African Journey
by Chris Dashiell

The work of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami has opened up new possibilities for the cinema, at a time when it was beginning to seem as if the art of film was exhausted. His non-dramatic approach blurs the lines between fiction and non-fiction, while his sense that "being seen" by the camera is an integral part of our viewing experience attempts to change the role of the audience from passive observer to active participant. Although each Kiarostami film stands on its own, to follow his career is to experience them also as parts of a larger on-going project. The method is part of the goal: to humanize the person behind the camera as well as those in front of it.

Recently, at the Arizona Film Festival, I got to see ABC Africa, a documentary on the AIDS orphans in Uganda that Kiarostami made at the invitation of the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development. After a devastating civil war and a raging AIDS epidemic, it is estimated that there are 1.6 million children left without parents in Uganda. The picture fulfills its sponsor's goal of publicizing the problem, and the programs that are attempting to meet it, such as a nation-wide organization of women who adopt orphans and receive training in managing and saving money. At the same time, this is a Kiarostami film - so instead of the kind of dry, earnest, public service style movie that we've come to expect from a "documentary," ABC Africa is a very lively and personal portrait of the country, its children, and the filmmaking project itself.

Indeed, the presence of the cameras is in itself a sort of main character in the film. The children are fascinated - they cavort, make faces, run in front of the cameramen so as to stay in the picture. This is the kind of thing a conventional documentarian would try to prevent in order to attain an "objective" view of daily life. Far from preventing it, Kiarostami accepts it as part of his story, calmly walking among the kids, letting them look through the viewfinder, taking everything as it comes with ease. After a while the laughing and shouting of the children becomes a thing of beauty - the director stands aside and lets them present themselves as they wish to, and we get a sense of life in the present rather than a staged sense of life perceived by an outsider.

There have been complaints in some quarters that the film is too upbeat. In fact, the suffering and devastation is not downplayed - in one sequence, we see a dead child being wrapped and put into a cardboard coffin at a hospital - but what the film inevitably captures is endurance. We do not see a defeated people, but a people committed to surmounting the ordeal, and this heightens our view of Uganda and the orphans, and touches us more directly.

A sequence in the middle of the film brings us back to the personal. In the town where the filmmakers are staying, the electricity is turned off at night. The screen is totally dark, and we hear the crew talking, and fumbling to find their rooms. Staring at a blank screen for five minutes or so, we are given the choice to turn inward and contemplate what we have seen so far. Then a storm begins, and the flashes of lightning briefly and beautifully illuminate a tree waving in the wind outside the window.

ABC Africa may be one of the minor links in Kiarostami's life project, but it is unmistakably his work. The pioneer of a new humanism in cinema presents a model for gentle engagement in the nonfiction film. As the plane leaves Uganda, we see the faces of the children superimposed on the clouds.

Also showing at the fest, as part of its African film series, was Souleymane Cissé's 1987 movie Yeelen, which won the jury prize at Cannes that year. The Malian director is one of the most admired figures in African film, producing independent work outside of the usual French-financed channels. Yeelen, based on an actual myth, tells the story of a young man (Issiaka Kane) of the Bambara tribe in 13th century Mali. He has stolen magic fetishes from his father, the head of his tribe's ancient cult of the god Komo. The son seeks to renew his people, and the world, redeeming it from the corruption of the old ways that are based on power and vengeance. He flees across the country with his father in pursuit, who is determiend to kill him.

Along the way the son is captured by a cattle-herding tribe that asks him to use his magic against a marauding enemy. Meanwhile the father partakes in rites and ceremonies that will guide him to his son, including a magic post that moves with a power of its own while being carried (rather comically) by two servants. The son must reach a sacred spring where his blind uncle, a wise sorcerer, will bestow a powerful gift. Everything leads up to an apocalyptic showdown between father and son.

With its wandering rhythm and non-linear narrative style, Yeelen evokes a mythic world of shamanic power. The scenes involving ceremonies, with extended call-and-response rituals, are fascinating and hypnotic. The photography is stunning. And although the story, and the style, is uneven and sometimes crude, with elements that seem disjointed or part of a larger story that we don't know, the parts that succeed are like a glimpse into a legendary past or alternate world. Cissé uses this myth of conflict between two magical traditions to reflect on the modern situation in Mali, where old ways have proved to be impotent and self-destructive in the wake of colonialism and its aftermath.

Since Yeelen, Cisse has directed one film (Waati) in 1995. I hope to see more from him, and I fervently wish that African film will get more support and exposure in the West during the coming years.

©2003 Chris Dashiell
CineScene