Growing up in a harsh world
When a newborn child’s cry rings out in «Children of Men,» the fighting stops and the woman carrying the only infant in the world passes by a mass of awestruck faces. Everyone falls back to allow her to pass. Their gunpowder-blasted, emaciated faces take on a glow. One reason Alfonso Cuaron’s film has stood out among recent productions was its subject: A world without children, a landscape that is desolate, hopeless, ruthless. Must we really travel to the world of fiction in order to fully understand the extent to which childhood is under threat today? The 9th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival (March 16-25) has titled its main section «Troubled Innocence,» opening the window on 12 films about children growing up – if they ever succeed in reaching maturity – in harsh reality. These are documentaries that record children’s grief, society’s callousness, children’s maturity and adult inertness. The directors who created these films have traveled around the globe to tell the stories of child AIDS victims in China, American children enlisted in Evangelical orders, underaged gangs in Ukraine, boys maimed by land mines in Cambodia, and much, much more. It is not the first time the Thessaloniki festival has chosen to focus on children. «This is a huge web of issues that organized societies prefer to ignore. They take no action on these issues. But children are the future of the planet, the future of life,» comments Dimitris Eipidis, the documentary festival’s director. Director Ruby Yang’s short documentary «The Blood of Yingzhou District» – a joint Chinese/US production which went on to win an Oscar earlier this month – bears witness to the fear on the faces of children orphaned or threatened by AIDS in this border province. «In the winter of 2002, I began a production on the AIDS orphans of China. In these peaceful and beautiful villages, people who didn’t even have the essentials have now have lost everything because of AIDS,» says Yang. The residents of many agricultural areas of the country became «professional» blood donors in the 1980s and 90s in order to supplement their meager incomes and today about 20 percent of the population is HIV positive. The director focuses her lens on a young boy who has lost both his parents to AIDS and who lives ostracized by his community in a society that lacks information and is too weak to voice its concerns, subdued by a guilty silence. Julia Reichart, a leader in American independent film and a strong presence on the documentary scene with two Oscar nominations, teamed up with Steven Bognar for «A Lion in the House.» For five years, the filmmakers observed up close the battle five children and their families waged against cancer. When you witness such scenes, say the filmmakers in a written comment, «you wonder how prepared you are for this job. We have been asked whether we had to freeze our emotions just to cope. No. You have to keep your humanity open to the pain of the situation you are filming.» Shira Pinson shot her first feature-length documentary film on the streets of Kiev. «Flowers Don’t Grow Here» paints an unusual portrait of child gangs in modern-day Ukraine. «The Boy in the Bubble,» the subject of a beautiful song penned by Paul Simon, lived in a sterilized plastic bubble for all 12 years of his young life. When his parents decided to put an end to his painful suffering, they just took David Vetter out of the bubble. Documentarists Barak Goodman and John Maggio recorded this case with their cameras, at the same time posing the scientific and ethical questions it raises. For the young fanatics of the Evangelical Church in the USA, there are two types of people: those who love Jesus and those who don’t. At age 10, they state they can change the world and rebuild America. Levi, Rachel and Toriare are just three of of the children observed by filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady in «Jesus Camp,» a summer camp located in North Dakota. It is basic training in fun, with the children singing songs in praise of Jesus, playing games, staging small skits, dancing and attending lectures and sermons. In prayers, the children kneel down, turn their eyes to the heavens and weep, their bodies wracked by sobbing. They are taught how to bring America back to the Christians. The two American filmmakers – who received two Oscar nominations – have made an emotive documentary with almost thriller-like qualities, which they didn’t have to work hard to find. Dimitris Eipidis Next year, the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival will be celebrating its 10th birthday. Director Dimitris Eipidis has been tending to it as if it were his baby: He keeps feeding it new things, enriching its development. His intention is to «sensitize, inform and mobilize the viewer.» The aim is to «help create a better society, a better world.» A maximalist, romantic dream one might say. Eipidis answers with experience: «Over the nine-year course of the festival, I have observed the development of its audience. At first they were bashful, skeptical, uncertain. They wouldn’t participate in the discussions and lectures; they wouldn’t raise their hand to speak. Now hands shoot up all around the room. Their arguments, judgments and comments are a constant source of surprise. I see an audience that is well informed, active, that takes an avid interest in the subjects addressed by the films. It has entered into a dialogue. The festival thus achieves one of its goals: to open a dialogue with the audience, which makes it a living, breathing organism that is connected to its environment.»
