Today we opened the goodfocus post office box in our sleepy little town and found a small, but very happening party inside. Apparently LEF (we did 10 minutes of research and still don’t know what it stands for either) decided to host said party in our post box by awarding us a small pre-production grant for the feature documentary we are currently working on in Hale County, Alabama.
As excited as I am about the award, I’m finding it very difficult to put aside the question: what does LEF stand for? It’s a series of three capital letters, doesn’t that suggest an acronym? Interestingly, during a panel discussion about documentary film funding at the recent CIFF (Camden International Film Festival – they seem pretty open about their acronym) I heard LEF refered to as both L.E.F. and LEF, as in “lef”. As in, the word “left” with the final consonant dropped – precisely how we pronounce it in my sultry youth in New Orleans. So, is it L.E.F. or lef? And if it’s lef, what does that mean, exactly? Is it a, currently, non-sense word; the intended purpose of which is to add a new short-hand, linguistic concept to our American vernacular? Is the sound of “lef” to become synonymous with “good documentaries funded through the generosity of private sponsorship?” I’ve tried recalling similar attempts at this tactic and haven’t had much success; the obvious ones are “google” and “spam,” but both are “real” words simply appropriated by new concepts that overshadow their previous meanings.
How often are truly new words introduced into the English language? Yes, asking this question begs a plethora of tidy responses suggesting the commonplace occurrence of such linguistic parthenogenesis, but in the everyday scheme of things, it’s quite rare.
What does this suggest? That LEF is, in fact, an acronym – regardless of how it is pronounced? LEF or L.E.F., it is a series of letters that are the leading characters in an otherwise unidentifiable series of words which, when taken in whole, have a meaning that in some way suggests the goals, history or intended purpose of the organization. This being the case – why isn’t it obvious? Does LEF, or L.E.F., or lef intentionally obfuscate their meaning in order to save themselves from ridicule or, worse yet, base humor? What does that ‘E’ really mean?
Regardless of their meaning, however, we are, at present, very much enamored with these three letters.
Thank you, LEF (or lef, or L.E.F.) for seeing the possibility that we see in Hale County, and in us.
