Coming to PBS’ American Experience and to DVD next Tuesday, February 28: THE AMISH
David Belton’s in-depth examination of an historically very private community premieres simultaneously on PBS and on DVD next week.
Because of general Amish restrictions on being filmed or photographed, the majority of the practicing Amish featured in the film are represented largely through audio interviews, though the film’s cinematography captures their rural environment quite beautifully. The doc presents the Amish way of life from their own perspective, supplemented with on-camera interviews with historians and other academics, as well as individuals who left the Amish community for various reasons. The result is a remarkably well-rounded portrait of a distinct community with its own social structures, traditions, history, and beliefs, contextualizing the misperceptions the outside world often has, while also providing critical insight from those whose disparate beliefs led them to leave the flock. Though widely understood to reject modern technology and educational advancement, the film succinctly explains their reasoning as a means to literally keep their community close lest modern advances encourage followers to stray, and to keep the focus on what God provides, not on what men make. Most intriguingly, Belton’s film shows how the Amish have had to adapt to larger changes in society, such as the lack of farmland in the regions they have typically lived, necessitating a shift from farming to operating small businesses; venturing outside of their community to find work in factories that mixes them with the “English” (aka non-Amish); or, more radically, settling new communities out West in places like Colorado where farmland is cheaper and more plentiful.
