ABC Africa Abbas Kiarostami of
ABC
In Africa, we find the sacred triad that Kiarostami has placed in the center of his film and who works in a way his work underground: the camera, the look and reality. Interaction between these three elements gives rise to a very personal film, which corresponds to both the thematic and aesthetic of the films of Kiarostami. It includes the same concerns that worked the previous films: reflections on the power of the camera, onto the film and its relation to reality, the single movement which includes both the camera and the filmmaker to the meeting a decisive fact in danger and he is saved. As
And life goes on, the film is entirely worked by a fundamental dialectic generated by the encounter between the eye the camera here in the real object placed on diegetic, and the spectacle of reality, personified by the faces and places of Africa. As in previous films, the camera becomes a central character in the film. In "And Life Goes On", the camera, mediated by the filmmaker, not content to record reality but aroused, which arise even among the rubble of the earthquake moments of life that were beyond destruction and death, as if in this struggle between life and death, the film was there to sustain life, to fix forever these moments of flickering and fragile reality, to give continuity to what is fleeting and inexorably doomed to destruction. ABC in Africa, the centrality of the camera is more important than the nature of the film, which is a command on a subject of "humanitarian" [1] tends to relinquish his power, by assigning it a place limited: to comply with the so-called objectivity of the report, not to intervene by introducing the subjectivity of the filmmaker and his personal view on the world he films. Yet Kiarostami thwarts this trap by making a constant offset between two instances in the film: discourse from humanitarian to show that imposes a tragic reality unbearable suffering and personal tragedies, and the momentum of the stubborn camera that lets itself drift with the images and movements that beset on all sides, without supervision and without reins. One of the first scenes of the film shows the film crew that arrives in a village in Kampala. A guide to the voice of villagers sitting on the ground that hold bank notes between the hands. The voice explains that the villagers are part of the cell created by a local NGO that helps orphans whose parents died of AIDS. The voice continues to detail using it provides to orphans and families. Suddenly, the camera turns and follows children leaping in front of her, which begin to tame the filmmaker and his strange object, they dance, are the clowns, fun. The camera is carried away by them, he lets himself drift along with their cavalcade of fun in the dusty streets of the village, she recorded all the flow fact that she met a man drunk, another in serious expression, a woman who goes with his kid on his back, a mule, etc.. Something chaotic, playful and easygoing emerges from these movements suddenly released, which opposes the propagandistic language too early. At the static pose of villagers sat quietly in front of the camera to film and comply with the media image that has been in Africa, Kiarostami contrasts a more fleeting reality that leads to a drift images and movements unordered, unauthorized, and thus obeying a pure capture reality. Throughout the film, these two bodies continue to oppose. In another scene, the film crew is in a hospital. We see the faces of these children haggard, dazed by the fever and the approach of death. A door opens and it is the spectacle of death that assails us. For long minutes, Kiarostami films a nurse who tries to put the corpse of a child in a cardboard box and then transport it and bury it. The light, framing, all combine to give those images a long solemn and sad. It is said that now the filmmaker seek to film these tragic images, colorful carnival at the beginning of the procession will replace slow and desolate. But no. Kiarostami up right after and brightly colored images of a choir, all dressed in yellow, sings and dances of religious incantations. By diverting the order, Kiarostami does that joining the overriding focus of his film, which is the stubborn belief, almost magical in the power of the image. It is as if the camera became the underpinnings of life, that his screen was the surface registration indelible moments and unique images that the film tries to save from dereliction. The subjective camera that follows the filmmaker becomes something of a magnet that grabs the reality and hypnotizes to better capture the image.
However, a new dimension in the composition of the film, which makes it slightly different from previous films Kiarostami's. It is known that the effects of Kiarostami's signature is put in this abyss of the cinema, this dimension scopic allowing the filmmaker to somehow questioning the apparatus of cinema. ABC in Africa, the presence of the camera continues to be highlighted as to denounce both the coercive power and illusory. In many scenes, we see the children first puzzled look at the camera, then we see Kiarostami filmed filming children, we see close-up face and the scope widens to reveal the director scene included in the area they filmed. Another concern that that underlies the accuracy of its intention: to become visible, the film process allows the filmmaker to capture more of a reality unknown to them, including himself, recording his crew, his cameraman, as a image of a transcript in the space of Africa and of the film. These constant Décadrages, emphasizing the otherness and heterogeneity of these bodies, those of children and those of the filmmaker and his team not depict the image of Africa but an attempt by a crew of tame Africa, to seize cinematically. As Depardon, another filmmaker "outsider" who has filmed Africa, Kiarostami seeks to introduce subjectivity of the filming, as opposed to the supposed neutrality and objectivity of television news reports. Thus in Africa how it goes with the pain Depardon introduced his own voice, not as a commentary, but as sound track included in the material of the film. His voice as coming from beyond the grave, we did enter a world of evanescent shadows and ghosts of times past. Depardon had indeed been filmed in Africa several times before. His last film was a return to these places decrepit and devastated by war. The case is different for Kiarostami filming Africa for the first time. However, the unveiling of the filming process proceeds in the same momentum as in Depardon: making visible the presence of the filmmaker, to the land of Africa, his children, his face and he himself are interspersed in the same image as a sealed unit, like a welding irreversible.
This is also the strangeness of the place that brings Kiarostami to revisit the techniques of cinema, as if he discovered along the earth's flamboyant and Africa need to adapt its framework, its light, these new shades. In one of the most beautiful sequences in the film, Kiarostami films a conversation between members of his team and himself. We hear them reflect on the experiences of people in Africa, the presence of natural rhythm and especially the report that Africans have with light. Then gradually as the day goes out and the team rushes into the dark stairs of a dilapidated hotel, the screen goes black, mimicking the sensations experienced by people living in the movie . The image becomes like a living space, suggests that the sensations experienced in real space. For 8 minutes, placed before the black screen image, the viewer is brought almost physically in the space of Africa, it is also deprived of light that villagers grope in the dark in search of familiar objects. Disoriented, caught this black screen, then we rediscover the light, with the appearance of pale one day and rainy on the plains of Africa. In the last sequence, Kiarostami films long a child takes his first steps, staggering and yet stubborn. The entire film is well articulated by this Basic research, by the unstable equilibrium of the first steps that roam the world. ABC All Africa brings us to a world first, the pure feelings of a world newly hatched, are explored by trial and error.
[1] It is indeed an order from IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development) in Ugandan children with AIDS or whose parents have died of this virus.
And life goes on, the film is entirely worked by a fundamental dialectic generated by the encounter between the eye the camera here in the real object placed on diegetic, and the spectacle of reality, personified by the faces and places of Africa. As in previous films, the camera becomes a central character in the film. In "And Life Goes On", the camera, mediated by the filmmaker, not content to record reality but aroused, which arise even among the rubble of the earthquake moments of life that were beyond destruction and death, as if in this struggle between life and death, the film was there to sustain life, to fix forever these moments of flickering and fragile reality, to give continuity to what is fleeting and inexorably doomed to destruction. ABC in Africa, the centrality of the camera is more important than the nature of the film, which is a command on a subject of "humanitarian" [1] tends to relinquish his power, by assigning it a place limited: to comply with the so-called objectivity of the report, not to intervene by introducing the subjectivity of the filmmaker and his personal view on the world he films. Yet Kiarostami thwarts this trap by making a constant offset between two instances in the film: discourse from humanitarian to show that imposes a tragic reality unbearable suffering and personal tragedies, and the momentum of the stubborn camera that lets itself drift with the images and movements that beset on all sides, without supervision and without reins. One of the first scenes of the film shows the film crew that arrives in a village in Kampala. A guide to the voice of villagers sitting on the ground that hold bank notes between the hands. The voice explains that the villagers are part of the cell created by a local NGO that helps orphans whose parents died of AIDS. The voice continues to detail using it provides to orphans and families. Suddenly, the camera turns and follows children leaping in front of her, which begin to tame the filmmaker and his strange object, they dance, are the clowns, fun. The camera is carried away by them, he lets himself drift along with their cavalcade of fun in the dusty streets of the village, she recorded all the flow fact that she met a man drunk, another in serious expression, a woman who goes with his kid on his back, a mule, etc.. Something chaotic, playful and easygoing emerges from these movements suddenly released, which opposes the propagandistic language too early. At the static pose of villagers sat quietly in front of the camera to film and comply with the media image that has been in Africa, Kiarostami contrasts a more fleeting reality that leads to a drift images and movements unordered, unauthorized, and thus obeying a pure capture reality. Throughout the film, these two bodies continue to oppose. In another scene, the film crew is in a hospital. We see the faces of these children haggard, dazed by the fever and the approach of death. A door opens and it is the spectacle of death that assails us. For long minutes, Kiarostami films a nurse who tries to put the corpse of a child in a cardboard box and then transport it and bury it. The light, framing, all combine to give those images a long solemn and sad. It is said that now the filmmaker seek to film these tragic images, colorful carnival at the beginning of the procession will replace slow and desolate. But no. Kiarostami up right after and brightly colored images of a choir, all dressed in yellow, sings and dances of religious incantations. By diverting the order, Kiarostami does that joining the overriding focus of his film, which is the stubborn belief, almost magical in the power of the image. It is as if the camera became the underpinnings of life, that his screen was the surface registration indelible moments and unique images that the film tries to save from dereliction. The subjective camera that follows the filmmaker becomes something of a magnet that grabs the reality and hypnotizes to better capture the image.
However, a new dimension in the composition of the film, which makes it slightly different from previous films Kiarostami's. It is known that the effects of Kiarostami's signature is put in this abyss of the cinema, this dimension scopic allowing the filmmaker to somehow questioning the apparatus of cinema. ABC in Africa, the presence of the camera continues to be highlighted as to denounce both the coercive power and illusory. In many scenes, we see the children first puzzled look at the camera, then we see Kiarostami filmed filming children, we see close-up face and the scope widens to reveal the director scene included in the area they filmed. Another concern that that underlies the accuracy of its intention: to become visible, the film process allows the filmmaker to capture more of a reality unknown to them, including himself, recording his crew, his cameraman, as a image of a transcript in the space of Africa and of the film. These constant Décadrages, emphasizing the otherness and heterogeneity of these bodies, those of children and those of the filmmaker and his team not depict the image of Africa but an attempt by a crew of tame Africa, to seize cinematically. As Depardon, another filmmaker "outsider" who has filmed Africa, Kiarostami seeks to introduce subjectivity of the filming, as opposed to the supposed neutrality and objectivity of television news reports. Thus in Africa how it goes with the pain Depardon introduced his own voice, not as a commentary, but as sound track included in the material of the film. His voice as coming from beyond the grave, we did enter a world of evanescent shadows and ghosts of times past. Depardon had indeed been filmed in Africa several times before. His last film was a return to these places decrepit and devastated by war. The case is different for Kiarostami filming Africa for the first time. However, the unveiling of the filming process proceeds in the same momentum as in Depardon: making visible the presence of the filmmaker, to the land of Africa, his children, his face and he himself are interspersed in the same image as a sealed unit, like a welding irreversible.
This is also the strangeness of the place that brings Kiarostami to revisit the techniques of cinema, as if he discovered along the earth's flamboyant and Africa need to adapt its framework, its light, these new shades. In one of the most beautiful sequences in the film, Kiarostami films a conversation between members of his team and himself. We hear them reflect on the experiences of people in Africa, the presence of natural rhythm and especially the report that Africans have with light. Then gradually as the day goes out and the team rushes into the dark stairs of a dilapidated hotel, the screen goes black, mimicking the sensations experienced by people living in the movie . The image becomes like a living space, suggests that the sensations experienced in real space. For 8 minutes, placed before the black screen image, the viewer is brought almost physically in the space of Africa, it is also deprived of light that villagers grope in the dark in search of familiar objects. Disoriented, caught this black screen, then we rediscover the light, with the appearance of pale one day and rainy on the plains of Africa. In the last sequence, Kiarostami films long a child takes his first steps, staggering and yet stubborn. The entire film is well articulated by this Basic research, by the unstable equilibrium of the first steps that roam the world. ABC All Africa brings us to a world first, the pure feelings of a world newly hatched, are explored by trial and error.
[1] It is indeed an order from IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development) in Ugandan children with AIDS or whose parents have died of this virus.
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