ABC Africa by Kiarostami

January 25, 2008

The documentary often implies a high level of authority. Directors immerse themselves in a topic and interview experts in order to wrap themselves within an unassailable point of view. Abbas Kiarostami makes no attempt to build himself up as an expert in ABC Africa. He is unabashedly a newcomer to Africa and during his ten days in Uganda he simply keeps his eyes open (and camera recording). It is a risky creative path for a documentary maker.. as it would be easy to make cultural errors that could discredit his work. But by means of transparency in the creative process Kiarostami turns this documentary into a meditation on his ability to see and know another culture.

Let me unpack that a little bit. It is absurd to think that with a ten day trip to a foreign country a person gains the insight to comment intelligently. Instead of faking it and trying to build in an external authority, Kiarostami is forthright about his lack of full knowledge. In several scenes we view Kiarostami (and his collaborator) in the act of filming the people of Africa. The kids preen themselves for the camera and adults go on with their work.

It is obvious from these scenes that Kiarostami is a visitor.. that he is not seeing anything like the "real" Africa.. only a single surface.. one that surely breaks down as soon as the visitors are gone. This transparency shifts our focus from interest in learning about the way Africa "really is" to learning about how difficult it is to see Africa as a visitor.

Kiarostami turns out to be a great model for me in my Wisconsin Views project. There is one sequence where he simply walks from small store to small store, peering inside. It is a potent reminder of the power of simply documenting life. Looking into a hair salon his camera scans the posters on the wall:

A scene like this is filled with cultural information.. the kinds of daily things that largely escape filmmakers who take up the really "big" ideas.

Any film that records the surface of Africa will be in danger of sentimentalism. Scenes of orphans dancing and running around the camera make it possible for a viewer to get the impression that "despite problems" Africa is doing fine. Kiarostami manages to undermine this in two ways. First he has a frankness about the place of death.

In the above scene is a nurse placing a tiny corpse into a makeshift cardboard coffin. We have just seen the nurse smiling and laughing.. and then we follow her into this scene of death. From the context it is clear how little this death means.. how ordinary it is. I don't believe an American film could let death feel so meaningless.

Kiarostami's film technique itself is a second force undermining sentimentality. Numerous times we note the camera shifting to details of life or clothing that are not complimentary and that give hints of what life is like when the camera is gone. This is subtle and I would need some examples to fully make my point.. but truth in filmmaking comes about by means of a truthful gaze. The camera records those minute impulses to see beyond the surface.

Near the middle of ABC Africa is a strange scene in which the small group of Iranians who are part of this project talk amongst themselves at a hotel late at night. The electricity cuts off and they make their way to their rooms. The camera is still recording, but all we see for a few minutes is a black screen.. except for subtitles:

-How can they live their lives in this darkness?
-Where we were 200 kilometers back, there was no electricity. Here it is cut off at midnight.
-Imagine that grandmother living with 35 or 45 kids in a single room.
- The sun is gone, life is gone. With no candles, no lights, no television, and no internet.
-I can't think of anywhere in this world where the sun could be more precious and welcome.
-They live half their lives within these dark walls, like blind people. We can't even handle 5 minutes of it.
-Because it is 5 minutes. If it was 5 or 50 years, we'd get used to it.

This conversation could bear several paragraphs of interpretation. To begin with I was struck by the way Kiarostami's theme of the preciousness of small natural things (think Taste of Cherry) gets an unexpected mention: within this darkness the experience of the sun would be more powerful than in another well-lit country.

Taking place as it does in the dark, with a dark screen, Kiarostami manages to give the viewer a sense of darkness. We literally are subjected to 5 minutes of darkness as we watch the film.. thus finding ourselves within the conversation.. and having a chance to understand something more about life in Africa. The initial impulse in the conversation is for the participants to distance themselves from Africans: imagine what it would be like to live like this! But at the end a voice asserts that actually we could live like this: we could be Africans if our context was different; we'd get used to it.