Juliette of the Herbs

Distributed by Mabinogion Films, PO Box 92, Spencertown, NY 12165, 518-392-4257Produced by Tish StreetenDirected by Tish Streeten1998, VHS, color and b&, , Second Edition 75 min. "The most important thing we can teach children is love for the animals." -- Juliette de Bairacli Levy Juliette de Bairacli Levy has an unwavering faith in instinct and the body's ability to heal with the aid of the natural world around us. Realizing that human society, in its pursuit of antibiotics and modern medicine, had abandoned that faith at the expense of animals, Juliette sought her own truth, becoming an endangered species herself in her search to preserve what could be forever lost. Tish Streeten has produced an enduring film which captures Juliette's natural propensity for her simple existence. Although Juliette's life has been filled with distant shores and romantic encounters with Gypsies and nomads, it has been the simplest, most natural existence, eschewing running water and electricity for a communal life with the earth and its creatures. The film has a peaceful, humanitarian message for our modern quick fix society, thus accomplishing that which Juliette herself seeks: preservation of years of knowledge for the benefit of future generations. Known as the founder of holistic veterinary medicine, Juliette's privileged upbringing as the daughter of a wealthy Turkish father and Egyptian mother in Manchester, England gave her an enviable niche from which to pursue her search. Moved to become a veterinarian by the death of a childhood puppy, Juliette ran a distemper clinic in London until she was urged to learn all she could about her growing interest in herbal medicine. Thus began her lifelong relationships with the nomadic populations of the world. One of very few outsiders welcomed in Berber, Bedouin and Gypsy camps, Juliette sought to preserve their vast herbal knowledge learned over thousands of years before it was lost. Far from the peer pressure of her colleagues, Juliette's nomadic existence gave her the freedom she needed to learn her herbal craft. Juliette also studied the natural instinct of animals to heal themselves, and used her growing herbal knowledge to cure the sick while writing her well-known herbals which "...record the wisdom of nature." The video opens with an elderly Juliette in her 11th garden on the Greek Island of Kithira. With one of her beloved and ever-present Afghan dogs by her side, she quietly talks about planting rosemary and southern wood, "the protector of newborn infants and women," in each of her gardens. She reminisces about her travels and the animals and people she's cured. Ms. Streeten skillfully weaves narration, firsthand accounts, and black and white still photos from Juliette's childhood and later years with footage gathered over seven production years filming in England, Spain, Greece, Switzerland, France, Portugal, and America. The film intersperses quiet, pastoral scenes of Juliette swimming in the ocean, reading poetry, or tending her gardens together with interviews with Juliette, her contemporaries and colleagues, and her daughter. We learn Juliette married a Spanish journalist and bore a son and daughter who she raised mostly alone. We listen in on lectures Juliette gives during her annual travels to America to speak to the growing herbalist community. The photography is superb, and Sarah Plant's musical score fits the images perfectly, creating a mesmerizing legacy of one woman's pilgrimage to Mother Nature herself. As we listen to Juliette's modest voice, her simple words evoke powerful images. On the subject of pollution, she puts it simply: "where a bee can live, man can live." She acknowledges a belief in God, quoting the Bible, "... I've given you every herb and seed." One colleague describes Juliette's "constant universal kindness;" another tells how Juliette inspired him to practice holistic veterinary medicine. Susan Weed, author of the Wise Woman Herbal Series of books notes the great influence Juliette had over her own work. Juliette is one of those rare individuals who lives what she teaches, raising her Turkamen Afghan hounds on a diet of raw meat and natural plants and her children as vegetarians like herself. Her daughter, Luz Lancha de Bairacli Levy, talks with her mother about her upbringing and her future with her own child. The absence of Juliette's son in the film does leave the viewer with questions, but gives ample reason to further explore other sources. Toward the end of the film, Juliette reminisces with long-time colleague and friend Helen Nearing, and speculates on their deaths. Rather sadly, the film closes with Juliette, now in her 80s, leaving her 11th garden to move to a yet more remote location that will be harder to pollute, for she can no longer bear to watch the damage modern civilization wreaks on the world. Tish Streeten puts a piece of herself in her films, directing the project from start to finish through her own company. Her passion for and intimate understanding of her subject gives the viewer a delicious sense of anticipation, watching the story unfold in an unhurried manner totally in sync with the main character. Highly recommended for high school and university collections, an important addition to any consumer health or health sciences alternative medicine collection. Ms. Levy has published many books, the most famous of which are her herbal guides for animals. A few titles are available through Amazon.com and Faber and Faber. Her poetry and a brief biography is listed in English Poetry of the Second World War. A Biobibliography by Catherine W. Reilly, Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1986. Less well-known is her Traveler's Joy, where one can "learn the secrets of survival, comfort and enjoyment in forests, fields or caves." An audio of an interview with Ms. Levy is available on the KBOO 907 radio Web site, a listener-sponsored non-corporate community radio station in Portland, Oregon. KBOO also has a link for a Juliette's mosquito remedy from her Traveler's Joy book. Also available online is the advertising review from the video jacket along with a videoclip of the film.