Juliette of the Herbs

Production: A Mabinogion Films presentation. Produced, directed, written, edited by Tish Streeten.
Crew: Camera (Duart color), Brian Danitz, William Rexer II; music, Sarah Plant; sound, Rexer, Tish Streeten, Ann Streeten. Reviewed at Boston Festival of Women's Cinema, April 17, 1999. Running time: 75 MIN.

Publish date: 2024-07-06

To outsiders it sounds incredibly arcane: the life of Juliette de Bairacli Levy, an herbalist who specializes in holistic veterinary medicine. But tightly told story will be a plus on the fest circuit and should find a strong afterlife on cable and niche homevideo due to growing general interest in alternative medicine.

Filmmaker Tish Streeten spent seven years on the project, filming in Levy’s native England as well as in the U.S. and across Europe. The daughter of a well-to-do couple of Turkish and Egyptian extraction, Levy got a degree in veterinary medicine, became interested in natural healing and lived with gypsies and other nomads to learn what they knew. She made her own discoveries about plants and became renowned in her field, writing bestselling texts on herbalism since the 1940s. Through extensive interviews with her subject, Streeten conveys a real sense of the woman and her work. She also reveals her eccentric side, as in a scene during which Levy stands in a field talking to cows, looking like something out of a Monty Python sketch. Film has solid tech credits, seamlessly mixing home movies and still photos with new footage.

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