英文影评：A.B.C.到非洲（ABC Africa）
发布时间：2019-08-17 14:58:10
Digital video documentary about the plight of Ugandan orphans from Iranian Abbas Kiarostami. A vivid and often joyous work, celebrating humanity‘s resilience in the face of adversity
Several of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami‘s finest films have been inspired by real-life events: Close-Up recounted the trial of Hossein Sabzian, the man who impersonated fellow filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, while And Life Goes On was set in the Koker region of Iran, which had been devastated by an earthquake. The documentary ABC Africa focusses on another contemporary humanitarian crisis, the plight of children in Uganda, where AIDS and civil war have deprived millions of youngsters of one or both their parents.
Asked by the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development to make a film that would highlight the various UWESCO (Uganda Women‘s Effort to Save Orphans) schemes, Kiarostami travelled to Uganda to visit various hospitals, treatment centres, schools, villages and orphanages.
Certainly ABC Africa will confound those expecting a traditional documentary account of a collective tragedy. Although sequences such as a nurse wordlessly fashioning a makeshift baby‘s coffin out of a cardboard box convey the depth of suffering, Kiarostami chooses to highlight qualities of tenacity, cheerfulness and spontaneity. Shooting on digital video, Kiarostami fills the screen with bright colours and images of smiling kids, as they sing, dance and lark around in front of the cameras. (Music is integral to ABC Africa‘s emotional impact.) The day after a torrential downpour, there‘s a quietly lyrical scene where the grown-ups get things back to normal, mopping up floors and hanging washing out to dry. And if no quickfire solutions are proffered to the AIDS epidemic, the refusal of the Catholic Church to condone contraceptives is made explicit.
ABC Africa foregrounds, at least initially, the presence of the filmmakers, with various shots of Kiarostami and his colleague Seifollah Samadian at work. And in a key scene, during a night-time power-cut at their hotel, they debate the role of fate in determining lives, whilst wondering at the capacity for humans to adapt to circumstances. The closing shot, from the perspective of a departing aeroplane, ends this affecting documentary with an image of poetic beauty.
Asked by the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development to make a film that would highlight the various UWESCO (Uganda Women‘s Effort to Save Orphans) schemes, Kiarostami travelled to Uganda to visit various hospitals, treatment centres, schools, villages and orphanages.
Certainly ABC Africa will confound those expecting a traditional documentary account of a collective tragedy. Although sequences such as a nurse wordlessly fashioning a makeshift baby‘s coffin out of a cardboard box convey the depth of suffering, Kiarostami chooses to highlight qualities of tenacity, cheerfulness and spontaneity. Shooting on digital video, Kiarostami fills the screen with bright colours and images of smiling kids, as they sing, dance and lark around in front of the cameras. (Music is integral to ABC Africa‘s emotional impact.) The day after a torrential downpour, there‘s a quietly lyrical scene where the grown-ups get things back to normal, mopping up floors and hanging washing out to dry. And if no quickfire solutions are proffered to the AIDS epidemic, the refusal of the Catholic Church to condone contraceptives is made explicit.
ABC Africa foregrounds, at least initially, the presence of the filmmakers, with various shots of Kiarostami and his colleague Seifollah Samadian at work. And in a key scene, during a night-time power-cut at their hotel, they debate the role of fate in determining lives, whilst wondering at the capacity for humans to adapt to circumstances. The closing shot, from the perspective of a departing aeroplane, ends this affecting documentary with an image of poetic beauty.