Tour of Africa
Then when I was teaching a class on women in ministry, I had a student from Rwanda. Her husband lost six family members in the genocide. That sparked our interest, so we rented "Hotel Rwanda." It left its mark, so we selected the documentary "Frontline: Ghosts of Rwanda" to give ourselves a context for the horrendous events. Then Leani, one of my then writing students from South Africa, loaned me a pre-release copy of "Yesterday," the first South African film nominated for an Oscar. In it the main character, (above) a Zulu woman named "Yesterday," faces the ravages of AIDS. It made us realize how AIDS has wreaked havoc on South Africa even more than apartheid has.
Then we added "Tsotsi" to our queue. I can't remember how I heard about it, but this Oscar-winning Best Foreign Language film shows that no soul is too far gone from being reformed. After shooting a woman and driving off in her car, Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae), a ruthless thug, is surprised to discover a crying baby in the backseat. He grudgingly takes the child home, and through his efforts to care for the tyke, Tsotsi slowly rediscovers his compassion, self-respect and capacity to love.
Not long after we watched that, some writerly friends spent a weekend together in West Texas, and one of my colleagues recommended "The Power of One." In it a young white South African orphan is terrorized because of his political beliefs. He turns to a streetwise black prisoner (Morgan Freeman) who teaches him how to box. After years of witnessing injustice all around him -- including seeing racist white jailers cruelly humiliate black inmates -- the young orphan unites with a former boxing adversary to fight the uphill struggle against apartheid. Great stuff.
We also rented "Red Dust." I think that was another of Leani's recommendations, because it's also focused on South Africa. A S.A. police officer (Jamie Bartlett) files an application for amnesty for acts of atrocity he committed under apartheid. And a human rights lawyer (played by Hilary Swank) returns to her homeland to investigate. In the process, she decides to represent anti-apartheid activist Alex Mpondo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a member of parliament who staunchly opposes the amnesty because he was one of the police officer's victims.
None of these are for the faint of heart.
In doing some research for Informed Consent, I viewed "Frontline: The Age of AIDS," which I mentioned in a recent blog entry, as I think every thinking, caring person should make it a priority to watch. Frontline probes the social, political, economic and scientific factors that led to the rise -- and hindered the fall -- of the AIDS pandemic. The show includes interviews with key researchers, world leaders, activists and AIDS patients. And it presents a pretty accurate view of the faith community's response (good and bad), as well.
More recently we viewed "The Last King of Scotland," in which Forest Whitaker won himself an Oscar and a Golden Globe for playing the part of brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. During an African medical trip in the 1970s, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) impresses Amin by acting swiftly in a crisis. Installed as the dictator's personal physician soon thereafter, Garrigan enjoys the perks of his new position, until he becomes aware of Amin's inhumanity -- and his own complicity.
In My Country - Currently I'm in the middle of this drama (watching it in segments as I use the stationary bike). In it a Washington Post journalist (played by Samuel Jackson) heads to South Africa to cover the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings and ends up finding love. The more he learns of South African history, the more he doubts that the country will ever heal. He meets a white Afrikaans poet (Juliette Binoche) and is initially against her views, but his feelings begin to change in more ways than one.
For me the mix of friendships, books, documentaries and dramas, has been a great way to become familiar with a part of the world that had previously been unfamiliar to me. But I have to say it has not always been enjoyable. Every one of these works has deeply disturbing elements. And some of the films have "R" ratings.
This is where I think it's important to look less at the rating and more at the point of view. That is, when we see the evil and injustice, is the point of view of the directors that we applaud or condemn what's wrong? I enjoyed watching "The Italian Job," but the point of view was to keep viewers rooting for the thieves. In the African films listed above without exception doing justice and loving mercy were at the core of what the viewer was supposed to want. To me, that is storytelling at its best.