Customer Reviews

ABC Africa

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is how developing Africa looks and feels. (And, the film deserves great credit for that. This is the only film I've seen since my return from teaching in Malawi 25 years ago which makes me feel there again.) Yet there is only so much of children mugging for the white man's camera, of drunks outside the village bars, of shy young mothers trying to avoid the camera. . .before. . .you want a story.

Maybe, that is the director's intention: to capture the everyday. But then, and this is the film's other great strength, there is the footage of the home, ruined by civil war, still rented out to government workers; of the hospital spilling those dead from AIDS, of the--almost countless-- orphans and the small, locally-organized groups of women trying to help them, and, finally, most memorably, the clouds below the jet bound back to Europe. That final minute is poetic cinematography.

It would have been easy for Abbas Kiarostami to fly to Uganda and play "Bono" -- giving the world "simple answers" (send money; buy "red" products) for "simple problems" (they have AIDS and are dying) -- instead he takes a harder path: providing no answers or questions, forcing the viewer to find the significance for all that he just saw. It's a difficult picture, because it appears as if there's very little going on, besides some tourist videography, but soon you start to question the helpfulness of the UN (in sending a camera crew instead of something better) and the savings clubs for the women, and the adoption of little Ugandans by Europeans. The thread of futility strikes daggers at the heart of "Oprah Do-Gooderism" by wondering if it's all for naught. There are beautiful scenes in this movie (of children dancing and singing and automobiles driving along dirt paths) and scenes of torment both of which feed into what we stereotypically expected from the film and from "Africa" itself. Perhaps it's all lost on this age which views self-reflection as something foreign.

Abbas Kiarostami is one of Iran's greatest filmmakers, and honestly, I believe he's one of the world's greatest filmmakers. This film, a documentary about the AIDS/orphan crisis in Uganda, is one of his most remarkable works. Many filmmakers/documentarians would employ a "TV news" style to this type of material, but that would end up being pedantic and it's been done so many times. Most people who are going into this film know (or are at least familiar with) the AIDS crisis in Africa, and are not going to need to hear the socio-political background. Kiarostami doesn't go the obvious route, and concentrates on the people of Uganda. Aside from a few offical spokespeople giving a minimal of background information, Abbas lets this film play out with many long traveling shots of Uganda, shots of the children, shots of a hospital (which is both fascinating and harrowing), a wonderful scene of a wedding, another wonderful scene of an Austrian couple adopting, and a scene shot in almost complete darkness during a thunderstom. This final scene is the most memorable in the film, with profound, beautiful observations by Kiarostami and his crew. Unlike some other documentary filmmakers, Kiarostami doesn't inject himself too much into the film, letting the Ugandan people be the stars of it.

There is also a remarkable documentary about Kiarostami himself on the DVD, where many film critics (most notably Jonathan Rosenbaum, a Chicago Reader film critic and a huge admirer of Kiarostami's work) talk about Kiarostami, his background (which is much more diverse than I had thought), his relationship to Iran and how it impacts his filmmaking, and Kiarostami's philosohpy towards his art and filmmaking. Kiarostami is also a poet, and several of his poems are read during this documentary about his work. It's not surprising that Abbas writes poetry, as there is much poetry in his filmmaking.

ABC Africa is both uplifting and deeply sad at the same time, but Kiarostami manages to walk this fine balance so well, and ABC Africa is one of his most moving, memorable films. The documentary on Abbas himself is also wonderful.

Written, directed, and edited by the Iranian film maker Abbas Kiarostami, this documentary portrays the plight of Uganda's 2 million children who have been orphaned by the ravages of civil war, life under the psychopathic despot Idi Amin, and AIDS. Kiarostami made the film at the request of the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development. If you have been to Africa the sights and sounds are very familiar--piles of smoldering garbage, orange clay landscape, rutted roads, rusted corrugated tin roofs, bicycles, the ubiquitous rubber flip-flop sandals, and a weary yet resilient, elegant, and remarkably joyful people. In the film's most powerful sequence, a nurse wraps a dead child in a dirty blanket, packs him in half of a cardboard box ripped open for the purpose, and then loads the corpse onto the back of a bicycle. In particular, Kiarostami highlights the work of UWESO--Ugandan Women's Efforts To Save Children, an all volunteer organization of women who give themselves to care for the orphans and to train women in small business skills. The film has almost no narrative, and would have been even more powerful if it had. But the images speak for themselves. The title refers to a t-shirt worn by a small child featured in the film who was adopted by a young Austrian couple.

What is perhaps most distinctive about the impression left by this film is the apparent incongruity between its troubling subject matter and the vibrance of the children whose laughter and dance and song tend to draw the attention of the filmmakers.

Commissioned to make a film that would highlight the plight of orphans in Uganda, Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami chose to make a very different kind of film than the usual tragic but hopeful infomercials designed to pluck at the heartstrings and wallets of well-off Westerners. His film, that superficially resembles a spontaneous travelogue, shot on consumer-grade digital video cameras by a couple of Iranian tourists, does indeed portray the plight of orphaned children due to war and poverty and AIDS and other epidemics. At the same time, the film highlights the impossibility of summing up such a situation, of representing adequately such complex problems, or of offering simple solutions. Sending cash, adopting African babies, promoting sex education, are not sufficient. Even more, what the film aims to show is that Uganda is not just a "site of problems" but it is a place where children live and play, and laugh and dance, like children anywhere. The vitality of the children, their spontaneity and their promise, in spite of the difficulties, is the impression that sticks most strongly. What the filmmakers refuse to do is offer up an ostensibly objective account of the situation, the kind of documentary on Africa that is so common nowadays, when a news team flies in and after a whirlwind tour attempts to tell us a story that aims to sum things up for outsiders.

In spite of the seemingly arbitrary organization there is in fact a pattern that organizes the imagery and information presented in this unique documentary, that alternates between voices telling of devastation and of the systemic problems that make the situation seem intractable, local activists attempting to empower women to care for their children (there are few men, and it is explained why), and then images of children who smile and laugh and dance for the cameras, and images of adults who are more wary, cautious and suspicious. The whole is given structure by a flight into and then at the end out of Africa. The ending depicts the adoption of a Ugandan child by Austrian parents, who hope to be able to remind her of her origins when she is grown. If there is hope for her, the situation back in Uganda is more ambigous, and through the window of the plane we almost see the images of those not taken, for whom this is not a solution, etched on the clouds. The opening also establishes that whatever impressions we may garner from a single film about a complex culture and situation are bound to be incomplete, and as inadequate as any simplistic or one-sided solutions. We follow the filmmakers as they travel to Uganda, and see things from their perspective; and they make very clear that it is a partial perspective and don't pretend to objectivity. The fragmented character of their sometimes overwhelmed take on the situation they aim to depict is highlighted by a scene near the midpoint, that is perhaps the most obvious mark that this is an Abbas Kiarostami film. The scene reminds not only of the enigmatic ending of Taste of Cherry, but also of Kiarostami's general tendency to withhold information from his audience, to leave them guessing with only partial information, because he knows that their thinking they know what is crucial in the life of another is precisely what makes it impossible for them to empathize with or identify with that other.

In this pivotal scene at the midpoint, after which the perspective of Kiarostami and his partner gradually begin to make themselves less felt within the film, we begin with a shot of the lamppost where mosquitoes seem to glow like fireflies, illuminated by the brightness of the light. It is late and Kiarostami sits with his friend and partner, reflecting on what they have seen and suddenly the lights go out. This is a nightly occurrence, of which they had been only dimly aware and for which they hadn't prepared. They make their way back to their room in complete darkness as we hear rumblings of thunder in the distance. The camera is still rolling as Kiarostami enters his room and lies down in preparation for sleep. Suddenly, unexpectedly, there is illumination from the window as lightning strikes, once, twice ... a third time. Illumination, clarity regarding this or any situation this complex, only comes in fragments, and perhaps only for those who are willing to step outside of the comfort of the Westernized air conditioned hotel rooms that our filmmakers stay in to begin with, and enter into the reality of the situation, leaving behind the status of tourists and the comfort of their certainties. If only for a short time. There are no easy answers, we are told about the problems, but what you remember from this film is the dancing and the laughter of children.

This documentary was clearly made by a man who had not only never been to "Africa" (Uganda, actually), but had done absolutely no research prior to his filming. The film is more a boring examination of Samadian's culture shock and ignorant observations, then an examination of the effects of HIV/AIDS on Uganda. Even the title, ABC Africa, reflects Samadian's ignorance of the African continent in all its diversity--it is similar to titling a film about Sweden "ABC Europe." It is painful to watch anyone stumbling through their first journey in a new culture--culture shock and ignorance are never flattering--but not to realize one's woefully inadequate knowledge of a subject and distribute one's experience as a documentary is just plain crazy. Someone should have taken him aside and told him he was acting a fool.

I agree with the previous reviewer. Martin Scorcese must have poor taste in movies. In fact, most of his suck, so I shoulda known better. Anyway, this film takes a subject that is very much worth making a film about, has some great shots in it, but overall, there's NO story whatsoever. Felt like an 84-minute commercial for Feed the Children. Not very moving or very educational. I think the folks that consider this a "top 10" are just "feel-gooders," who rated the movie more on the subject matter than the actual film itself. You want a better movie that also shows you some of the cultural in that region, see Hotel Rwanda, or even Endurance. Much better.