Documentary Post 1: Darfur Now

Darfur Now. Dir. Theodore Braun. By Theodore Braun. Prod. Cathy Schulman, Don Cheadle, and Mark Jonathan Harris. Warner Independent Pictures, 2007.

The documentary I watched was Darfur Now.  It was filmed in 2007 and is meant to raise awareness about the Darfur Genocide.  The conflict started in the early 1980s when drought hit the country of Sudan.  At the same time, overpopulation was also becoming an issue.  Resources and fertile land became a serious source of conflict as different groups of people started to compete over these resources.  While the conflict started as something one can only accept as natural, the fight quickly became rigged when the Sudanese government started to favor one side over the other.  The “Arab” dominated government supplied “Arab” groups to wipe out the “African” population.  Soldiers riding on horseback, known as Janjaweed, began to carry out a mass execution of Darfurian villages.  Today, up to 3 million Darfurians have become displaced and hundreds of thousands more killed.  Roughly 8 years have passed since the official initiation of the holocaust.

The filmmaker’s purpose was to draw attention to the genocide and urge people to take action.  The filmmaker included lots of footage of travels in Darfur.  There is a constant use of testimonials throughout the video, both from victims and outside activists.  Refugees can be seen carrying weapons and machine guns, marching through the dirt in their sandals.  This is meant to bring the conflict to the viewer’s eyes, where he can see it up close and personal.  The documentary has several parts.  One of the parts is following activists such as Don Cheadle and Ahmed Mahammed Abaka as they attempt to bring light to the issue given their own unique positions.  Abaka tries to establish credibility for himself by speaking on a similar issue in his homeland Colombia.

Although the filmmaker tries to draw empathy from its viewers and attempts to appeal to pathos, honestly I thought he did an extremely poor job.  First of all, he overused his testimonials.  One can only stand so much “touchy-feely” emotion in one sitting.  Emotion is powerful in contrast with other elements of argument, such as logic and reality.  But the filmmaker’s use of it was especially poor.  Not only that, but the testimonials that the filmmaker chose to use were inadequate in portraying what truly goes on in Darfur.  So not only was I hearing the same things over and over again, but I could sense no real seriousness, no real pain, no real intensity.   The documentary’s presentation of Darfur seemed “fake,” and that was the sad part because it deserved to be presented in a more honest light.

There were also many disrespectful, foolish, and ineffective rhetorical decisions in the video.  The filmmaker used absolutely no logic in his argument.   I expected some type of real moral context, some philosophical push to aid Darfur but I received none.  I merely received the same naïve, childish excuse of “Oh genocide is bad and it is important to help people.”  If the video’s purpose is to get people to realize, and to make them take action, then that explanation is simply not enough.  Having been around this issue for so long, I just did not feel like the video did Darfur justice.  To me, it was the work of an outsider not fully committed to his proposed mission, but rather someone who was more concerned with giving off the impression that he cared.  This goes the same for many of the activists in the documentary.  Their efforts were honestly very naïve in some ways and disrespectful to Darfurian victims in that they did not understand the full seriousness of the issue.

One last aspect of the documentary that was extremely annoying to me was the music and the dialogue.  The music playing whenever Darfur victims were interviewed was jumpy African music.  I understand that this may be a part of their culture, but to make this loud distinction really hurts the cause.  The video makes all Africans look like they are tribal and “early humans,” like they are not fully developed.  This really upsets me because this is a group of activists that claim they respect and care for these victims, and yet they fail to view them as equal beings.  Also, at the end of the documentary, there was joyful hopeful music playing the background.  This was very disrespectful in my eyes because it gave off the impression that the genocide was over when in reality, it is still taking place today.  It was irresponsible in that the filmmaker did not put in enough thought to realize what a dangerous toll this mistake has.  Because of this “hopeful” sensation, audience members will entirely dismiss the situation as if it has already passed, or that it is too late to help now.