Juliette Of The Herbs - VIDEO

JULIETTE OF THE HERBS (VIDEO) Tish Streeten, prod./dir. 1998; 75 mins. $35 ($40 postpaid). Mabinogian Films, PO Box 92, Spencertown, NY 12165. 518/392-4257, streeten@taconic.net.

Juliette de Bairacli Levy is a truly great lady of the herbal realm. Now in her eighties, she has been a passionate student of nature, an adventurer, writer, teacher, and champion of Gypsy culture. This video charms and informs with Juliette's delightful commentary, photos, and tales of life on the road of healing plants. Born of Turkish and Egyptian parents and raised in England, she began as a girl to raise animals, curing them with diet and herbs. As a young woman she discovered that the Gypsy families roving Europe were her kindred spirits, and has maintained a lifelong friendship with their communities. Over more than fifty years, she has written classics on herbal cures for animals and children, and is credited with launching many young herbalists when there were few texts on the subject.

Certain moments in the video reveal more than print can about right relationship to nature, as when she sings praises to the olive tree while she harvests from it, combing its leaves. She tells how, feverish after childbirth, she nourished her tiny daughter by letting her suckle on a goat. While raising her children as a single mom on the shores of Lake Galilee, she also raised hawks and befriended Bedouins. She argues that we must respect people of the land, insists that we love all the animals (she bred a renowned line of Afghan dogs), and warns of the ways we lose what we don't appreciate. Her herbalist friends Rosemary Gladstar and Susun Weed chat with her, and there is a touching scene in which her old friend Helen Nearing reads Juliette's palm, and they speak sweetly about death.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Point Foundation
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