8/02/08

I AM BECAUSE WE ARE opened to a sold-out crowd this evening at the Traverse City Film Festival in Michigan. The acclaimed new documentary, written and narrated by Raising Malawi co-founder Madonna, documents the plight of Malawi’s one million plus orphans, and explores solutions to the country’s health and economic crises.

Hours before the film’s screening, director Nathan Rissman and consulting producer Philippe van den Bossche took a few minutes to discuss the film, the future of Malawi, working with Madonna, and the meaning of Ubuntu.

Philippe van den Bossche, the Executive Director of Raising Malawi and a frequent visitor to the tiny nation, explains that the film’s title is an interpolation of a Zulu phrase - umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu - which means ‘I am because you are.’

“It’s a phrase common to many different languages throughout Africa and it means that we share a common fate,” he explains. “Your problems are my problems. We all occupy this planet and have a responsibility to reach out and to care for each other.”

First time director Rissman echoes this idea in discussing the inevitability of the film’s title.

“Madonna and I had many working titles. We couldn’t describe what we were experiencing in Malawi, this thing we wanted to share with the rest of the world. It was Desmond Tutu that really brought that title to us, and that was it. This idea that we all have a responsibility to one another. As Bill Clinton says in the film, our similarities are ultimately more compelling than our interesting differences.”

This concept of Ubuntu is echoed throughout I Am Because We Are, and it lets no one off the hook. Part of what makes this documentary different is that is says we are all of us, from Michigan to Malawi, responsible for lifting the developing world from the throes of poverty and disease.

“Everybody, including Malawians, has to take responsibility,” says Philippe. “The point of film is that we all, not just those of us in the West and volunteers and donors, but Malawians and anyone living in a challenging situation – be it economic, gender-disparate, disease...we must take responsibility for the way we live. Malawians should band together to create their own prosperity. We should help them to do so.

“That’s not about sacrificing ourselves,” he adds, “but treating one another with human dignity.”

Raising Malawi was founded on this very notion. When co-founders Madonna and Michael Berg conceived Raising Malawi, their aim was much higher than allocating charitable funds. Rather, the organization is working to break the cycle of disease, despair, and endemic poverty altogether and for good by empowering Malawians to support themselves. I Am Because We Are expands on an idea that Michael Berg gave us as our guiding principle right from the start; none of us can be truly happy in life until we care about each other at least as much as we care about ourselves.

It is an idea that is alive and well even in the most devastated corners of sub-Saharan Africa, and I Am Because We Are was created very much in this collaborative spirit.

“Madonna was creatively involved in every decision,” Nathan says, “Her narration came directly from writing she did while on the ground in Malawi. She keeps journals the whole time, and when we’d shot about eighty percent of the film, she began to take from those journal entries and we built the film from there.

“Very personal moments like the ones we got only come after spending time with the people there, and letting them into your life as well.”

Nathan was accompanied by Philippe on every one of his trips there, and both of them became deeply involved with the communities they visited.

“There are more than 300 hours that did not make it into the film so there are many more stories, so many more kids.” Nathan says. “Philippe and I are committed to returning four times a year to manage a charitable fund set up for the kids in the film, so we will definitely be seeing them again and again.”

For all the horror of the conditions of Malawi, there is a profound beauty in the landscape and on the faces of the people there. Even in the midst of death and despair, there is incredible joy. It’s something Nathan Rissman noticed from the start of filming.

“The further into the depths of poverty you go, the more humanity you find,” says Nathan. “The people in Africa are not as distracted as we are. With all my travels in Africa the biggest thread has been this dichotomy.”

Now, years since filming began and months since I Am Because We Are first premiered, it opens to a sold-out crowd in Michigan’s Traverse City Film Fest. Nathan shares why this one matters.

“What’s exciting in Traverse City is that after the big premieres in New York and Cannes, now we’re surrounded by a more intimate community. I get to find out what my peers think. Of course the most important thing is to create a dialog, to get people to start to talk about issues that have to be discussed.”

But why aren’t emergencies like Malawi discussed at least as much as Hollywood gossip and fashion faux-pas?

“We’re just distracted from our part in it by various messages,” explains Philippe. “Not only specific marketing messages and all the important urgent matters that we experience in our day to day lives. But then there are urgent situations, immediate critical things like earthquakes and cyclones that also deserve our attention. So you have to compete with all these messages. The only way to compete with that is by being provocative and by interesting people who have the kind of gravitas and presence of Madonna or Bill Clinton. People with passion who can generate enough excitement about it to build a constituency.”

The Traverse City festival is also important because the proceeds from these screenings will benefit Raising Malawi, specifically the forthcoming Raising Malawi Academy for Girls.

There is an indomitable spirit exemplified by the leaders, teachers, and aid workers featured in I Am Because We Are, but it shines brightest in the faces of the children profiled in the film. One of them asks very simply that we help Malawi’s children forget that they are orphans.

“Children who grow up with nothing don’t realize what having something is,” says Philippe. “They may not know to request medical care, they may not understand a lack of water, or sufficient nutrition. But the greater message is that there’s a stigmatization that occurs when we label a child an orphan. When we stigmatize them this way, they become marginalized. Their community sees them differently and as a result they cannot live the life that a child should. There is obviously a stigmatization that occurs when you label a child HIV-positive; when you label a child an orphan that is equally stigmatizing, and it creates separation.

These are not just orphans, but children.”

To learn more about I Am Because We Are, visit www.iambecauseweare.com

To make a donation, click here