Julia Haslett speaks to Saint Leo University

By Greg Robinson – Online Editor

Revolutionary. Political activist. Labor worker. Teacher. Philosopher. Author. Mystic. Christian. All of these words help describe Simone Weil (pronounced Vey), but none of them sum up her unique and tireless personality. However, Julia Haslett, a noted documentary filmmaker, attempted to distill the complex and mysterious revolutionary figure onto the screen.

An Encounter with Simone Weil was screened at Saint Leo University in the Greenfelder-Denlinger boardrooms on Monday evening, Sept. 19, at 7 p.m. The event was packed to the point that extra chairs had to be brought in to accommodate the crowd of Saint Leo students, faculty, staff, and guests.

Haslett was introduced by the Cannon Memorial Library director Brent Short, the library also having sponsoring the event. After she briefly introduced the documentary, the screening began.

Weil’s existence was one of  bourgeois comfort; however, the precocious and abnormally bright woman refused to succumb to an idle life. She was a tireless activist for factory workers, the oppressed, and the poor, believing in solidarity with the working men and women. One of her most famous quotes goes, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

A teacher for portions of her life, Weil left her profession to work in a factory in 1934, when she was only 25. She believed that the only way to truly understand another’s plight was to suffer with them; to literally walk in their shoes. Although she held many Communists beliefs, Weil never joined the Communist party, having a deep mistrust of institutions.

Weil fought in the Spanish Civil War against Franco and the Fascists. However, a severe burn forced her to leave after a short period, three years before the Fascists took complete control of the country. When World War II broke out, Weil renounced her doctrine of pacifism, recognizing the evil of Hilter and the Nazis. Weil eventually succumbed to tuberculosis in 1943 while working for the Free French Government in London. Her health deteriorated quickly because she refused to eat more than the rations provided to those in occupied France.

The documentary was extremely well-presented, juxtaposing Weil’s biography with personal struggles in Haslett’s family and how attention as generosity could be applied to the real world. The cinematography was innovative yet appropriate for the genre, while an actor attempting to portray Weil was an interesting and bold touch to this style of filmmaking. Although overtly political at times, An Encounter with Simone Weil ends on a poignant note, summing up the film’s subject nicely.

A question and answer session was held with producer/director Haslett following the screening. Among the questions she answered were her personal feelings on Weil, the evolution of the film over a six-year period, and Weil’s impact on the world.

Haslett is a documentary filmmaker with a number of projects under her belt. She worked on a documentary called Hold your Breath that was shown on PBS in 2007, as well as working with public television station WGBH-Boston. Haslett has also worked for the Discovery Channel. Most of her films are described as “expressionistic” documentaries.

In her short life, Weil left behind the equivalent of 16 volumes of writing, categorized in various notebooks. Most of these were published posthumously. Due to her prolific nature, many quotes from Weil are popular today. A selfless individual, most of these quotes are sad yet inspirational:

“Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.”