{"id":62855,"date":"2015-08-24T12:00:24","date_gmt":"2015-08-24T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=62855"},"modified":"2015-08-23T15:18:36","modified_gmt":"2015-08-23T14:18:36","slug":"we-come-as-friends-explores-the-beautiful-nightmare-of-south-sudan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/08\/we-come-as-friends-explores-the-beautiful-nightmare-of-south-sudan\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe Come As Friends\u201d Explores the Beautiful Nightmare of South Sudan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aug. 22 2015 – <\/em>As a filmmaker, Hubert Sauper does not take the road less traveled. That would be far too easy. He doesn\u2019t, in fact, take roads much at all. First he spent two years on his French farm building his own ultralight plane out of tin and canvas and lawnmower wheels. Then, in 2010, he flew it from France to southern Sudan. And then things got interesting.<\/p>\n

\"Adolescent<\/a>

Adolescent boy from the Bari tribe, South Sudan, apparently imitating the tribal traditions of warriors putting ashes on their body. This ash is produced from burning trash. Photo: Courtesy of Hubert Sauper<\/p><\/div>\n

The Austrian-born Sauper spent the next two years flitting around the country in his rickety, two-seat, single-engine prop plane, keeping his eyes open and his camera rolling. The result, We Come As Friends<\/em><\/a> (which opened in New York on August 14 and will screen nationwide throughout the fall), is an improbable, cinematic magical mystery tour of a documentary: a portrait of a new nation being born out of the ashes of civil war amid a swarm of self-professed do-good American evangelicals, expat humanitarians, Chinese oil workers, and South Sudanese power brokers \u2014 most of whom seem to do anything but good. The film comes at an opportune time, as another in a long line of potential peace deals to end South Sudan\u2019s 18-month-old civil war has evaporated<\/a>. While it does so in exceptionally subtle fashion, We Come as Friends<\/em> helps explain just how things got to this tragic point.<\/p>\n

The acclaimed director of 2004\u2019s Darwin\u2019s Nightmare<\/em>, a harrowing study of globalization and economic exploitation in Tanzania, Sauper works in verite\u00a0style and doesn\u2019t lean on talking heads, title cards, or scolding voiceovers about the ills of neocolonialism, racism, globalization, or capitalism. Instead he allows his subjects to do the heavy lifting. \u201cThere must be a reason they\u2019re still 200 years behind the rest of the world,\u201d says a British Iraq War veteran, in Sudan to defuse landmines for an aid group, of the people he has come to help. Nineteenth-century \u201cdark continent\u201d themes seem barely submerged as the U.S. ambassador announces, \u201cToday we are, literally and figuratively, bringing light,\u201d before flipping the switch at a ceremony celebrating a modest electrical power project. And then there are the American Christian missionaries. \u201cThey don\u2019t understand property ownership the way you and I do,\u201d says one. \u201cYou were here first, but now there\u2019s a fence here, so\u2026\u201d was how another explained it to locals who complained when the Americans took away grazing land to build a house for themselves.<\/p>\n

Some of Sauper\u2019s directorial decisions skirt the outer limits of heavy-handedness. He pans his camera from the partying of United Nations staff on South Sudan\u2019s independence day to a lonely South Sudanese cleaning up the grounds outside or juxtaposes combat footage shot by a soldier, replete with gunfire and corpses, with a scene of white folks relaxing at some posh resort. We\u2019re never given much context about these episodes, but far from phony, the contrasts ring true; anyone who has spent much time in the country (especially the capital, Juba) has no doubt witnessed similar incongruities.<\/p>\n

In Darwin\u2019s Nightmare<\/em>, which shows how an invasive species of fish upends not only the local economy but the entire society around Lake Victoria, Sauper demonstrated an uncanny ability to document the everyday horrors of the developing world with an artist\u2019s visual sensibility. The result was disturbing and beautiful. We Come as Friends<\/em> shares the same DNA.<\/p>\n

Sauper understands the power of ambiguity and its ability to involve the viewer in his investigations, so there isn\u2019t much context or explanation anywhere in We Come as Friends<\/em>. But this film isn\u2019t about easy narratives or perfectly packaged stories. It\u2019s about big themes told in very small fashion \u2014 a collection of discrete, seemingly disconnected vignettes mixed with stunning, sometimes dizzying, aerial footage taken from his trusty tin can, the aptly named Sputnik.<\/p>\n

\"Sauper\u2019s<\/a>

Sauper\u2019s flying machine, \u201cSputnik,\u201d over the Mediterranean Sea, on the way to South Sudan. Photo: Courtesy of Hubert Sauper<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe airplane was the key of this whole project,\u201d Sauper said at a recent New York City screening of the film. \u201cWe are obviously Europeans \u2026 and we also repeat, despite ourselves, all these patterns. You know, like going to other places, discovering adventure. The notion of adventure is a very European, kind of colonial idea, right? Going to different worlds and the science fiction narrative is a post-colonial phenomenon; traveling through time and space and penetrating these other worlds, encountering these kinds of sometimes hostile, sometimes friendly other beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sauper wrapped up filming before December 2013 when South Sudan plunged into the current civil war. Today, it would be impossible to do what he did, though it was hardly less so then. For that alone, he deserves credit. For the documentary he made, Sauper deserves praise. Thoughtful and moving, We Come as Friends<\/em> encourages the viewer to look closely and think deeply. \u201cA lot of times \u2026 we, as filmmakers, were like \u2018What the hell are we doing here?\u2019\u201d Sauper admitted at the Manhattan screening. \u201cWe\u2019re just another set of white guys \u2026 and sometimes, you go, \u2018Okay, we\u2019re making a movie, but does it make sense at all?\u2019\u201d People interested in South Sudan or Africa or the human condition would be well-served by spending 110 minutes with We Come as Friends<\/em> and answering that question for themselves.<\/p>\n

__________________________<\/p>\n

Nick Turse<\/em> is the author of <\/em>Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam<\/a> and <\/em>Tomorrow\u2019s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa<\/a>.\u00a0He has reported<\/a> from South Sudan, most recently earlier this year.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlool.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a filmmaker, Hubert Sauper does not take the road less traveled. That would be far too easy. He doesn\u2019t, in fact, take roads much at all. First he spent two years on his French farm building his own ultralight plane out of tin and canvas and lawnmower wheels. Then, in 2010, he flew it from France to southern Sudan. And then things got interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}