Resting Places by Melissa Villanueva
Resting Places is the documentary by Melissa Villanueva on the growth in the Western World of roadside Christian crosses marking where loved ones lost their lives, and on the struggle between those who maintain them and those who want them removed.
UPDATE: KC premiere to close 2007 Kansas International Film Festival on September 20th.
Resting Places is narrated by Liam Neeson. Part of it was filmed in O’Dowd’s here in Kansas City where Dubliner Eddie Delahunt was interviewed, Villanueva being a big Irish music fan, giving an Irish perspective.
This is the trailer for Villanueva’s documentary:
As a cyclist I’ve always found impromptu roadside memorials, Christian or otherwise, as profoundly moving - probably because I am going at a speed that can take them in fully, as much as in their makeshift simplicity.
Cycling in rural Ireland, alone on quiet roads, a small wooden cross growing out of the long grass makes the past come alive somehow, and I feel better for seeing them. Cycling in the Czech Republic I once came across a roadside memorial for ten American troops who died at that spot during the Second World War.
I felt stange and foreign myself among the giant trees, ponds and castles of southern Bohemia, but I couldn’t imagine being an American teenager and dying there, so far from home. It’s not a lot of fun to be on your holidays and realize people died where you are, but it strikes me as wrong not to know.
In Ireland I have seen the crosses politicized where groups put fake crosses up - fake in the sense that nobody died there - in great numbers, to scare drivers to presumably drive more carefully. You’re actually more likely to crash looking at dozens of white crosses.
Once, when cycling across White Sands in New Mexico it was such a tiny roadside memorial in the desert that saved my life. Earlier that day I’d been warned of the dangers of the turn in the road from the desert floor to the ascent up the Organ Mountains. The year before a young woman cyclist was killed at that spot when the winds came down the mountain and threw her under a vehicle.
Alone in the heat of the desert, without even passing traffic for company, I’d long forgotten that story as I looked up at the Stealth flying overhead and wondered if my legs would make it over those frightening looking mountains to civilization on the far side. Then I saw a dust-devil sliding down the mountain towards me.
I’d seen many on my trip so wasn’t perturbed. Until I saw the little marker and remembered. Seconds later the swirling winds lifted me and the bicycle up, swinging me ninety degrees into the path of a passing semi with its horn blaring. But in the seconds after seeing the marker I had braced myself and then fought the winds, managing to turn the wheel and angle the bike just enough to not be hit.
I can’t think of a better reason for roadside memorials, whatever anybody’s Constitution says about religious symbols.
Update: Melissa Villanueva & Joe Kipikash on KCUR
Visit the official website of Resting Places
See Also:
• Cycling Across America: The Beginning
• Irish Dandies Disliked in Kansas
• Irish Sneetches
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
I cant view the video it must be something on my end.
It must be - ’tis fine here. It’s a standard flash video from MySpace. The voiceover is by Liam Neeson - instant gravitas, very cool.