THE
AXE IN THE ATTIC A post-Katrina documentary in which the filmmakers
transcend their self-indulgences as they delve deeper into the
nightmare. |
Some
believe democracy can save the world. Others wonder whether it can even
work in America. Lately, the process has not looked so good, with an
assassination in Pakistan, murder and chaos in Kenya, and Mitt Romney
ads in America. This year’s Human Rights Watch Festival at the Museum
of Fine Arts examines the success and failure of vox populi in various
countries around the world, highlighting issues that Americans might
bear in mind when they cast their own ballots.
Here’s
a slogan you won’t hear from any candidate in this country: “Support
the coca workers!” It works for Evo Morales, whose 2005 campaign for
the Bolivian presidency is documented in Alejandro Landres’s COCALERO
(2007; January 18 at 6 pm). Morales’s “Movement Toward Socialism” party
represents the poor, mostly indigenous farmers of the proscribed leaf
(grown, they insist, for legal, non-drug-related purposes), who have
been exploited and suppressed by the capitalist establishment and
multinational corporations. He at first appears a heroic, affable
crusader, but a few sinister traces emerge, such as his ties to Fidel
Castro and Hugo Chávez, his jolly slogan “Death to America,” and his
inclination to extend the presidency to a lifetime term. Landres,
wisely, records and does not comment.
Another marginalized group seek redress at the ballot box in Shimon Dotan’s HOT HOUSE
(2006; January 20 at 10:30 am, co-presented by the Boston Jewish Film
Festival), which is about Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and
their participation in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections.
Even as they were imprisoned for crimes ranging from terrorist attacks
to political activism, some members of Hamas and Fatah used their jail
time to earn university degrees and hone their political savvy. Several
of them ran as candidates in the election — and won. They almost win my
sympathy, too, until, for example, a pretty mother and former TV anchor
serving multiple life sentences complacently describes how she abetted
a suicide bombing that killed eight children.
Less
successful are the efforts of Femi, son of the late, legendary Nigerian
musician and activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti, in Dan Ollman’s SUFFERING AND SMILING
(2007; January 19 at 4:30 pm). Femi follows the same path as his dad,
who in his music relentlessly attacked the corruption and the Western
ties of reigning Nigerian despot Olusegun Obasanjo. Beaten by police,
his home burned down, Fela persisted till his death, with little to
show for his efforts. Femi is similarly frustrated, especially when the
people vote Obasanjo back into power. Much of the film is shot while
Femi tours Europe, but it neglects to discuss the impact, or lack
thereof, of the popularity of his and his father’s music in the same
countries he blames for Nigeria’s colonial past and ongoing
exploitation.
Some of Africa’s
miseries, however, must be regarded as self-inflicted. Bent-Jorgen
Perlmutt & Nelson Walker III’s harrowing LUMO
(2007; January 19 at 10:30 am) takes as its subject the ongoing civil
war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The young woman of the
title was gang-raped and assaulted by soldiers — and so savagely that
she suffered a fistula, a rupture of the wall between the bladder and
the vagina. A common complaint, it turns out, in this country. She is
one of the lucky ones, as she’s taken to a clinic where she undergoes
repeated but unsuccessful surgery. And if she recovers? She will return
to her village, where her attackers still operate with impunity.
Better
known in the West are the genocidal atrocities in Darfur, thanks in
large part to the efforts of former Marine captain and military
observer Brian Steidle, the subject of Annie Sundberg & Ricki
Stern’s documentary THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK
(2006; January 17 at 8 pm). Steidle was unprepared for the atrocities
perpetrated by the janjaweed, Arab horsemen employed by the Sudanese
government to eliminate the region’s African population. Helpless to
prevent the carnage or to compel his employers — the African Union — to
any action, he quit, took his horrendously documented evidence, and
mounted a campaign to inform the world. His outrage is easy to share,
but his call to kill the evildoers sounds like the rhetoric that got us
into Iraq.
With so many atrocities
going on today, who has time to dwell on the past? Yet given the
continued threat of nuclear proliferation, the lessons of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki remain as relevant as ever. In Steven Okazaki’s WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN
(2007; January 20 at 12:15 pm), survivors of the atomic bomb recall
their experience and show their scars, which remain vivid and hideous
six decades later.
Neither can we
be reminded often enough about what happened in 2005 in New Orleans
(though I don’t hear the subject coming up much in the presidential
candidates’ debates). Local filmmakers Lucia Small and Ed Pincus were
so distressed by TV reports about the magnitude of the disaster and the
incompetence of the response that they headed cross-country to
interview Katrina evacuees and survivors.
