Maria's Way - documentary

The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, April 8 through 11 in Durham, NC, with Duke University as the presenting sponsor. After considering over 1,200 submissions, the festival has released 51 NEW DOCS titles.
One of them is: Maria's Way (Director: Anne Milne)
Along a famed pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, one woman's calling is to sit by the narrow thoroughfare greeting and counting the travelers as they pass by.

Festival passes are currently on sale at http://www.fullframefest.org.

Maria's Way won a Scottish Bafta award - best student documentary. Lets hope it becomes available to the public so that we can buy a copy.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2010 ... -part-one/

Maria's Way, by Edinburgh College of Art student Anne Milne, is a bright and engaging high-definition video visit with the eponymous elderly woman, who everyday sits alongside the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. In watching her sell artifacts and passbook stamps (more often she is dozing or grousing about the many passersby who have little to no use for her roadside stall), the documentary short puts quiet observation ahead of a hard, clearly defined explanation of Maria's effort, far larger in faith than a return on physical toil. While a low-arching story does, in the end, play out (give an approving nod to the up-and-coming Milne's promise and skill as a documentarian), the director's trust that viewers will see that the short story provides an elegant endorsement of artistic patience.

PS:
In 2007 I gave Maria a little Brag Book with photographs of her mother, Felisa, sent to me after an appeal for photos via the camino forums. She was so shocked to see this photograph of her mother on the cover that she dropped the book!



Then she started crying, kissing the photograph and saying "Mi Madre - Mi Madre!" She became very emotional when I told her that pilgrims from all over the world had sent the photos to me to give to her.