ABC Africa (Film)

2001. Dir: Abbas Kiarostami.


Context:

Documentary set in Uganda, commissioned by the UN organisation, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, who invited Kiarostami to make a film there. Of course Kiarostami, who had worked for so long as the Kanun making commissioned films ostensibly for educational viewing by children, but which he shaped with his own intents, was no stranger to commissioned projects. It was Kiarostami's first documentary in a decade (since Close Up?). It is quite likely he had Farrokzhad's The House is Black as an ideal in mind. Like that film, the initial project gives way to very personal depths.

Marks Kiarostami's DV debut. He in fact travelled to Uganda, together with photographer/cinematographer Seidollah Samadian, first with the intention of shooting some practice rushes cheaply with a digital camera, but in the end liked this footage so much that it ended up making the film and no other footage was shot.

They had over 20 hours of footage which took them 8 months to edit into the final feature.

The film follows a similar template to many of his earlier films, having a stranger/foreigner (this time no more surrogates, it is himself) wandering around a foreign region which they at first do not understand at all but are eventually transformed and affected by. It can also be seen as the first step outside Iran of a filmmaker who would later make films only outside Iran. So it is once again a tale of journey and discovery, and also once again a film about children (the Ugandan orphans and AIDS victims).


The Film:

Several critics have noted that the film becomes worthy of interest as more than a mere commissioned documentary from the scene at the hospital in Masaka, moving from purely educational tone (a waste of Kiarostami's great talents as filmmaker naturally) to more personal and contemplative insights.