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"Words from the
Forest" © Copyright
2023 by Eric
Miller Below are summaries of the story of
"Words from the Forest," which is meant to be a commercial
fictional feature film with song and dance.
I have also written the screenplay for
"Words from the Forest" (not shown here). My primary aim in presenting the below is to
enable the reader to visualise the movie-to-be. If you or someone you know might possibly be
interested to help bring this story from the written word into existence as
an approximately 2-hour movie, please send an email to me at eric@storytellinginstitute.org
. It
seems it might be good for me to engage an agent who would seek to sell the
"Words from the Forest" screenplay to movie studios or individual
producers. If you are an agent, or
could possibly put me in communication with an agent, I would be very
grateful if you might send an email to me to say hello. By
the way: I am in sympathy with the ongoing strike by the screenwriting
members of the Writers Guild of America (info is here). Although I feel comfortable seeking to
engage an agent during the strike, we would concentrate on approaching USA
producers only once the strike would be over. Many thanks, Chennai (on India's southeast coast) 18th July 2023 __________ "Words from the
Forest" © Copyright 2023 by Eric
Miller 2) The
Story (3-page summary). 3) An
Outline of the Story: 7 Episodes, with 9 Songs. 5)
Author's Bio-data, and Commentary on the Story. __________ "Words from the
Forest" © Copyright 2023 by Eric
Miller 1) The Story (Brief Summary): Our story opens in New York City. Ten inhabitants of New York City – eight
16-and-17-year-old 11th-graders and two of their teachers – are planning to go
for a two-week summer-vacation educational visit with some tribal people in a
mountain forest in south India. Most of the USA teenagers are experiencing
"identity crises", as are some of the tribal teenagers who are
being visited. A number of the young
people sing and dance about what they are going through. Things change dramatically when one evening
the visitors use an experimental tablet computer they have with them to participate
in a videoconference via satellite from the side of a mountain, with their
tribal hosts also present. The
electronic image is projected onto a sheet that is hung between two wooden
poles. The videoconference is with an administrator
of the visitors' school back in NYC.
The administrator tells them that a global health crisis is underway:
millions of people have fallen into comas.
After five days, permanent brain damage would occur. Today is Day 3. A senior woman of the tribe says she knows
how to bring the people out of their comas, especially by using a particular
medicinal flower – but she will share the secret only if it is promised that
tribal people around the world who live in forest areas should continue to be
allowed to live there, and that forest trees should also be protected. The school administrator apologetically
says that while he is sympathetic to her requests, he is not in a position to
make such promises. The
videoconference ends. One of the visiting students contacts a global
TV news channel, and the United Nations.
On the following evening another
videoconference occurs. This time the
people on the south Indian forest mountainside are patched into the global TV
news channel. They are joined there by
the leader of the United Nations, who says that to the best of his abilities,
the senior tribal woman's conditions would be met. The senior tribal woman then tells about how
the flower (which can be found in many places around the world) can be
ground-up and applied to the skin. She
also teaches a certain kind of massage that should be done on, and a certain
song that should be sung to, the people who are in the comas. The senior tribal woman's three-part antidote
is widely applied ... and it works!
Many people come out of their comas. Two days
later, the members of the school team return to Chennai where they
participate in a Global Videoconference Dance Party (via Zoom)
celebrating how a collaboration between traditional nature-related knowledge,
and high-technology – the ancient and the modern – has saved the day! Members
of the school team participate in this global videoconference from a disco
hall in a big hotel in Chennai. Some
of the tribal people participate, via smart phones, from their village. The "Words from the
Forest" theme song is sung and danced to, accompanied by thrilling and
beautiful electronic art made on-the-spot, some of it based on the electronic
images of dancers from various locations around the world. __________ "Words from the
Forest" © Copyright
2023 by Eric
Miller 2) The Story (3-page summary): An Establishing shot (an Aerial
shot) – High above the water, passing the Statue of Liberty (on one's
left), approaching Lower Manhattan. In New York City, in mid-town Manhattan. Many people are walking on the sidewalks
and are crossing streets. The streets
are full of cars. The traffic lights
show red, then green. On a building on one busy street is a sign over a
set of wide double-doors: "School for the Future". Inside the building, in a classroom, 20 students,
ages 16 and 17, are sitting at their desks. A teacher enters the room and tells the students
that the school has arranged for as many as eight of them (with two teachers)
to go, during the upcoming summer vacation, on a two-week educational visit
to India. Specifically, they would be
visiting a community of tribal people in a forest area in a mountain range in
south India. The teacher says,
"You might learn things about the world, and about yourselves, on this
trip." Many of the students excitedly
raise their hands to request the forms that their parents would need to fill
out. Montage. (In the following series of very brief
scenes there is no audio other than continuous music.) 1) A number of the students give the forms to their
parents and try to persuade their parents to give permission for, and to pay
for, the students to go on the trip. 2) The eight students who are going on the trip buy
things for the trip. 3) The eight students go to the airport, board an
airplane, and settle into their seats. The male students are: 1) A Chinese-American (a rapper, with dreadlocks). 2) A European-American (dealing with being
gay). 3) An Iraqi-American (aspires to be a civil
engineer), 4) A Puerto-Rican-American (aspires to be an actor
and playwright). The female students are: 1) An African-American (a Modern Dance enthusiast). 2) A European-American (a techie). 3) A European-American (mildly autistic). 4) A Native-American (a social activist). Also settling into their seats on the airplane are
the two teachers who are accompanying the students: a European-American man
(a Drama teacher), and an Indian lady who has emigrated from India to the USA
(a Biology teacher). Both are in their
mid-30s. As the airplane takes off, the members of the school
team begin to watch a movie (the screens are on the backs of the seats in
front of them). The members of the
school team doze off. The screens they
are watching – and the entire screen on which "Words from the
Forest" is appearing – fade to black.
Here appears the opening credits – in English, but with the lines that
form the letters at times moving like snakes and at times taking the shapes
of letters in the script of the Tamil language. *** The plane lands in Chennai in the middle of the
night. (Chennai is the capital city of
the south Indian state, Tamil Nadu.
Chennai is on India's southeast coast, facing Singapore and
beyond.) The members of the school
team step out of the plane. Even
though it is night, they can feel the air's tropical heat on their faces, and
the air's tropical humidity in their lungs. The next morning members of the school team travel
through Chennai in a van. They are
struck by the extreme contrasts:
People walking in religious processions, oxen pulling carts (photo),
and people riding bicycles – beside people on motorcycles, in cars of all
sorts, and in huge buses. Huts made of
thatch with living trees as one or more of the supporting columns – beside
modern multi-story glass-and-steel buildings. They visit the University of Madras (Chennai used to
be called Madras). In the Anthropology
Dept office they meet the PhD student (a male in his 20s) who would be
accompanying them to the tribal village. They visit a computer company where company
officials loan to them a special experimental tablet computer for them to use
during their visit. This tablet
computer: 1) can do a satellite videoconference from anywhere, 2) can be
powered by a hand-crank or a foot-pedal, or by solar power, 3) has a
universal translator (giving translations on screen or as audio), and 4) has
a built-in projector. As the tablet computer is given to members of the
school team, a photograph is snapped – and this photo is almost
instantaneously shown appearing in a Chennai newspaper. *** Members of the school team board a train for the
eight-hour southward ride to Madurai.
In Madurai they marvel at the huge and beautiful temple in the centre
of town. Then they take a five-hour south-westward bus-ride
to near Agasthya Malai (Mountain), in Tirunelveli District, Tamil Nadu. This is in the far southern section of the
Western Ghats mountain range, and is near the border with the neighboring
state to the west, Kerala. Agasthya is a legendary Hindu sage who is said to
have, perhaps 8,000 years ago, taught medicinal uses of plants, as well as
some ritual songs, to the tribal people in the area. *** Up in the mountains, amidst beautiful vegetation,
the bus comes to a halt. The members
of the school team get off the bus.
The bus rumbles away. The
members of the school team are left in silence (aside from the sounds of the
forest). The Anthropology PhD student
gestures for them to follow him on a paved road that leads to the tribal
village, which is approximately one kilometre (two-thirds of a mile) away. However, one of the students, a European-American
young woman who is mildly autistic, is otherwise occupied. She has seen a lizard on a branch of a tree. The lizard is approximately 18 inches long,
including its tail. The lizard is
perfectly still. It seems to the young
woman that the lizard is looking at her.
The young woman looks at the lizard, and enters the lizard's state of
utter stillness. This continues for
some moments. Then another member of
the school team notices that the young woman is not following the group, and
gently convinces her to leave the lizard and its stillness behind, and follow
the group. *** They reach the village which is beside the forest,
not actually in the forest. The
village consists of a single road with approximately ten houses on each side
of the road. The houses are made of
concrete. The visiting teenagers meet the local tribal
teenagers. All go down to the river, where the locals show the visitors how they catch
tiny fish (by driving the tiny fish into a large cloth which serves as a
net), and cook the fish (with spices, wrapped in large leaves) by placing the
leaf packages on stones (that have been heated in a fire) in holes in the
ground. Over the following days there are numerous
goings-on. Most of the tribal
teenagers can speak English well because they have attended a Christian
day-school. (The alternative is Govt
Schools, in which the medium of instruction is Tamil language. In neither case are tribal dialects used or
taught in the local schools.) *** The PhD student and some of the tribal people give informal talks
for the visitors about tribal history and culture. The PhD student speaks English, Tamil, and
the tribal dialect. *** The two teachers: The lady Biology teacher is originally from
India, and thus sees herself as the leader of the school team. However, as a vegetarian, she is not in tune
with certain aspects of tribal life, such as catching, killing, cooking, and
eating animals – especially turtles and large lizards. A gentle competition occurs between the two
teachers regarding who is leading the school team. *** Some of the tribal people
take the visitors on a walk in the forest. They show the visitors a place
where "a wicked man was crushed to death by two large
boulders". This man was hunting
an udumbu (a large lizard) but the man had not done the proper prayers before
starting the hunt. The udumbu ran
between the two boulders and the man followed – but the boulders came
together and crushed the man. This
story might imply that all nature is alive and ready to punish bad behaviour
and reward good behaviour. They also show the visitors a
place along a small mountain-river where, long ago, people from the plains
came to survive when there was a drought on the plains. Two of the tribal men show how
they collect honey from a honeycomb in a tree. *** The Iraqi-American male
student, whose father is from Iraq and has settled in the USA,
wonders if he can fit into the USA.
(His father, and Iraqi man, worked as a translator for the USA
military during the USA's occupation of Iraq, and later emigrated to the USA where
he married a European-American woman.)
The Iraqi-American student aspires to be a civil engineer. He is very interested in water management. A tribal young man shows him
ways water is stored in certain plants, how wells work, etc. *** While they are walking on a
forest path, a tribal young woman brings melodies sung by birds to the
attention of the autistic European-American female student, who
is entranced by the birdsongs. *** The other European-American
female student is a proud "techie" (working with audio and
video technology, including computers).
She does not care if some people call her a nerd and say what she is
doing is not "feminine." She
and the Puerto-Rican-American student (who aspires to be an
actor and playwright) talk with a tribal young man who manages
the cable TV system for the village, and who wants to be a cinema
director. They sing a song about the
joy of communication, of sharing experiences, thoughts, and feelings. *** One tribal young man does not
leave his family house very much. He
angrily proclaims that he has little respect for or interest in his culture
(tribal culture). He listens to Tamil
cinema music for hours on end, and prepares recordings for the village dance
troupe to dance to. The Chinese-American
student demonstrates rap singing for this tribal young man,
free-styling (improvising). In his
rap, the Chinese-American student says that he has found value in aspects of
his own heritage (including Taoism and Zen Buddhism), and he encourages the
tribal young man to find value in his culture and heritage also – not as a
be-all and end-all, but as an element in a mix: "mix it to fix it." One tribal young woman leads a
dance troupe in the village that dances (including in Hip-hop style) to recordings of Tamil cinema music, for people in
nearby villages (both tribal and others). The tribal village has
electricity and receives FM radio and cable TV signals, so they know of the
cultures of 1) Kollywood (home of the cinema
industry in Kodambakkam, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, in south India), 2) Bollywood (home of the
cinema industry in Bombay, now called Mumbai, in north India), and 3) Hollywood. This tribal young woman
dance-director also aspires to found a clothing-design fashion company that
would combine tribal and other elements of fashion: this could involve mixing
silk and silk-like fabrics with tribal-associated elements such as leaves,
beaten-bark, and feathers. The African-American female
student tells the tribal young woman dance-director about Modern
Dance – a style of dance (founded by Martha Graham and others over a
hundred years ago) that features stretching, bending, and twisting of one's
body coordinated with breathing-in to expand one's body and breathing-out to
contract one's body. The
African-American student sings about Modern Dance as she demonstrates it. The tribal young woman
dance-director then leads an improvisational Indian-cinema style dance, with
her team of young tribal dancers, that incorporates Modern Dance. *** The European-American male
student is facing the fact that he is gay. While walking in the forest and seeing the
variety of vegetation, he sings to himself about how nature (and people) take
many forms. *** The Native-American
female student befriends a senior tribal woman who
lives in the "old part" of the village – on the side of a mountain,
a 30-minute walk from the new part of the village. The senior tribal lady shows the
Native-American student many plants that can be used for food or
medicine. This Native-American student
is very concerned about indigenous people being able to continue living in
the natural environments in which their ancestors have lived. *** Videoconference
1. Things
change dramatically when one evening the visitors use the tablet computer to
participate in a videoconference via satellite from the side of a mountain,
with their tribal hosts also present.
The electronic image is projected onto a sheet that is hung between
two wooden poles. The
videoconference is with an administrator of the visitors' school back in
NYC. The administrator tells them that
a global health crisis is underway: millions of people have fallen into
comas. After five days, permanent
brain damage would occur. Today is Day
3. The
senior tribal woman (mentioned above) says she knows how to bring the people
out of their comas, especially by using a particular flower, the medicinal properties
of which she believes were taught to her people in ancient times by the Hindu
sage, Agasthya. However, she says she
will share the secret only
if it is promised that tribal people around the world who live in forest
areas should continue to be allowed to live there, and that forest trees
should also be protected. The school administrator apologetically
says that while he is sympathetic to her requests, he is not in a position to
make such promises. The
videoconference ends. One of
the visiting students contacts a global TV news channel, and the United
Nations. *** Videoconference
2. The following day, a herd of
panicking elephants runs through the tribal village. They are stampeding to escape a fire set by
workers in a nearby agricultural estate (as a way of expanding the estate
area). One of the elephants steps on
and crushes the tablet computer. All
seems to be lost. However, later that morning a
video crew from a Tamil TV station appears.
This crew has come to do a feature about the visiting students – they
have a copy of the newspaper article featuring the photo that was snapped at
the computer company when the tablet computer was loaned! The video
crew's equipment is not programmed to transmit from the forest area. Fortunately, the European-American young
woman techie had backed-up onto a pen drive the app on the tablet computer
that enabled it to connect with the satellite, and she successfully installs
this app in the video crew's transmitter. The
Native-American female student visits the senior tribal lady in the old part
of the village (on the mountainside) and praises the senior tribal woman for
setting the two conditions before she would tell ways to bring people out of
their comas. That
evening Videoconference 2 occurs.
This time the people on the south Indian forest mountainside are
patched into the global TV news channel.
They are joined there by the leader of the United Nations, who gives the
requested assurances. The senior
tribal woman tells about how the flower (which can be found in many places
around the world) can be ground-up and applied to the skin. The senior tribal woman also teaches a
certain kind of massage that should be done on, and a certain song that
should be sung to, the people who are in the comas. The
senior tribal woman's three-part antidote is widely applied ... and it
works! Many people come out of their
comas. *** Two days
later, members of the school team say goodbye (for now) to their tribal
friends. A number of USA and tribal
teenagers are in tears. The two
teachers quietly announce that they are engaged to be married. The
members of the school team return to Chennai where they participate in a Global
Videoconference Dance Party (via Zoom) celebrating how a collaboration
between traditional nature-related knowledge, and high-technology – the
ancient and the modern – has saved the day!
The
members of the school team participate in this global videoconference from a
disco hall in a big hotel in Chennai.
Some of the tribal people participate, via smart phones, from their
village. The
"Words from the Forest" theme song is sung and danced to, accompanied
by thrilling and beautiful electronic art made on-the-spot, some of it based
on the electronic images of dancers from various locations around the world. ________ "Words from the
Forest" © Copyright
2023 by Eric
Miller 5) Author's Bio-data and
Commentary on the Story: I am a USA person settled in
Chennai (on India's southeast coast) for the past 20 years. *** The main part of "Words from
the Forest" takes place near Agasthya Malai (Mountain) in the far
southern section of the Western Ghats Mountain Range in southwestern Tamil
Nadu. Agasthya Malai is south of the
Mudumalai Tiger Reserve – where, incidentally, "The Elephant
Whisperers" (winner of the 2023, 95th Academy Awards‘ Best Short
Documentary award) was shot. "Words from the Forest"
is a fantasy version of my own experience visiting that mountain range and
some tribal people who live there for my University of Pennsylvania Folklore
PhD verbal-arts-related fieldwork. (My
fieldwork occurred in 2002-4. The PhD
was awarded in 2010. The PhD
dissertation is here.) I had a tremendous drive to visit
the kind of place and people portrayed in "Words from the Forest" –
and I am certain that a lot of other people might feel the same way, and that
they might be interested to go on a "movie visit" to that milieu. Thus, the primary target audience for this
movie is people around the world who might like to visit India, especially
jungles and mountain-forests of India, and tribal people who live there. *** Two song-and-dance numbers in
"Words from the Forest" would, I feel, be highlights of the movie:
"This is Modern Dance!", and "You and Us Together". Modern Dance is a style of dance that
arose in the West starting in the 1920s.
Modern Dance is based on ways breathing controlled by the diaphragm, a
muscle near the center of the body, can help to generate movement, producing
a good deal of stretching, bending, and twisting. In Modern Dance, one breathes-in to expand
one's body, and breathes-out to contract one's body. In the "This is Modern
Dance!" song and dance number, a young woman from the USA demonstrates
and explains Modern Dance for a young tribal woman who is the director of the
village dance group that dances to recordings of Tamil cinema songs for
people in villages throughout the area. In "You and Us Together"
(which immediately follows "This is Modern Dance!"), the tribal
dance-director – and the dancers in the troupe she leads, all teenagers –
bring aspects of Modern Dance into the cinema dance of commercial movies of
India (also incorporating elements of local traditional tribal dance). I believe "You and Us
Together" will be a show-stopping number in "Words from the
Forest". This number could have a
profound and historic influence on the cinema dance of India. *** Three themes of "Words from
the Forest" are: 1) Teenagers singing and dancing
as they find themselves (such as in
the movie and TV series, "Fame"; Fox TV's "Glee"; and
Disney's "High School Musicals" movies). 2) The Western fascination with
the forests and jungles of India (Jungle Book) and Africa (Tarzan),
starting with Europe's Age of Discovery in the 1400s. 3) Ecological inclinations to
'Save the Forests' – including communities that live in forest areas (with
their traditional knowledge relating to the forest) – and to value
biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity, which are
mutually-supportive. *** The Academy Awards organisation is
having an "India moment". As mentioned, "The Elephant
Whisperers" won the (2023) 95th Academy Awards‘ Best Short Documentary
award. This was a Netflix documentary,
directed by Kartiki Gonsalves, and produced by Achin Jain and Guneet Monga
(Sikhya Entertainment, Mumbai). And "Naatu, Naatu," a song
from a Telugu-language movie, won the (2023) 95th Academy Awards‘ Best
Original Song in a Movie award. This would be a good time for
"Words from the Forest" to extend this increasing visibility of
India on the global cinema scene. *** To introduce myself: I am Eric Miller, born in 1957 in mid-town
Manhattan, New York City, where I was also raised. I first visited India in 1988, and settled
in Chennai in 2005. I have earned a
PhD in Folklore from the University of Pennsylvania (based in Philadelphia)
and a MSc in Psychology from the University of Madras (based in Chennai), and
have taught at numerous colleges in NYC and Chennai. *** My personal website (featuring
links to 89 of my non-fiction writings) is https://storytellingandvideoconferencing.com
. The website of the NGO I
co-founded and direct, the World Storytelling Instititute, is https://storytellinginstitute.org
. My CV is here, my Life
Narrative is here,
and an overview of my activities is here. Links to recordings of 20 storytelling-related
videoconferences I have co-hosted are here. A recording of a brief talk I have
given on "Educational Uses of Technology" is here.
A transcript of the talk is here. The transcript of a talk I have
given on the history of the academic discipline of Folklore is here. Links to 91 newspaper, etc,
articles mentioning my work are here. *** I am the son of Lydia Joel Miller
(1915-1992: her obituary is here). In her youth, Lydia was a
dancer-choreographer and led her own Modern Dance dance company. She was Editor-in-chief of Dance
Magazine from 1952 to 1969 – a period which included the first 12 years
of my life (1957 onward). Then, from
1973 to 1984 she was Head of the Dance Dept of NYC's Performing Arts High
School. I originally learned about
dance, and about performance in general, from my mother. I am also the son of Edwin Miller
(1921-2003). Edwin was Entertainment
Editor of Seventeen Magazine from 1946 to 1988. And he was a playwright. I originally learned about composing
stories (especially for theatre) from my father. "Words from the Forest"
is dedicated to my mother and father. <complete> a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a |
