"Honesta Homo," a Short Film About Diogenes

My contribution to the Esperanto film festival.

A few months ago, my then-ten-year-old son and I filmed a short film in Esperanto and submitted it to an Esperanto film festival. (It's really short: under 3 minutes long. And don't worry: it has English subtitles.) It's about Diogenes (the Greek philosopher who went around with a lantern searching for an honest man), and it's called "Honesta homo" ("An honest person").

I'm embedding the video below, but most importantly, please click through to YouTube and "like" ("thumbs-up") the video there: "audience favorite" gets a special prize in this film festival! (I don't think you can "like" a YouTube video when you watch it on this blog: click on the title at the top of the video to open it in YouTube.)

 

Thanks to Alexander Vaughn Miller, former vice president of Esperanto USA and indefatigable longtime organizer of this film festival (called the "Fifth American Good Film Festival", or, in Esperanto, "La 5a [pronounced 'kvina'] Usona Bona Film-Festivalo"). Click here to see the full set of 50 films submitted to the festival. (Alex also organizes the local Atlanta Esperantist scene -- if you find Esperanto interesting and are in the Atlanta area, let me know and I'll hook you up.)

Esperanto is the most popular of the constructed languages (and has been around longer than Klingon, Elvish, and High Valyrian), is extremely easy to learn, and is even easier to learn these days now that there's an Esperanto course on Duolingo. (Back in 1997-98, I had to learn it using a book. Now, I've finished the Esperanto and Klingon courses on Duolingo.) I might go to the national congress next year in L.A., and I might also visit Esperantists next March in Białystok, Poland, where Ludwik Zamenhof, the guy who founded the language in the 1870s-80s, was born.

And remember, please click through to YouTube and "like" my video!

Comments

[Currentsitguy]

Sure ain't no Shatner:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubus_(1966_film)

[David Nieporent]

Um, I'm pretty sure Elvish is many millennia old.

[Bill Poser]

Nice film. Esperanto's grammar is simple and regular, which no doubt makes it easier to learn, but another major factor is presumably that much of the vocabulary is based on the Romance languages. For a person such as myself, who knows several Romance languages, this makes the vocabulary very familiar. I wonder how easy it is for people who do not know any of the Romance languages or English (which is not a Romance language but much of whose vocabulary comes from French and Latin).

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I’m just glad they didn’t re-enact this part of Diogenes’ career:

“Upon being challenged for masturbating in the marketplace, Diogenes replied, ‘If only it were so easy to soothe hunger by rubbing an empty belly’.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201203/my-hero-diogenes-the-cynic

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

We used to say in the Navy that while it might be against the regs to masturbate in the shower, there was no regulation against just washing very very thoroughly.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

The Stoics *theoretically* admired the Cynic philosophers, except that the Stoics tended to have jobs (except when they were retired, or when they were exiled for speaking too much truth to power).

[mydisplayname]

The film is perhaps neither as memorable as cartoonist Jim Barry's caption "Senator Pressler? I am Diogenes. I've been looking for you" nor as memorable as _American Hustle_, but is memorable nonetheless.

"Pressler, particularly, acted as citizens have a right to expect their elected representatives to act. He showed a clear awareness of the line between proper and improper conduct, and despite his confessed need for campaign money, and despite the additional attractiveness to him of the payment offered, he nevertheless refused to cross into impropriety."
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/25/nyregion/excerpts-from-ruling-by-federal-judge-upholding-the-abscam-convictions.html?pagewanted=2

[Sorcer23]

While did not view the film, do remember, from high school, that while Diogenes was looking for an honest man, he was also wanted for counterfeiting.

[wnoise]

Cannibalism!

[wnoise]

Or "hommanĝado" or "kanibalismo", I suppose.

[lopiccolosonbowwer]

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