Originally published in Liza Béar, Beyond the Frame: Dialogues with
World Filmmakers (Praeger, 2007)
36 2001
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI: ABC AFRICA
A recipient of the UN’s Fellini medal in 1997 for
his humanitarian work in film, Abbas Kiarostami was
invited by another UN agency1 to promote the work
of the Uganda Women’s Efforts to Save Orphans
(UWESO), in any way he chose. ABC Africa,
Kiarostami’s poignant and poetic response, is his
first full-length documentary since Homework
(1989), his first digital video feature and first
film to be shot outside Iran.
A travel diary shot over a 10-day period,
in visual style ABC Africa is deceptively lowkeyed.
But much as in the earlier Life and Nothing
More, shot in the wake of the 1990 Koker
earthquake, the keynote is human adaptability in
the face of tragedy. Armed with two digital video
cameras and a still camera, Kiarostami and his
assistant Seifollah Samadian (plus sound person and
production coordinator), crisscross some 300 miles
of Uganda’s lush countryside outside Kampala,
2
driving past billboards promoting safe sex,
stopping in villages notably devoid of menfolk.
The filmmakers turn a compassionate eye on the
surviving widows and orphans. Long, handheld verité
takes show children jumping rope, reciting English
in outdoor classrooms under a tree’s huge canopy,
bursting into song and dance and frequently mugging
for the camera. Women working, playing volleyball
or seated on the ground sharing their problems show
the resourcefulness of the caregivers.
Local AIDS relief workers explain how mothers
and grandmothers, all volunteers, take care of
orphans through a savings/credit system. Under the
auspices of UWESO, they form groups of five and
larger clusters of 50 to engage in small incomeproducing
activities. With 1.6 million orphans
registered at the 1991 census, the logistics are
daunting: One 72-year-old woman who lost all 11 of
her children to AIDS now takes care of 20 orphans.
3
Throughout there are telltale signs of the
bigger picture — not far from the well-stocked
fruit and vegetable stalls and the You and I barber
Shop, an outdoor lumberyard churns out a staggering
number of coffins; the smug portrait of Pope John
Paul, hanging next to signs advocating virginity,
speaks to Catholic intransigeance.
Two disturbing scenes offset the film’s general
high-spirits. The crew visits a crowded hospital
ward for terminally sick children in Masaka, the
epicenter of the AIDS epidemic. A buxom, whiteuniformed
nurse jokes with a colleague, then
bundles up the limp corpse of a dead child into a
flattened cardboard box that is wheeled away on a
bicycle. The sad ordinariness of the scene is
conveyed by the matter-of-fact way in which it’s
shot.
Later, in a powerful blackout sequence —
electricity is routinely shut off after midnight —,
for several minutes the filmmakers stumble in the
dark looking for their hotel rooms
4
and continue their dialogue. Over a totally black
screen, occasionally lit by the flame from a match,
Kiarostami comments on the terror that Ugandans
must feel of dangers lurking in the dark, in
particular of the large mosquitoes bearing malaria,
yet another fatal disease.
This interview took place at Cannes where ABC Africa
premiered; it was translated from Farsi and French.
CANNES, MAY 12
— When this invitation to make a film in Africa
came from the U.N., at what point were you in your
life?
— I must say I was going through a not particularly
happy period. For a year I hadn’t been able to walk
too well, and so my morale was low. I received the
invitation in the spring and right away it lifted
my spirits because it offered a change of scene.
— And of mindset.
— And of mindset. It’s not that I wasn’t able to
travel. The fact that the film would be about
Africa and children helped me to decide. And I
5
remember being truly delighted and really wanting
to go. What’s more, the fourth day after arriving
in Africa, I noticed that I was beginning to walk
normally.
— There’s a wonderful overhead shot of a black road
snaking across the red soil of Africa...
— Uhhuh.
— In Iran you were exposed to disasters such as the
Koker earthquake, for instance. But even so — what
was the hardest thing to get acclimatized to in
Uganda, either in terms of environment or
psychologically?
— The first four days, we weren’t authorized to go
inside the hospital in Masaka. But once we stepped
inside the hospital, a big change took place in
each of us. Our fear turned into sadness. [We were
afraid] because although we had been vaccinated
against malaria, we’d nevertheless been warned
about the risk of AIDS if we cut ourselves or were
stung by insects. But once we were able to see for
ourselves the conditions in the hospital wards, we
6
felt that AIDs was somehow outside of us. AIDS as
experienced in the US or in Europe is different
from the AIDS experienced in Africa. What’s
shocking is that in Africa it’s a disease of
poverty, whereas in the West it affects the middle
classes and the intellectuals.
— Did you choose a different crew from your normal
one for this trip because of the demanding nature
of the project?
— Initially, we weren’t going to Uganda to make a
film, but merely to scout locations and do
research. We went with a really reduced crew, just
four people. And we took two digital cameras. It
wasn’t my normal crew. For instance, my assistant
[Seifollah Samarian] was a photographer, and I took
him with me because he likes to travel and he
travels well, so he’s a good traveling companion.
After we looked at our footage, we decided we
had enough to make a film. I shot 30 hours myself.
— Did you have a plan? How did you decide where to
go and what to shoot?
7
— No. I just wanted to be completely open to
impressions and to film as we traveled. From
Kampala we drove about 300 miles through the
surrounding countryside to small villages. And we
only discussed our itinerary with the people who
had invited us, to get some practical information.
— Suggestions as to who to visit?
— Right.
— Do you think of going back to Uganda to film
there again, something else?
— Yes, I think about it a lot. Especially to take
photographs. I took some extraordinary photos while
we were there. The people are really beautiful. And
very often they don’t know that you are shooting
them, so they don’t change their pose in front of
the camera. That even allows me to change lenses,
to change vantage point, to take my time.
— ABC Africa focuses very much on the sheer
exuberance and joie de vivre of the children and
the women that you filmed. Was that your main
objective, so that people would realize the
8
enormous loss, seeing them so happy? When, in
reality, 1 million 600,000 children are orphans and
risk dying of starvation.
— Yes, it was. I had seen several films [about
Uganda] on television, where the children are
completely covered with flies. There’s so much
misery shown that you end up thinking that AIDS is
perhaps a blessing in the sense that it would
liberate them from this miserable existence. On the
contrary, when you see them as they are, beautiful
and happy, clean, well-dressed and totally
civilized – and I must tell you, they had so much
respect for the law that when we were driving on
the road, those who were on bicycles or mopeds,
would ride on the dusty sides of the road so as not
to obstruct the cars driving on the highway.
Whereas, boum, it would have been much easier for
them to pedal on the tarmac. These people are
really disciplined. And it’s this contradiction
that makes you regret that they will die. That’s
when you feel the pain of their death.
9
“The film shows the disaster by means of
statistics and during the ten minutes we were
allowed to film in the hospital, when a child dies
in front of the camera. But when you see how
beautiful and happy they are alive, that’s when you
realize the immensity of the tragedy. You cannot
infer the disaster by just showing the disaster.”
1 International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
(c) copyright Liza Béar 2001
