incarcerated individuals who are deaf and have no services provided to them. Those in our prisons are members of our community. Those in the disabled population are members of our community.
Many of the films showed the different ways people seek home and belonging when their sense of home is taken. When Rubber Hit the Road shared the fallout when mass numbers were unemployed when Uniroyal shut down, fallout that people still feel today.
The film February showed the unexpected ways people find belonging when an immigrant bonded and shared shelter with someone who seemed an unlikely match. For anyone to find their belonging in a community and thrive here they need others to spend time with them. Which is hard to do if you are rejected. Home is also who is with you, and some have no one.
When the System Breaks, the Community Feels It
Watching the films also made it clear for me that the thing we are actually examining and lifting up in our work in JONAH, and thus the purpose of this film festival, is
1. We are all connected in our community, and
2. What happens when the system is broken – the community feels it.
For example, When Rubber Hit the Road showed that layoffs don’t just impact wallets — they impact identity, dignity, and culture. In the discussions after that film, attendees shared that the recent hospital closures showed the same ripple effect. Economic justice is not just policy — it’s relationships, trust, and resilience. Economic Justice is built by supporting local businesses and building their capacity to hire more people, strengthening the whole community.
Another example, in the film The Hidden Homeless on youth homelessness, it was really demonstrated, and our local expert Dani Graham (the Homeless Coordinator for the Eau Claire School District – ECASD) elaborated on it, how important it is to build relationships to help homeless youth navigate troubles. In order to really help those individuals, trust has to be built and earned. Partly because they have learned that adults fail them, and partly because each individual has such a unique experience and skill sets. We learned that not only are there 300+ homeless families in the ECASD system, but 40 youth are homeless in Eau Claire without any guardian – they are alone. Community is the ECASD paying for taxis to pick up these kids off the street everyday to get to school. We feel this brokenness not only in the schools, in the lives of these youth, but also the lack of their presence in the greater community and the pain in the truth that this happens.
One of the final films, Screenagers, really illustrated that because some problems, like screen usage, are so much bigger than one family, relationships are everything in keeping screen use healthy. We are all feeling the effects of too much screen time for youth and all of us. Connecting is the only way to heal and change our relationship to screens to relationships to each other.
Healing is Personal and Collective
So a community that isn’t truly operating as a real community needs healing.
Everything Wrong and Nowhere to Go talked about how healing is hidden work, often spiritual. It even discussed the notion that when you heal yourself, those around you heal too! It explained the term polyvagal – how the autonomic nervous system, influenced by the central nervous system, responds to environmental cues and influences our behavior, including our social engagement, survival responses, and mental health.
Healing our community is within us! But it does require a certain amount of privilege and character to seek help. The film Bad Faith discussed the idea of challenging harmful theology. It shared that for community to heal faith must be rooted in humility and justice. There must be a willingness and openness and trust in each other.
Some more hope on healing: Being Hmong Means Being Free shared that “spiritual frameworks invite us to reimagine identity”. And Dialogue Lab: America encouraged that small acts of listening can shift entire conversations. There are many ways we can heal if we try.
The Youth Are Watching — and Imitating
Screenagers offered strong messages to remind us of the urgency of the responsibility to heal. What our kids see, they mirror — and right now, it’s screens and perfectionism. Violent media increases their mistrust. Relationships and modeling matter! Parents, mentors, and community leaders need to lead by example. Bad River reminds us that our future community members are part of our community as well.
How to Build Community – You are a vital part of that.
- Lean on each other — we survive as communities, not individuals.
- Create space for hidden voices and unseen struggles.
- Accept people where they are — but also challenge growth.
- Reimagine faith traditions as rooted in justice, not judgment.
- Model the values we want to instill, especially in younger generations.
- Embrace cultural complexity without flattening it for comfort.
- Recommit to seeing what’s hidden.
- Share stories — your own and others’.
- Support local and cultural resilience (businesses, traditions, conversations).
- Engage in deep dialogue.
- Ask yourself: Am I learning? Am I listening?
- Invest in the future of community – not just today.
Closing Note
Community is so much more than we realize. We must look deeply to see all the parts of our community and realize every person is part of OUR community. It takes intention to build a place where people can belong. It is an inherent part of human existence that each person (and some would argue each animal and plant and organism and future members as well) feel a sense of home, healthy identity, belonging, and relationship to have a thriving community.
I highly encourage all of you to watch some of the films that are free to access, here are some titles and links below! Watch with someone and have conversations, too!
- Las Chicas y Chicos de Blossom St (PBS 2023, length 4:59) – WI Latin American experience https://pbswisconsin.org/article/wisconsin-life-animation-to-be-screened-at-beloit-international-film-festival/
- Breaking Silence (PBS 2024, length 18:06) – deaf father and hearing daughter, impacted by incarceration https://pbswisconsin.org/watch/pbs-online-film-festival/breaking-silence-ovovmi/
- Everything Wrong and Nowhere to Go (PBS 2023, length 12:04) – climate anxiety https://pbswisconsin.org/watch/pbs-online-film-festival/everything-wrong-and-nowhere-to-go-sdovha/
- Black Space (YouTube 2022, length 12:39) – Mental Health Stigma for Black Wisconsinites https://www.voanews.com/a/black-space—a-group-therapy-experience/6427099.html
- Power of Us (PBS 2021, approx 40 min) youth and adults collaborate to save the environment https://www.pbs.org/wnet/peril-and-promise/films/the-power-of-us/
- The Hidden Homeless (PBS 2013, approx 40 min) – WI teen homelessness https://www.pbs.org/video/wpt-documentaries-hidden-homeless/
- Being Hmong Means Being Free (PBS 200, approx 40 min) https://pbswisconsin.org/watch/pbs-wisconsin-documentaries/wpt-documentaries-being-hmong-means-being-free/
- Dialogue Lab: America (made in 2022, 1 hour in length), talking with others when disagree https://www.ideosinstitute.org/dialogue-lab-america-film