ABC Africa

Kiarostami is invited by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to see the work of Uganda Women's Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO). Carrying a couple of camcorders, the director sets to document what he sees. The film material covers the period from April 2000 to March 2001.

The ravages of civil war, AIDS and also malaria have resulted in a plenitude of orphans in Uganda. It is for them that UWESO exists.

Kiarostami makes at least one extended visit to Masaka, the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic in Uganda. This is the kind of place where electricity is cut out at midnight. One of the longest take in the film is shot in a pitch black night after the lights go out.

Efforts to control the spread of AIDS is hampered by religion. Use of condoms is discouraged by the religious. Virginity is advocated as the correct alternative. Fat chance. Not surprisingly, 15 to 45 years men die from AIDS. The result is that towns are devoid of adult males.

Kiarostami never misses an opportunity to film kids. It is an old interest of his. Moreover UWESO is there for them.

Kiarostami meets an Austrian couple, a doctor and a teacher, who adopt a little girl. Elsewhere a little boy catches Kiarostami's attention. The camera approaches and zooms in. This little boy has eerily brilliant sky blue eyes.

Asked by the UN International Fund for Economic Development (IFAD) to make a film documenting the plight of millions of Ugandan orphans ravaged by the recent civil war and the scourge of AIDS, Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami responded with something much more, a personal and poetic film that allows us to see the people, the land, and the culture of Uganda without relentless images of despair. The documentary, ABC Africa, captures a kaleidoscope of faces of children and adults that display an enthusiasm for life that belies the grim statistics. The children of Kampala may be without parents but they are still children, ready to burst into wondrous song or dance, or simply mug for the camera when given the opportunity.

ABC Africa illuminates the work of the Uganda Women's Effort to Save orphans (UWESCO), an organization of women willing to adopt these children even though they may have many other mouths to feed. There is no voice-over narration in the film, only interviews with Ugandan relief workers who describe the extent of the problems they face. In trademark Kiarostami fashion, as a car drives through the streets of Kampala and the countryside, the digital hand-held camera records the passing scene, revealing both the beauty and the ugliness of Ugandan life. In one extraordinary sequence, we share the grief as the camera pans into a hospital for children dying of AIDS and follows a dead child being wrapped in a blanket and put into a makeshift cardboard box, then wheeled away on a bicycle to an unknown burial ground.

Equally memorable is a five-minute segment shot in total darkness inside a hotel where the power has failed due to regular midnight power cuts. All we hear is the conversation of two men in Farsi as they struggle to find their hotel room, a hint of the fear that Ugandans face each night and a metaphor for the darkness in which millions of Africans live. The film also shows the well-meaning but questionable efforts of a young Austrian family to adopt an orphaned girl found on the streets and bring her to Austria. Though some might have wanted ABC Africa to address the social, economic, and political causes that have left 1.6 million children without parents, Kiarostami's camera is simply present to each given moment and the result is a revelation.

This movie has very good goals and intentions, but isn't edited enough to get the full point. I found myself getting lost in the singing, and children dancing in front of the camera, and often forgetting what the point was. A good half of the film was just that.. children reacting to the presence of a video camera and having non African men around. Also, there was just too much footage of children's faces. We seem often too fascinated by poor little African's faces and forget the real surrounding issues. Other than that, the film had some good points and good scenes. Beautiful footage of the countryside, although also too much.

One of the great humanist directors of his time, Abbas Kiarostami, visits a humanitarian crisis in Uganda, where Civil War and the AIDS epidemic have led to great devastation and roughly two million orphans. It's five stars as far as noble purposes go, but as a documentary, it was quite a bit less accomplished. It's very much filmed like a voyeuristic travelogue, with quite a bit of the runtime filled with excited children prancing around for the camera, images shot from a truck, and even Kiarostami and his small crew talking about malaria and the humidity in the dark of a modest hotel room before a thunderstorm hits, a ridiculously long scene. There is a certain degree of power in those things - showing the conditions as they are, and the resilience of children who still smile despite hardship - but it felt unstructured and often tangential to the central issue.

We certainly do see shots of people in hospitals, and briefly see a 72-year-old woman who has lost all 11 of her children to AIDS. The statistics given are astonishing, that of the 22 million people in the country, 2 million have died. And yet, we hear from a local that the Catholic Church in the area advises against the use of condoms, as it is against "family planning" and "promoting promiscuity," one of the most interesting snippets in the film. What's upsetting is that to this day the church still clings to this regressive view, damn the consequences, as HIV continues to ravage Africa.

It's ironic that Kiarostami doesn't even bother linking the ABC on the T-shirt of the little adopted girl to the ABC of Uganda president Museveni's three-pronged approach to the problem - Abstinence, Be Faithful (monogamous), and use a Condom as a last resort. He's less interested in exploring these things and understanding the issues than he is in just giving us images of his experience there. Early on we have someone explaining in painfully long detail the organization of UWESO (Uganda Women's Effort to Save Orphans), completely unedited, and it seemed like after that, information flow was pretty limited. I feel heartless to say this documentary was a disappointment, but unfortunately, it was.

Just saw this at the Doubletake Documentary Film Festival, where it world premiered as part of a tribute to Kiarostami's works. The film is a self-described "notebook" done on handheld DV, which was originally intended only as a rough record of his UN-sponsored trip to AIDS-ridden Uganda. Upon viewing the footage, Kiarostami decided it could stand on its own. I agree. Although it only gives a partial glimpse into the Ugandan people and their methods of dealing with the current crisis, limiting itself to a scene set in a UWESO-run hospital, it is a stark and yet poetic evocation of the spirit of place. You get the feeling that you are wandering through the same streets and towns, an advantage of the new digital technology and its impact on the viewer.

This film will be featured at Cannes 2001 and will eventually - one hopes - make its way to a no doubt limited release in this country. If you get the chance, by all means check this one out.