Vital, joyous and as important as life: Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos' BENDING THE ARC

What a thrill, a joy, an unexpected amazement it is to see a new documentary that addresses (other than global warming) one of the most important subjects in our world today -- the right to health care for all human beings -- and does this is a manner that first makes you sit up and take notice and soon has you glued to the screen in wonder, and then in tears -- of thanks -- for the good work the people you've met have done and are continuing to do. If you can sit dry-eyed through BENDING THE ARC, I shall be very surprised. Boy, do we need this movie now!

As directed by the team of Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos (shown above, with Kos on the right) and written by Cori Shepherd Stern, the documentary covers some 35 years, during which its protagonists -- we begin with just three of them; today there are many more -- who've formed a group called Partners in Health (PIH) slowly bring some decent health care to the general populace of Haiti and then go on to Peru, where they help solve the problem of Multi-Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis, eventually help bring relief from AIDS to developing countries, and finally move to post-genocide Rwanda, where we watch and marvel as a fine health care system is developed.

The three (then) young people who form this group are (shown above, from left to right) Jim Yong Kim, Ophelia Dahl and Paul Farmer. We see the steps along the way in each of the situations they encounter and so become aware of, not simply the problems -- plenty, of course -- but how each is tackled and (in some form) surmounted. Initially we may find ourselves thinking, "Oh, some more do-gooders," but soon the good that they are doing countermands most other concerns. It's real. And it counts.

When the movie becomes the most personal, showing us individuals suffering from TB and then AIDS, along with what happens to them, it also hits hardest and strongest. Also powerful and anger-provoking are the near-constant attempts by academics, politicians and the medical profession, as well as the powers that be, internationally (initially, The World Bank is one of these), to undermine the PIH accomplishments, rather than embracing them and helping foot the necessary bill.

The documentary is full of excitement, suspense and surprise, as well as peopled with memorable  characters whom we grow to care about and hugely appreciate, especially some of the patients (shown above and below) to whom PIH ministers and saves, or not, along the way.

Unlike the very lightweight and close-to-embarrassing doc that opened last week, Prosperity, Bending the Arc makes no claims that its protagonists can save the world. It simply shows us what can be accomplished by smart, caring people who keep trying. What happens to these three is interesting, of course, but in the case of Mr. Kim, it is rather amazing and thrilling -- bringing a much-needed change to one of the world's most powerful organizations.

The titular "Arc" here is that metaphoric "arc of justice," which philosophers of the kindly sort tend to see bending very slowly toward justice for all. While it is difficult, under current American (not to mention much of the rest of the world's) leadership, to even remotely believe in this possibility, Bending the Arc, against all odds, will convince you that this is indeed happening.

My one caveat with the movie is that nowhere does it mention the probable problems that crop up when dealing with dictatorial governments in places where your group needs to provide help. What special arrangement had to be made, for instance, and what was "skimmed off the top"  by government officials? Of course it would not prove helpful to further endeavors to even bring up this subject, I suppose. Just as this sort of thing becomes the price of "doing business" in a corrupt country, it is undoubtedly also the price of doing good. Still, one can't help but wonder how the negotiations worked.

From Abramorama and running 102 minutes, Bending the Arc -- a shoo-in, I would think, for an Oscar nomination -- opens this Friday, October 6, in New York City at the Village East Cinema,and then the following Friday, October 13, in Boston (Sommervile Theater) Los Angeles (Laemmle's Monica Film Center),and Washington DC (Landmark's West End Cinema). On Friday, October 20, it hits San Francisco (Landmark's Opera Plaza) and Berkeley (Landmark's Shattuck Cinemas). If you're interested in arranging a screening for your community, click here then scroll down.

Apartheid's end as seen from the opposite side: Nicolas Rossier's doc, THE OTHER MAN, opens

If, after the death of this most important African leader, you as did I began to feel overcome with the growing amount of Mandel-iana -- movies, documentaries, magazine articles, television shows and what not -- I can recommend a new documentary that opens this week and covers a fellow whom many of us Americans probably saw as the adversary of Nelson Mandela: former South African President, F.W. de Klerk. Titled THE OTHER MAN : F.W. de Klerk and the End of Apartheid and directed by Nicolas Rossier (shown below, who gave us the excellent doc, American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein), this new film might have you initially thinking that it will be some kind of whitewash of de Klerk. Not on your life.

Neither is the documentary a condemnation. Rather, it's a very interesting look at a man who would dearly and clearly like to be remembered as some sort of savior of South Africa, but is more likely to be thought of as the white South African at the top of the power chain who at least had the sense to do what had to be done to avoid an oncoming bloodbath. Frederik Willem De Klerk's family history goes back to the British vs the Dutch South Africans, and as the former President, pictured below, tells it, the preferable phrase is not "apartheid" but "separate development" to describe the condition affecting South African blacks under white rule during that prolonged era. (Yes, the phrase does remind one somewhat of our own country southern style "separate but equal" nonsense.)

Under this "separate development," de Klerk likes to remind us, "there was a big improvement of the physical lot of black people in South Africa." Yes, and also torture, imprisonment, massacres and the like. He also says -- and often reminds us that he said it -- "I've come to the conclusion the apartheid was wrong." Hallelujah.

We learn of the man's history, and of the influence of his older and more liberal brother, as well as his much more conservative first wife. During the course of the film, we are also reminded of our own President Reagan's pro-apartheid stance, and the Republican-controlled congress that actually over-rode Reagan's veto on the matter because American public opinion back then was so strongly anti-apartheid. (Can you remotely imagine our Republican-controlled congress doing anything like this today?)

The man is given credit for doing the right thing, even in the face of the possibility of his own security agency and military joining with the far-right wing. At the end of the day, he did have the guts to call the kind of shots -- freeing purely political prisoners, member of the Communist Party and the ANC -- that many members of the white South African establishment could not abide. At the same time that all this was going on, the world was watching what was happening in Angola, as well as the fall of the Berlin Wall, and soon after, if piece-meal, the fall of the Communist block itself.

The documentary shows us much of the violence that occurred, post apartheid; as the film makes clear, some whites and some blacks preferred violence over change. During that change, de Klerk and Mandela became partners -- if uncomfortable partners. In 1993, the pair was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (below). Many of the us recall Mandela's receiving it, fewer remember de Klerk's award.

Once the movie gets into certain individual stories of the recipients of violence -- the mother of a particular black woman (below), the blinding and bombing of a priest -- it goes a bit off-target because these individu-als, despite their loss, simply are not to the point of this film in the way that its leaders were and are. Finally, the documentary comes down to a question (regarding de Klerk's knowledge of the many assassinations and massacres that took place) that many Americans will remember from our own Nixon/Watergate years: What did he know and when did he know it?

It seems safe to say that de Klerk simply did not want to know and so lets himself off the hook too easily. Finally a comparison is made between this South African leader and Russia's Mikhail Gorbachev. The comparison is in some ways pretty apt, but hearing de Klerk point out where it goes off course is both funny and ridiculous. Whatever else he might be, the fellow has a mile-wide streak of egotistical narcissism.

From First Run Features and lasting just 76 minutes, The Other Man, a South Africa/USA co-production, has its New York theatrical premiere this Friday, February 6, at the Quad Cinema. Other playdates? None are listed yet, but being from FRF, the film will surely have a DVD release at some future date.

Don't believe The New York Times review: HAVE YOU HEARD FROM JOHANNESBURG

The monumental and encompassing new documentary that opened this past week -- one that rivals The Sorrow and the Pity, Shoah and Hotel Terminus in its depth and breadth (but has nothing to do with the Jewish holocaust) -- just got dissed and dismissed last Wednesday in a review by Mike Hale in The New York Times. While TrustMovies has agreed with Mr. Hale in the past and will certainly do so again, he cannot let pass what he considers a troubling opinion that counters the facts in certain regards.

I have just now finished the penultimate episode (the sixth of seven) of HAVE YOU HEARD FROM JOHANNESBURG, produced and directed by Connie Field, shown below). My original post, on the first four sections can be found here). Instead of deciding, as did Mr. Hale, that "there are repetitions large and small... which cover the same time period from slightly different angles (and) feel redundant," for me, one of the great strengths of the film is this very repetition of time periods, during which we learn quite different aspects of the fight against apartheid -- presented so well that there can be no real accusation of repetition. (Nor of the "average-to-mediocre television" level that Hale judges the work.)

Does the boycott of the South Africa Rubgy team repeat the oil embargo, for instance, or the student protests regarding "divestment" that riddled U.S. universities repeat the British boycott of food products from South Africa?  Or does the manner in which Barclay Bank handled its South Africa connection repeat the way Polaroid and Shell Oil handled theirs?  I don't think so.  Nor, I suspect, will you.

Most telling of all, perhaps, is the comparison of Ronald Reagan's "Constructive engagement with South Africa" to Leon Sullivan's (the first Black man to sit on the board of General Motors) set of principles to make the South African workplace better for Blacks.  You really can't compare, of course -- unless you've seen all of Ms Field's seven films.  By then, you'll realize just how little repetition there has been.  Episode 5 from Part 2, for instance, deals specifically with the African-American response to Apartheid and demonstrates, as well as anything I have seen, how local governments, a half a world away, were able to effect important and lasting changes on what seemed like an impossible situation.

This episode may also make you nostalgic for a time in America when Republican elected officials had the balls to actually vote against their party and its then-leader Ronald Reagan, who was firmly committed to supporting South Africa's Apartheid regime.  Field shows us the meeting between Bishop Desmond Tutu and Reagan, with our President explaining why we must continue to support South African because that country supported us during World War II. "Your history is faulty, Mr. President," Tutu corrects him. "Most of these people supported the Nazis."  But then Reagan, much like Republicans of today, seldom allowed facts to stand in the way of  his version of the "truth."

In the sixth and so far the best of the episodes (each one has seemed better than its predecessor, which probably only demonstrates Ms Field's keen organizational sense), we see how South Africa's business community at last had to rally against an intractable government in order to survive.  This is fascinating stuff, made only better by gem-like moments such as the interview with one businessman who recalls the first meeting between his business community and the African National Congress leader Oliver Tambo (shown below, center).  We businessmen, he explains, had heretofore only viewed Tambo and his group as "terrorists pawns of the Communist Russia."  And now, here we are sitting down to lunch?   And then Tambo makes a quip about how the seating arrangements rather aped apartheid.  Everyone breaks into laughter, the participants mingle and -- can it be? -- the beginning of some real change is afoot.

In another priceless moment -- during the embargo of oil to South Africa which began in 1979 and sent gas prices sky-rocketing -- a white South African housewife bemoans the exorbitant cost of petrol: "This is worse than when Tutu won the Peace Prize!"  So full of precise details and terrifically informative (not to mention surprising, moving and funny) interviews is each individual segment, that seeing one episode simply gears you up for the next.  Perhaps Mr. Hale's problem was sitting through the entire 8-1/2 hours without lunch or dinner? Which does bring up a possible caveat: How to manage the full set of three separate programs (together with separate admission prices) that make up this seven-part, 8-1/2 hours worth of film?

I would suggest viewing each of the three sections on a different day, if possible.  This will give you some time to mull over what you've seen, and the day between each screening will rest and freshen you for the next segment, with your brain ready to start making those many connections that each new episode is likely to set in motion.  (You can view the entire program with dates and times of the Film Forum screenings here.)  As a critic, I was lucky enough to receive a set of screeners, which I could pop into my DVD player, at approximately the rate of one per day (or every other) for a week and a half.  (The final episode did not include a finished sound track and final editing, I am told, because Ms Field was expected to show up just prior to the Film Forum opening with the finally-finished last section in hand.)  This episode-by-episode approach may be the very best way to see the groundbreaking documentary, but for most audiences, that will not happen until a DVD set is released commercially -- and for now, there is no assurance of this.  So head to Film Forum if you really want to view this masterwork.

Once I've seen that final section in finished form, I will probably make time for a wrap-up on this one-of-a-kind documentary.  There's so much to say here that I have barely scratched the surface.  Which is unfair to Ms Field and her film: a work that probes and probes until we finally understand the big picture via the accumulation of the minute details of the small one.  This is a task I would have imagined unfathomable until this filmmaker, with her genius for organization, put it all together and showed us the way.