Aug 28 2010
Argenta: A Community Filmed
Peter Schramm’s new film in progress, Argenta: A Community, is about the home of his childhood and youth–the Quaker community in Argenta, north of Nelson. 
Last weekend I went to the Express Summer Shorts Film Festival at Lakeside park- my first time at an event that has been happening for five years. The films shown were all by local filmmakers. There must have been close to 200 people there, and we watched films well past dark, outdoors in the park. The quality of the films varied wildly. The one that really drew me in, making me eager to see the rest of it, was this trailer for Argenta: A Community.
In 1970, when Peter Schramm was five years old, his parents moved to Argenta to join the group of Quakers who had moved there from the U.S. in 1952 to live a simple, rural life untouched by militarism and materialism.
A Message the World Needs
“Many of the original Argenta Quakers were still there,” he says, “running the Friends School and thriving. Many of them were in their 50s and 60s and for me it was like having a whole replacement set of grandparents, especially John and Helen Stevenson. They gave me a jackknife when I was 5 years old, and I never forgot that. It was a vibrant and positive time– there was an optimism in the air that you could change the world.”
That’s why Peter wants to make the film– to communicate the vibrancy and optimism of those days. “I feel the world just needs this message at this time of how to live more locally, consume less energy, and retain your idealism, passion and belief that it is possible to make change and do good and have fun doing it .”
An Innovative Approach to Funding
Peter has received some grant money from the Columbia Basin Trust, the Regional District of Central Kootenay, and the Opsrey Foundation. But his application for a large grant from the Canada Council was turned down and he is still waiting for word from a couple of other agencies. He’s frustrated with the granting process in general, and so has turned to IndieGoGo, an internet site that bills itself as a “collaborative way to fund ideas.” You can visit Peter’s IndieGoGo page here.
On IndieGoGo (and other similar sites) you can publicize your project and ask for funding in small amounts from friends or strangers. Peter is asking for as little as $15 from individual donors. In a month he has raised $1770 of his $3500 goal on IndieGoGo. “There are people who have contributed to the film that I don’t even know, and there people signed on to the Facebook page I don’t know– there are 150 members on there. I think the funders will look positively on that. And it builds the audience and the network for when the film finally comes out.”
Interviewing the Elders Before It’s Too Late
It may take some time to get funding, but Peter is in for the long haul because this film is a labour of love. “There is something inside me that feels it is really important. I wanted to get those elders interviewed, and I did interview some of them. Two of them died when I was in the process but I was at the funerals and memorials and connections were made and I can talk to the children.
“What’s incredible about the Quakers is that they actually got up, moved, and tried to do what their belief was, and it seems we are in an age of way more cynicism right now and it is hurting people and it’s hurting the earth. People don’t believe things are possible, and yet I have seen Argenta Friends School students who have gone on to do incredible things in the world.”
A Simple School for a Simple Life
The Argenta Friends School opened in 1959 and closed in 1982. “It was a boarding school where the students often lived with the teachers and learned homesteading skills like milking cows, chopping firewood, gardening and cooking on a wood stove. A micro-hydro plant provided electricity to a significant number of households and a community freezer preserved much of the food that people produced themselves.
Photo by Anni Valentine (courtesy of Peter Schramm)
“My mom, if I complained about something, would say, OK do it yourself then, so I learned to make yogurt when I was really young. And we had a cow and goats and chickens and a compost pile.
Waking Up to the Problems of the World
“The people there were so politically aware and active. When I was 16 all the problems in the world hit me and I became active in the peace movement.I did a talk about world hunger and nuclear disarmament, and the Stevensons came to my talk and I thought I was doing something new. I didn’t know at the time they had been at it for decades. But they were there to support me. For me it was fresh.
“That awareness has been a blessing and curse because it is a heavy weight to carry, and when people ask me if I am a Quaker I always say, half-Quaker, because it is a bit too Gandhian for me. I really respect Gandhi but it can be a heavy load. Other people manage it, and the Quakers have an excellent moral compass about how to handle anything in the world, and so if I ever have to look for what to do about an issue I often consult them and see what they came up with.”
And the rest of us can do the same, with Peter Schramm’s film added to the legacy of the Argenta Quakers.
I truly was unaware of thh Quaker roots of Argenta. I love that Peter is setting out to tell this tale and if his trailer is any indication of what the film will become, it is sure to be another profoundly engaging Kootenay story. I look forward to further excerpts and it’s final completion.
Hi Julia. As for the Quaker roots of Argenta, I think Peter would be quick to point out that there were people living in Argenta before the Quakers got there, and I mention this now because it was maybe not clear in my post. I think his film is about the Quakers in Argenta and not the history of it before that.
Nice work Bill… and good luck in completing this important work Peter. The introduction shows your skill as a film maker.
I posted something on my blog too.
Great post!
As a student at Argenta Friends School in the late 60′s/early 70′s, it was a varied and rich experience. The total student body was 23 students, from all over North America and a few from further afield. Most had Quaker background, but not all — one student had found a brochure about the school lying on the ground in a parking lot somewhere in the eastern USA. Try on this idea: for two years a group of students and staff are in a situation where all decisions are made by consensus. For me, that process, which is a combination of a lot of things, but a huge part is being able to actually listen to other people’s ideas and possibly adjust your own stance, understanding or actually widen your perspective to come to a conclusion that is inclusive of many people’s ideas — well, it’s profound, and it informs one’s life from there forward. As does starting the school day with gathering for meeting, which was silent, in it’s school morning short form (1/2 hour, rather than Sunday’s hour long ‘meeting for worship’). There is something about that practice of meeting in the morning, of gathering together physically, but also a phenomena called ‘a gathered meeting’ which i experienced there, which was almost like an inaudible hum of connectedness within the group. Yikes, that sounds cultish! But it was not. Just a great way to share time and space at the start of the day.
A few years ago “consensus” became kind of a business practices catch-phrase, and the company I worked for tried it on — or thought they did. They certainly weren’t prepared for the kind of time and listening-evolving-to-greater-understanding that the process, if really practiced, requires.
There were certainly times, as a student there, when i was exasperated by the process and by the teachers. But 30+ years later I am still learning from it.