Culture December 2007
Critical Possibilities:
Finding Ways Out of Darfur Now
by John Esther
This year, director Ted Braun traveled to Darfur, Sudan, to make a documentary about an area of the globe the United Nations has called, “the world’s greatest humanitarian and human rights catastrophe.” Although he and his crew were routinely under government surveillance, Braun managed to garner interviews from members of nomadic communities and the Sudanese Liberation Army as well as from Sudanese government officials. Then Braun went to The International Court (IC) in The Hague, as well as Cairo, Beijing, Washington, D.C. and Sacramento. Along the way, he chronicled the actions of six people waging a campaign against what the U.S. Government has recognized as “genocide” in Sudan. These stories form the basis for Dalfur Now (released in November of this year through Warner Independent).
Adam Sterling is a UCLA student who campaigns for a law which would block California funds to Sudan. Argentine Luis Moreno-Ocampo is an IC prosecutor in Europe who meticulously builds a case against war crimes perpetrators. American actors Don Cheadle (who co-produced Darfur Now) and George Clooney travel to Egypt and China, asking them to apply pressure to the African country. On the warfront, Pablo Recalde acts as head of the World Food Program in West Darfur while Ahmed Mohammed Abakar leads the 47,000 internally-displaced Darfurians living in Hamadea. Meanwhile, in the Sudanese hills, Hejewa Adam joins the rebels after her son was beaten to death.
In this exclusive interview, Vision Magazine speaks with director Ted Braun, Adam Sterling, Darfur Now co-producer and Oscar-winning President of Mandalay Independent Pictures Cathy Schulman, and Darfur Now co-producer, USC professor and three-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker Mark Jonathan Harris.
Vision Magazine: In what ways can documentaries like this encourage social change?
Cathy Schulman: We all learned (a lot) from An Inconvenient Truth. When a Hollywood studio is able to mobilize an exciting social action campaign alongside a marketing distribution campaign on a documentary, you (can) actually increase exposure and make a lot of noise.
Mark Jonathan Harris: I’ve been making social/political documentaries for forty years and you never know what affect a film can have. We’ve shown this film to the United Nations. We’re going to show it to the U.S. Congress. We’re trying to reach a broad base of decision makers.
VM: What can we make of the fact that actors are meeting heads of states instead of elected government officials?
TB: [Cheadle] says it best: “It’s embarrassing.” I’m quite sure George Clooney and Don Cheadle would be much happier if our government leaders were sitting down with the leaders of China and Egypt to discuss Darfur.
Adam Sterling: It was embarrassing that I had to write my own law. We assume that we would have a good idea, be advocates—and then someone would be there to write the law.
VM: The politicians in the documentary express, or feign, interest. Were there some who did not want to talk to you about the issue?
CS: Everybody we approached participated and a few others who weren’t in the film have participated afterwards. Barack Obama (Illinois senator) did a Public Service Announcement in support of the film…Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is staging a press day in support of the film and the issues it supports.
VM: In what ways does our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan affect our legitimacy against this crisis?
TB: It’s hard to speculate. When I was speaking to the Arab-Muslim population in different parts of Sudan, they made it clear that our moral standing in that part of the world was at an all time low. That said, there are also a lot of people in Sudan who remember America coming to their aid during the great famine of the mid-1980s. There is still a reservoir of possibilities to draw upon, but we have to act fast. As you see in the film, there is a kid on the hill who dreams of coming here to get weapons to blow people away. If we don’t act now, the only memories of America that will be left for the next generation is of a hostile, armed nation instead of a breadbasket working to bring freedom and hope to the nations of the world.
John Esther is a Los Angeles based writer focusing on cultural concerns via cinema.