NEWPORT BEACH 2012: UNDER AFRICAN SKIES



Paul Simon in Under African Skies.

Sounds of defiance

By Ed Rampell

Joe Berlinger’s complicated two-hour documentary Under African Skies has, on the one hand, a sonorous soundtrack featuring Paul Simon and his African Graceland band. On the other hand, the doc deals with a complex issue: The role of art and politics. When the better half of Simon and Garfunkel flew to Johannesburg to record tracks for an album mixing American pop and the South African sound, he ran afoul of a cultural boycott supported by the U.N. and African National Congress against the tyrannical apartheid regime, enforced in those gloomy days before Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

Twenty five years later Simon reunites with his onetime African bandmates and the doc examines the controversial role Simon played then and its resonance today. In crucial scenes the aging Simon meets one of the ANC revolutionaries who condemned the musician in the 1980s for breaking a boycott intended to strangle the segregationist state. Simon continues to decry the way politicians use artists and insists on the right of talents to express themselves. Who’s right? Having triumphed over apartheid, the ANC activist can afford to be magnanimous.

In any case, the music, featuring Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Simon, etc., is extraordinary, and creates a musical mélange that’s the dialectical opposite of apartheid.         

  



AWARENESS 2011: INVISIBLE CHILDREN TONY

Tony in Invisible Children: Tony.

Invisible Children of the revolution

By John Esther 

Dedicated to "bringing awareness and opening eyes to some of our world's pressing issues; Ecological, Political, Health/Well Being and Scientific Progress" the Awareness Festival is now in its third year. 

A four day event concluding today, yesterday the Los Angeles festival screened the DVD, Invisible Children: Tony, on the big screen. 

In 2003 Americans Bobby Bailey, Larry Poole and Jason Russell, along with a camera, wound up Uganda in search of something more important in life. These 19-year-old men found it when they befriended young Ugandans like Tony, another boy victimized by Joseph Kony's Lords of Resistance Army (LRA).  

A particularly ungodly organization, the LRA has been accused of mass murder, child abduction and rape in Uganda and beyond. In order not to be forcefully recruited as child soldiers, who must kill fellow Ugandans or be killed, hundreds of children like Tony would leave their village homes and migrate to the city in order to sleep safely.

Responding to their newfound awareness, the three Americans returned to California to form Invisible Children, a group bringing awareness to the plight of Ugandans terrorized by mass murder. With a coalition consisting mostly of Ugandans plus American Invisible Children Roadies, the organization grows to such a degree it influences U.S. legislation. Then cold-blooded murder strikes Ugandans and and an American during the 2010 World Cup. 

(Beyond the horrors of the terrorist attack, politically speaking, it was tremendously stupid on the part of the LRA to make such an attack while the games were held in the country of South Africa. Westerners were actually paying attention to the African continent. An international public affairs fiasco, the attack brought negative-worldwide attention to the LRA -- who are not affiliated with al-Qaeda, despite initial ignorant coverage of the attack.)

Rather than give up, American youth was vitalized by the event. More signed up and more became dedicated to helping Ugandans live safely. There is now a movement to get quick communication devices (radio, cell phones) to remote areas so citizens can warn other citizens when the LRA is near. 

Co-directed by Poole and Russell, Invisible Children is more than just an engaging documentary that inspires action, it provides a wonderful example of what resides in some of America's best youth.

SFIFF 2011: THE REDEMPTION OF GENERAL BUTT NAKED

A scene from The Redemption of General Butt Naked.

Soldiering onward Christian

By John Esther

Those expecting The Redemption of General Butt Naked to be the latest film by Judd Apatow are in for a rude awakening upon first glance of Eric Strauss and Daniele Anastasion’s documentary about a man trying to save his neck, er soul.

From 1989-2003 a brutal civil war raged on in the Western African nation of Liberia. A conflict claiming an estimated 250,000 lives, few were more feared than General Butt Naked, a man who went into battles, villages and homes with little more on than guns and a cutlass where upon he stole, raped and killed men, women and children. The cutlass was his weapon of choice because it caused more pain than a gun.

Claiming to have seen the light, General Butt Naked disappeared in 1996 and returned from exile 10 years later as Joshua Milton Blahyi, an evangelist spreading the word of Jesus and begging/insisting on forgiveness from the those he had wronged – both far and near.

Preaching the word of Jesus to any African listening, Butt/Blahyi’s salvation is a hard pill to swallow (personally, I think he is a jerk), but most of the people in the documentary are more often than not able to forgive -- perhaps because of his or her own guilt.

Nothing funny or fun here, The Redemption of General Butt Naked takes a cold, bare look at what it means to forgive and never forget under harsh circumstances.

FILM REVIEW: IN A BETTER WORLD

Claus (Ulrich Thomsen) and Christian (William Jøhnk Nielsen) In a Better World.

Something is rotten in Denmark, Africa, Hollywood, etc.

By Don Simpson

Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier’s (Brothers; After the Wedding) seemingly apolitical diatribe on the cycle of violence and retribution in our post 9/11 society -- a narrative trope that seems to be becoming increasingly prevalent nowadays -- took home the Best Foreign Language Film of the Year Oscar at the 83rd Academy Awards I can see why.

Christian's (William Jøhnk Nielsen) mother recently died after losing a battle with cancer. After the funeral, Christian relocates with his father, Claus (Ulrich Thomsen), from England to Denmark. Christian detests quitters and he believes that his father quit caring about his mother thus causing her death. Christian’s deeply suppressed grief begins to reach its boiling point when he notices a bully picking on Elias (Markus Rygaard), a meek and scrawny boy at school. (The bully, whose abuse is tinged with anti-Swedish bigotry, says Elias' sharp facial features makes him resemble a rat.) Christian does not like bullies and despite his young age he has already established a philosophy about how to deal with them: hit them hard enough the first time and they will never bully you again. It does not help matters that Claus is clueless -- primarily because he spends a majority of the film absent from the screen and from Christian's life.

Christian’s coldly rational and self-justifying propensity for violence plays in opposition to the pacifist philosophy of Elias’ father, Anton (Mikael Persbrandt). Anton, a humanitarian doctor in an unnamed African country, is confronted daily with ethical dilemmas concerning a brutish local warlord -- Big Man (Odiege Matthew) -- who enjoys slicing and dicing the young women of the village. Facing the unconscionably primitive violence of Africa with a near-comical stoicism, Anton even steps up to provide medical treatment for Big Man, much to the dismay of his clinic's staff and local villagers.

During a visit home to Denmark, Anton gets bitch-slapped by an adult bully -- at a playground, no less -- in front of Elias and Christian. Anton shrugs off the situation, playing it cool in front of Elias and Christian. Little does he know, the boys are embarrassed of his pacifism. We all know what Christian thinks about bullies (and it seems he has convinced the incredibly malleable Elias to think exactly as he does); he is convinced that Elias' father should have challenged the bully to a fight. In a feeble attempt to teach Elias and Christian that turning the other cheek is not wussy, Anton and the boys visit the bully at his place of business. Anton accepts a few more bitch-slaps from the brute, thinking that this will successfully prove that the bully is just a big dumb jerk, but the boys determine that Elias' father is a big dumb pansy.

So what do the boys do? Christian and a somewhat reluctant Elias decide to take revenge on the aged bully on their own (this after they were just recently scolded for a violent attack on the adolescent bully). Thanks to some instructions downloaded by Christian from the Internet, the boys build a few pipe bombs with gunpowder from discarded fireworks...and we all know that nothing good will come of this.

Anton and Elias' respective bullies in Denmark, Anton's failing marriage with Marianne (Trine Dyrholm) and the situation with Big Man in Africa, causes Anton's sublime sense of control and impeccably peaceful demeanor to shatter. Anton's pacifism is represented by Bier as shameless moral vanity while his ideals of justice and nonviolence are proven to be not only illogical, but unsuccessful as well. (Violent revenge, however, is not punished -- other than the physical trauma endured by Elias). Anton essentially handles the African and Danish town bullies identically -- refusing to inflict violence against them with his own hands, leaving others to do the dirty work -- so comparing the two scenarios sadly provides no additional insight into his character.

The placement of Anton in Africa is not merely a tactic for Bier to offer a stark visual contrast between the warm African golds with cold Danish blues and greens; Bier does this in order to pit the irrationally idyllic values of the affluent/liberal/white western world against the uncivilized mayhem in the poor/tribal/black third world. Bier offers a menagerie of patronizing caricatures of Denmark's woefully naive upper class and their spoiled kids, as well as of bullies (all three of whom appear to be culled directly from Hollywood stereotypes).

Despite impressive acting performances all around and beautiful cinematography (Morten Søborg), Bier's confounding attempt to remain neutral in the discussion of certain moral issues (bullying, revenge, violence, parenting, etc.) ends up muddling the film's plot and purpose. Additionally, there is absolutely no sense of realism for the audience to latch on; every aspect of the narrative (absentee parents, dangerous information on the Internet, the Hippocratic oath, marital infidelity, masculinity, pacifism and the hunger for revenge) is handled as heavy-handedly and purposefully as the naming of the character Christian.


For a complimentary interview with Susanne Bier please click Bier.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: SUSANNE BIER

In a Better World director Susanne Bier.

Senseless and sensitivity

By John Esther

Another intense family drama by the director behind Open Hearts, Brothers, After the Wedding and Things We Lost in the Fire, the latest film by Susanne Bier, In a Better World, examines the various levels of tolerance some people will accept before retaliating.

Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) is a doctor working in an African desert camp where girls are often brought in after being cut open by a local warlord named Big Man (Odiege Matthew in a role he seems born to play).

Back home in Denmark, Anton's estranged wife, Marianne (Trine Dyrholm), is trying to raise their son, Elias (Markus Rygaard), a socially misfit kid who gets into a heap of trouble after befriending the new boy in town, Christian (William Jørgennsen), a bitter boy with a chip on his shoulder called Dad (Ulrich Thomsen).

When a plan of attack goes dreadfully awry -- although it could have been much worse -- it becomes clear that mother, father, husband, wife and son need to learn the value of forgiveness in a world riddled with revenge.

Days before In a Better World won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (Denmark) I met up with the Danish director in Beverly Hills. As she moved around on the slippery couch quite a bit, we talked about her latest film.

JEsther Entertainment: Why did you want to make this film, tell these stories?
Susanne Bier: Because I thought it was interesting. I thought the whole thing about revenge and forgiveness seemed like something which sort of creeps upon us in our vocabulary. It's about time to make a movie that dealt with those kinds of things.

JE: Do you think there is a greater thirst for revenge now than in the past? SB: There's a greater acceptance of revenge as a notion. If you look back the past five or six years the notion has become an accepted term.

JE: Worldwide? In particular places?
SB: In the Western World, yes. It's very hard for me to say what it's like in Asia.

JE: What kind of political intentions did you have behind making In a Better World?
SB: I don’t think I had political intentions. I had intentions dealing with ethic or moral issues. I very consciously did not deal with political things. This film deals with moral issues: the whole issue of revenge and forgiveness; the whole notion of violence and non-violence; and the whole ideal about being a decent human being and what that implies. I didn’t want to set it in a definite political context or religious context either. That way we could keep the universality of the moral issues.

JE: Do you think Anton has the right response in these situations, incidences where people are seeking revenge?
SB: I don’t think he has a correct or non-correct response. He's trying hard to remain stoic upon what he believes is right and, like all of us, at some point he has a breaking point. His breaking point is an interesting point because that's where you as an audience feel, "Oh great, we got rid of this guy. We don’t want Big Man to go around doing the sort of atrocities we know he's going to be doing. Once he's well he's going to go out and cut up stomachs of small pregnant girls." You don’t want him to be able to do that so there's a strange sense of relief at the same time you clearly realize Anton is feeling defeated.

JE: Big Man's death is a self-defense mechanism for the "girls of the future."
SB: You can say that. I'm not sure that's the correct mechanics, but you can say that.

JE: How do you deal with your thirsts for revenge? How do you negotiate that energy into something else?
SB: The way we feel offended in everyday life and the way we want to deal with feeling offended is usually pretty easy to deal with. Unless you've been exposed to real atrocities, it's hard to predict your capability to deal with them. As a general rule I do believe in forgiveness. All adult human beings know that the spiral of revenge is terribly tragic.

JE: A lot of your films deal with tragedy. Is there a reason why you are drawn to characters with intense internal conflicts that manifest themselves outward?
SB: My movies are dramatic movies. If you look at great dramas, they are pretty violent, pretty powerful. There's been a particularly European tradition of being withheld and sort of subdued by your scale of dramatic expression and I don’t really believe in that. I actually believe in telling the stories with a lot of emotion. You're probably much more capable of reaching an audience if you feel you've got an important story or if you feel you have something in your heart which you think is important to convey.

JE: Do you see your films as a response to the lack of intensity in European drama?
SB: You don’t make sort of intense movies because you think other movies are boring. You make movies because you think this particular story is right. When I get the criticism of my movies being incredibly dramatic, I kind of go, "Yes, great. Thank you," even if it's not meant that way. I actually happen to think it's great.

JE: I was not posing it as a criticism –
SB: No, I know you were not.

JE: Do people actually criticize your films for being too dramatic?
SB: Actually it's interesting here, because I'm Danish, my movies are sort of "art house." In Europe I'm so mainstream, that I'm not entirely accepted among certain movie circles in Europe. I'm quite pleased with that. I mean, if you think moviemaking is about talking to two people in a very sophisticated cinema, far away from everything, be my guest. I just don’t believe it. I actually believe in making accessible movies with real content.

JE: Now that you say that, when I was at Sundance in January (where In a Better World screened), I was sitting around with a few Scandinavian filmmakers and there was a surprisingly intense debate over your films.
SB: Yeah.

JE: What do you think about the film's Oscar nomination?
SB: I'm very happy. I'm very proud. I get to wear a long dress.

JE: Do you think the Oscars usually get it right with the winners?
SB: Nobody gets it right always. I do tend to like the Oscar movies.

JE: They are usually dramas.
SB: [Laughs]. Yeah. Sometimes certain comedic performances do not get appreciated because they are comedic performances. And those can be the most difficult to put out. So tell me about this Sundance Scandinavian discussion. I think that's very interesting.

JE: Some thought you were too commercial. They thought your Oscar nomination came through name recognition since you had done Things We Lost in the Fire (with Halle Berry) and Brothers was adapted into English (withTobey Maguire). Others did not see how being commercial was a bad thing. And how could your films be so commercial since they were so intense? There were fans for Sweden's Simple Simon, which did not make the cut.
SB: Okay.

JE: You are also one of the few female filmmakers consistently working. Do you see progress for women trying to make it in this business?
SB: It's probably a bit easier, but society still places a big emphasis on women having to choose between their careers and having children. Society should change that. It's a huge pressure on younger women.

JE: Lastly, what do you think of these interviews where you discuss yourself and your work? Does it serve the film? Should the work speak for itself?
SB: That's a very theoretical question. Yes, I would prefer for my work to speak for itself, but that's not the reality. The reality is that I need to generate interest. If you are serious about your work, this is just as an important part as shooting the film.

JE: Do you read interviews with other directors?
SB: Sometimes. In Europe, particularly, directors can be very pretentious. That doesn’t make me terribly keen to see a film. I'm very sensitive to the education of a particular project. If I read a director, and the director seems sincerely dedicated, it is going to make me interested.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: SHERRY HORMANN & LIYA KEBEDE

Liya Kebede (left) plays Waris Dirie (right) in Desert Flower.

Years to bloom

By John Esther

After a childhood diet of abuse, slavery and disfigurement, at the age of 13 Waris Dirie escaped from the desert of Somalia to London, England, where she spent her adolescent years and early adulthood as a maid in her country's London embassy. After she lost her thankless job, Dirie was homeless.

Thanks to lots of luck and a little love, the poor, illiterate nomad from Africa climbed out from under the seedy streets and slummy hotels of London to the runways of some of the most glamorous fashion designers in the world.

On the surface, Dirie's story sounds like some random-fated rags-to-riches story, but behind the cover girl lurks a child scarred with terror.

Based on the European-best selling book by Dirie and Cathleen Miller, writer-director Sherry Hormann's seemingly light treatment of Dirie's youth during much of Desert Flower – although there are some horrific parts of Dirie's life exposed between the film's incidents of female camaraderie and model runways (from sparkling shoots to dreary London hotel hallways) – works its way into a crescendo of outcry against the barbaric practice of female genitalia mutilation.

With no legitimate basis in law or religion, female genitalia mutilation is an injustice happening to six thousand girls worldwide every day. That means one female is mutilated every 14.4 seconds around the clock; or, to put it another way, during the 124-minute running time of Desert Flower, over 516 girls fell victim to a practice nowhere mentioned in the Koran; or, to put it another way, during the estimated five minutes it will take you to read this article, nearly 21 girls have been traumatized, sliced and stitched without anesthesia, but with parental consent, if not participation, too.

For the role of Dirie, Hormann (Silent Shadow; Father's Day) cast Ethiopian-born Liya Kebede (The Good Shepherd; Lord of War), a supermodel and Goodwill Ambassador for the World Health Organization. The film also stars Sally Hawkins as Dirie's best friend, Marilyn, and Timothy Spall as the photographer who discovered the working girl with a great profile and made her a star.

In this exclusive interview we spoke to Hormann and Kebede about Desert Flower.

JEsther Entertainment: Why did you want to make this film?
Sherry Hormann: It's a story that has to be told. It's an issue we don’t know a lot about and knowing that 6000 girls a day are mutilated. And, just think about it, a nomad girl, illiterate, survives war, being a maid and then giving that historic speech in front of the U.N. It gives me a lot of hope.
Liya Kebede: It's a really an amazing story; one that needs to be told. She's an incredible woman; I was inspired by her.

JE: Did you have any more direct political intentions with the film?
SH: Political intentions? I'm not a politician. I'm an entertainer. I strongly believe in human rights. I strongly believe no human being should be hurt. I believe humor is the best weapon to survive. The grayer it gets during the day, the more I try to pull out my sense of humor. This is why I tried to balance the drama with comedy. Otherwise you can't digest what's going on in her life.

JE: How did the making of the film change you?
SH: My next film has a political topic as well and Desert Flower might provide me with more courage, maybe, and more attention on what's going on.
LK: Before making this film, Sherry and I sat down and I remember Sherry said to me, "You know this film is going to change your life, right?" It did. [Laughs.] We learned a lot. I had a lot of personal growth in this movie. I was really inspired by her. This film will change everyone who comes close to it, whether you are making it or watching it.

JE: What do you think you have in common with Waris?
LK: We have some things. To a certain degree I can see what it must have felt like to leave your home and go somewhere new and start all over and learn the ropes, adjust yourself and all these kinds of things. I can see a little bit how she must have felt, even though we come from different backgrounds. I can see how she went into fashion.

JE: She goes from such impoverishment to high fashion.
LK: It's a stark contrast – the access of everything. She can't even understand it. Even when she becomes a successful model, her house is so stark. It's like she's now comfortable and she doesn’t really know what to do with it. She's never really comfortable, even in the end.

JE: How have American audiences responded so far? Are they different from other audiences around the globe?
SH: The screenings I've had around the globe are great. We had it at film festivals, but in Europe we've had school classes streaming in and we had the European Union supporting us, even though they didn’t support me at all while I was writing (the screenplay). We've had a huge response from South America – where I never expected it. You never know. This movie has no stars attached. It's a low budget movie. It's a difficult topic, but it comes along as an entertaining movie. It's not the art house-ish movie. I don’t know how the American audiences will respond. What do you think?

JE:It will probably work on a few levels. Liya, have people changed toward you?
LK: We've really had the kind of reaction we wanted from the audience. People come out of the screeners overwhelmed and touched and moved and educated about something new. It's a wonderful reaction. People were able to go to the cinema and spend two hours on a journey.

JE:How do you think the way the film ends will impact audiences, especially with regard to younger American females?
LK: Because it ends with the U.S. speech?

JE:Not so much the U.N. speech as the penultimate scene where we see the worst of the worst happens to Waris?
SH: I debated that a lot, believe me. I've rewritten the script several times and in the editing room I changed the structure many times. At the every end, I decided with the editor (Clara Fabry) that I wanted the hero to be understood, to be loved. I wanted to give her a huge hug. I also didn’t want it to look like becoming a model is easy. I wanted to come with a hammer at the end. Nothing was easy. There's a huge scar, a secret, behind the whole life of this woman. I wanted people to leave the movie theater being pensive, debating what's going on.
LK: It's a bold move on Sherry's part. It's a necessary one. It has truth. It's important that something like this is shown truthfully.


JE: When I was watching it, I started to become more and more apprehensive because I thought the film was going to be a rags-to-riches story and that the worst of the worst things that happened to Waris would be reduced to a conversation Waris had with Marilyn in the bedroom.
LK: And then they gave you exactly what you wanted. [Laughs.]

JE: To the film's considerable credit. It wallops the viewer in the face with some hard truth. The viewer will not depart from your film with a "feel good" feeling. Sure, they will be happy Waris survived and the work she does to bring this phenomenon to the world's attention, but there are other deep issues involved. For example, there is the issue of American girls not being able to live up to the images of the media. Maybe American girls who can afford a film ticket will not feel so sorry for themselves after watching the film? Maybe they will think, "Okay, I may never be the cover girl, but I don’t have that kind of horror inside me, either. I have a more balanced life."
SH: Right. Look beyond your pink bubble. You open up the news and it's always the same topic. You just have to turn your head a little to see what's going on. Africa is always the forgotten continent. You can watch a movie where you laugh and it's lighthearted, but also where you feel pain and where you cry.