"Mesaĝo en botelo," a Short Film in Esperanto

My contribution to this year's Esperanto film festival (I need your "likes" on YouTube).

I just made a new Esperanto film, which I've submitted to an Esperanto film festival (the 6th American Good Film Festival). (It's really short: under five minutes long. And don't worry: it has English subtitles.) It's called "Mesaĝo en botelo," or "Message in a bottle." My kids (and a couple of others) have acting or voice roles in it, and my twelve-year-old son Mark did the video editing. You might remember my Esperanto film from last year, "Honesta homo" ("An honest person"), which was about Diogenes.

I'm embedding the film 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! Voting finishes on Monday, so please do it now.

(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 Catie Neilson, the host of this year's festival, and Alex Miller, former vice president of Esperanto USA and indefatigable longtime organizer of this film festival for the previous five years. Click here to see the full set of 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.) The film reflects that I visited Esperantists earlier this year in Białystok, Poland, where Ludwik Zamenhof, the guy who founded the language in the 1870s-80s, was born; and I might go to the world congress next year in Brno.

And remember, please click through to YouTube and "like" my video (and spread the word)!

Comments

[Suudy]

"is extremely easy to learn"

And that's why I don't find it interesting. What makes Latin and Greek interesting is that they are challenging. And pretty much the entire west are based on writings in those languages.

[John Rohan]

Your Esperanto USA link is broken (remove the "ttt").

I am curious - did Esperanto update it's vocabulary to include neo-pronouns?

[Krayt]

It's hopeless.

[Frank Drackman]

No Homo, but "Esperanto" sounds gay

[DrD]

When I was writing my children's book (Shaggy Magic) I wanted to make the tale's "magic book of fire" a mystery, so I put it and the chapter titles into Esperanto and had the boy study Esperanto to learn how to decipher it. So I too had to dig into a few grammar books to learn enough to use it and also pick up a little history along the way. Don't know how much I retain now (if you don't use it, you lose it, just like high school Spanish). Congratulations on your film. I'm going there next!

[Swede425]

You dare to challenge Pig Latin?

War it is, then.

[Bored Lawyer]

Ixnay on the Arway, Uddybay.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Languages which conjugate accusatives are not so easy to learn. In fact downright aggravating, but I suppose language nerds like them. Now Japanese, there's an easy grammar.

[John Rohan]

But Japanese has 3 different alphabets, and one of them totally unsuited to text messaging

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Alphabets are not grammar.

[rrg144]

Excellent and funny film, I "liked" it and I liked it.
Though I don't speak Esperanto, I did name one of my musical projects Suspektema. It seemed fitting for my dark, slightly creepy ambient drones.

[aleksomiller]

Hey! I'm the Alex Miller mentioned in the article who has helped Sasha with some of his films. I adapted two Shakespeare scenes into Esperanto this year plus acted in a horror film and they could use your votes/likes as well. ^_^ "La Dresado de la Megero" and "Mezuro" (can you guess which plays those are from?) and the horror film is "La Longa Hejmeniro."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WnWlXIltAw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlW4x_b8XAc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEc33TijVnI

To answer a question above about pronouns, yes, the non-binary pronoun ri/rin for singular they/them has become pretty ubiquitous even though the Akademio de Esperanto has yet to formally accept it.