By: Henry J. Fromage –
This week I caught three excellent films at the New York African Film Festival, then checked out a few documentaries to boot.
316. Promised Sky
This striking Tunisian-set drama played Cannes last year, and focuses on sub-Saharan African immigrants to the Mediterranean nation (many with an eye towards continuing onwards across the sea to Europe) who are living on a tenuous knife’s edge- many there illegally, but even those who are legal, like one young woman on a student visa, finding themselves exposed to the vagary of a racist government and society that seems to begrudge their presence more than not. Two Beers.
317. My Father and Qaddafi
This documentary from Jihan Kikhia does as it says- it examines the life’s work of her father, Libyan diplomat Mansur Rashid Kikhia, who was at first Ambassador to the UN on behalf of Qaddafi’s newly independent regime, before become his most significant political opposition after it became clear what kind of ruler Libya had signed up for. This détente continued for over a decade, until Kikhia disappeared from a Cairo hotel room at an international conference for Arab rights, kicking off his wife Baha Al Omary’s years-long quest to find out what happened to him, even as she and others knew the answer almost certainly was that he was kidnapped by Qaddafi and brought back to Libya. All the while, Al Omary, who presents as an incredibly strong figure here and during the Q&A held after the film with her and her filmmaker daughter, raises four children to be strong, smart adults in their own right. Answers are eventually uncovered, unsurprising yet nonetheless devastating ones, but it’s their strength that is the real takeaway from this both macro and micro story. Two Beers.
318. The Eyes of Ghana
This documentary from the Obama’s Higher Ground production company profiles legendary Ghanaian cinematographer Chris Hesse, who was mostly known as the personal cameraman for freedom fighter and first President Kwame Nkrume. While the Ghanian Ambassador to the U.N. sitting next to me during my screening was more apologetic of Nkrume’s authoritarian tendencies later in his rule than I think is defensible (yes, three assassination attempts will have an effect on a person, no, they don’t justify abolishing all other political parties and declaring yourself President for life), he also happened to be the undisputed father of African independence movements without whose actions it’s estimated Africa would have remained under colonial rule for at least a few more decades.
The documentary actually focuses on all of this surprisingly little, instead playing as a gorgeously rendered, genuinely emotional paean to the power of cinema, and the importance of historical preservation (the military coup that deposed Nkrume tried to erase his achievements any way it could, including burning all of the many films his government had produced, but they didn’t know as Hesse did that the negatives actually resided safely in London, awaiting the digitization attempts this film just scratches the surface of). As an aesthetic achievement, it’s one of the most accomplished documentaries I’ve seen in recent years, but I wish it had struck a bit better balance of also profiling its dual subjects informationally speaking. Two Beers.
319. The Black and the Green
The Criterion Channel hosts this short documentary from 1983, which follows a group of Black Civil Rights activists as they travel to Northern Ireland to meet with Irish separatists there in a show of solidarity with another people long struggling under the yoke of an oppressor. It’s fascinating seeing these two otherwise fairly disparate (and at times in history at-odds) groups interact and find common purpose (and fend off predatory opposition media), even if no great epiphanies result. Two Beers.
320. Hacking Hate
This documentary examines the work of journalists and social media experts to diagnose and contain the virulent spread of White Supremacy and associated toxic ideologies across the internet. Swedish writer My Vingren in particular is compelling as a woman who has been able infiltrate many of the worst of the worst groups (and she interacts with some real capital F Freaks- Tinyface Thor is an all-timer, although less amusing when you realize he’s both real and regardless of how much he actually believes the bullshit he spouts, he’s probably making a living doing so). Two Beers.
321. Chernobyl: 48 Hours to Escape
This short British documentary gives a perhaps too concise recounting of the events of April 26, 1986, an otherwise pleasant Spring day in Pripyat, Ukraine (then USSR) ruptured by the greatest nuclear disaster the planet has ever seen. Where this feature establishes its essentiality is in the interviews with the aged survivors of the event, many of whom saw their friends and neighbors succumb to the radiation they were exposed to that day either shortly after or in the years that followed, yet who themselves remain to tell their tales. Three Beers.
322. Syria After Assad
This Frontline episode/mini-documentary won a Peabody Award, which is how I came across it. You’re unlikely to find a better summary of the position Syria has found itself in after finally overthrowing dictator Bashar al-Assad and finding itself instead under the rule of rebel commander Ahmad al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda fighter turned politician trying to unite a country divided by sectarian differences and bitter history dating long before any in this conflict or even their grandfathers were born. He’s saying all the right things, but flashes of violence bely his populace’s interest in or ability for coexistence. Two Beers.
