Standard disclaimer! I am incapable of doing this type of thing without some use of spoilers. You have been warned.
The Pan African Film Festival website can be found here. It is not dial-up friendly, and there's nothing you can do to stop that irritating song from launching every single time you click a page. Make your peace with that before you clicky.
The definition of terms can be found here.
Film: Mo & Me (no website that I could find)
Director: Roger Mills & Murad Raynai
Writer: Same
Stars: Mohamed "Mo" Amin, Salim Amin, African turmoil
Awards: Grand jury prize, NY International Film Festival; Silver Screen US International Film Festival
Genre: Documentary, person
Country: Kenya
The country thing is a new addition. It was pointed out to me that this is a pan-African festival, but I've yet to say where these movies are coming from. D'oh! Eventually I will go back and update the previous entries to add that info, and include it in the stuff I see from the rest of the festival.
The first thing to say is this is a great documentary. I doubt if over here it will have a theatrical run, but I bet if you have cable or sattelite it might pop up all over, especially if your system is not hobbled by the myopia of the USA cable/sat systems. If it ever shows up on dvd, check it out.
This was actually the first movie I knew I was going to see back when I got the schedule. Because during the week what I can see must work around the day job, I was ever so happy that this one had an evening screening. His was the first modern-era photojournalist's name I ever bothered to learn, motivated only by to the power of his work and the few stories profs told us about him in j-school. I read this book about him when it came out several years ago.
You may not have ever heard of him, but you've probably seen his images and have been moved by them. The worldwide response to the tragedy of the Ethiopian famine in the 80s was a direct result of his photography and advocacy; most of the pictures of Idi Amin (no relation, more on that later) you've seen of that man and his brutality, he took them. Basically, anything that happened in Africa you saw on the news, he took those pictures and videos.
So far, this movie wins the BGF Central Best Quote of the Festival: Losers don't like to have their pictures taken. I'm going to be giggling over that one for weeks. I wish I could tell it to James.
The topic! Mohamed "Mo" Amin was an internationally-acclaimed news photographer who made Africa, his home, his life's work. Through cunning, contacts, competititve zeal and speed, he got there first, and didn't really care who he stomped on to do so. It is not inaccurate to say that his work saved millions of lives.
The approach! This comprehensive look at the life and work of Amin starts when he was a dirt-poor kid in Africa who at age nine began scraping together 40 shillings so he could buy a camera (it took him two years), and moves on through his early death via plane crash. Along the way we get to see lots of the stills and videos he took; hear memories and anecdotes from with his peers in the world media, primarily the BBC; visits to the locations where the big stuff he covered happened (the return to the death plain in Ethiopia kind of messes with your mind); and candid talks with his family.
The good stuff! The candor is one of the best things about this documentary. The second-best thing is how the filmmakers tell you exactly what you need to know about the various news situations he handled without going off-track into way too much detail that bogs down the narrative. That is a delicate dance, and probably difficult because we're dealing with Africa, a news Hellmouth that has never gotten the play that other places do. Random example, 8 times out of 1o your basic USA audience is going to have a working knowledge of what happened with the Troubles in Ireland. But 9 times ouf of 10 that audience is not going to be able to tell you what country Idi Amin brutalized. And if 9 times out of 10 the audience will remember Live Aid (and probably name a lot of the participants) same odds they won't be able to name the country involved, even less the region.
The way of the world is some places don't matter as much, and never make the news.
I was impressed with how it was made clear to us how he sacrificed his family in pursuit of his career. NOBODY pulls punches, not even his wife or son. I
think that's worth noting because this was produced and narrated by his
son, who wants to share his father's story and protect his legacy, but
sees no need to so by hiding the truth of the whole of the man.
While Amin was a brave, tough newshound with a phenomenal collection of contacts - he survived 28 days of torture at the hands of the Soviets in a notorious Zanzibar prison, and then years later survived getting caught in an explosion and having his arm blown off - he was an asshole. He used people. His partner in the photonews company he founded says more than once that the business might have been a bigger powerhouse if Amin could manage to refrain from driving away the people on staff. He communicated with his family primarily through memos, just as he did his staff. He was kind of ruthless, and as his reputation grew, so did his ego.
But there's no denying the import of what he used his skills to bring attention to, and that's laid out in the film as well. There's a bit where peers recall how the pack would get nervous whenever they realized nobody knew where Amin was, as that tended to be the first clue that he was ahead of them where news was breaking. They tell the story of how he once got a plane full of reporters into Uganda mainly because the operator who answered the phone thought he was a relative of Idi Amin, and put him straight through to the general. He let her think that, and he let others he had to work when in that zone think that, too when on the job.
About that arm. At first the doctors told him he had to get used to using a hook. He responded to that as he did to other challenges, by finding his own way. Eventually he had a robotic arm made in Ohio (wooo!), powered by a battery pack. He hacked it to add a plug so that he could juice up his camera if he camera battery ever died! We also learn that the robotic arm/battery weighed 16-kilos, and he had to wear that thing strapped to his shoulder, even though the bones in that shoulder never healed after the explosion. Whenever he wore that arm, he was in lots of pain. After the explosion he was never again as good a shooter as he had been before, but he never stopped going after the call.
The plot holes! I had forgotten how he died, so being exposed to seriously detailed Plane Trauma without warning made me clammy. But that's just me. I would have liked to hear or see more of his words, rather than have them provided in summary by his family and peers. We did get to see some footage of him without the camera toward the end of the movie, so we know it exists. On the other hand, that might be a greedy statement. Everything that man had to 'say' is in his pictures. He 'spoke' all throughout the movie.
The music! Nothing stands out as irritating or great about it. There was a soundtrack, but it wasn't hefty. Mostly we have voice-overs and such.
Application of the First Rule: Medium high. If you're a news junkie, high.
Application of the Sledgehammer Rule: Low. I'm going to give a pass, here. There was some pounding, but that's mainly because the son is so proud of his father. Because he paired the My Father, The Hero with plenty of examples of My Father, The Asshole, the SR is largely cancelled out.
Reaction of 13-year-old boy who is my inner essence: Because a lot of it deals with tragedy, war, destruction, torture, despots and so forth, he was interested. He only faded out during the very upsetting parts dealing with the famine.
Application of Julia Phillips rule: Low. Seeing those images of the famine on the big screen is deadly. It's one thing to see that on television, completely different when those videos are blown up the size of a building. Overall, this won't lose anything if you can only see it on dvd or television.
Die Whitey index: Mostly n/a. There's a brief bit about Amin's long affair with the white woman he took with him when he accepted an award from the Queen (what an asshole!! Get an award from the Queen, TAKE YOUR WIFE TO THE CEREMONY!). That woman is not interviewed in the film, nor are the other girlfriends the wife mentions in passing. I wondered how many there were. Though the wife doesn't get into specifics much, it is clear by the rest of what she says that her heart was broken by him, especially after 1984 when it sounded like he pretty much just dumped her at the home port and treated her with indifference. (For the record, the wife was a model in India. She was a babe in her youth, and a handsome woman now. More importantly, she put up with his shit.) The knock-down, drag out fight described over credit for the only interview Idi Amin gave after he fled to the Saudis is not a DW situation. Even though the BBC guy who tried to hijack all the credit was white, that fight was obviously predicated on journalistic bloodlust more than it was on race.
Hotness index: N/A.
Additional PAFF screenings: Feb. 15, 3:15 p.m.
Was Quentin there? Nope.
Random tidbit: As I was walking into the theater, one of my fellow judges was walking out! I wonder what movie he went to see. I didn't have time to ask since I flying in the door straight from the office.
One day someone will do a documentary abou the son, who continued his father's business, grew it, and got field work in covering Mogadishu, the genocide in Rwanda and the vicious happenings in the Congo. I'm not sure, but I think he might be one of the people involved in trying to bring an Africa channel to the sat systems.
