Communism to Tourism

Epicentro (2019) - Sauper
Hubert Sauper, known for his searing documentaries on the effect of globalization and legacy of colonialism on African continent, in Darwin's Nightmare and We Come as Friends, now turns his attention to the island nation of Cuba. But this time, instead of his journalistic, overtly expansive approach which was necessary to shed a light on the issues that no Western countries knew or cared about, Sauper takes more personal approach in Epicentro, perhaps because Cuba, the Caribbean island nation's reputation as America's longest running foe in such a close proximity, has been a known entity to most Westerners. This doesn't mean Epicentro lacks a bite on exposing and criticizing inhumane US policy on Cuba over the last 50 years and the new exploitation in the form of tourism. Blending cinema historionics and geopolitics Sauper creates something that feels pointy yet ethereal and deeply personal.

Sauper narrates briefly about the title of the film in the beginning. He calls Cuba the Epicenter of 3 dystopian chapters of history, the ingredients of building a modern empire - slave trade, colonization and globalization of power. You'd think it would be one of those third world poverty porn. but Epicentro is nothing but. Sauper's usual guerrilla style camera follows a handful subjects - mostly children whom he calls 'little prophets', as they go on about their daily lives - at school, at home, playing in the streets, taking dance lessons, etc. The most striking parts of these children are how vividly conscious about Cuba's place in the world as the sole remaining Communist regime (North Korea is something else entirely at this point) and proud to be standing up to the world's superpower up north for so long. Yes, there are elements of brainwashing, as they are constantly reminded in school and on the streets and on TV of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara's revolutionary rhetoric. But is that talk of self-reliance, cemented by decades of crippling economic sanctions, a bad thing? Whether it was Spaniards or Teddy Roosebelt, it was colonialism through and through. American invasion of Cuba in 1898 is based on the fake footage of USS Maine blowing up in which US government created in the bathtub with blowing cigar smoke and toy ships. Every Cuban knows this - the fact Sauper hits again and again throughout the film. Their literacy rate is staggering 96 percent.

First world arrogance is in full display - an American photographer snaps shots of the locals without any consent. They are used to this. Kids pose for him. He goes into their courtyards, snapping copious amount of pictures, through the windows even. Kids ask him for something in return. He gives the kid a pen, turns to the camera and say, "they should be honored to be photographed by me." An old German tango dancer, who is in Havana for 2 weeks, wants to show off his tango in school in front of kids doing ballet lessons. A teacher lets him, while kids snicker in the background.

Talking with the cadre of ex-pats and locals, Sauper juxtaposes the folly and absurdism of tourism industry. It is revealed that the director is a son of innkeepers in small Austrian resort town. In conversation, his friend says there are two types of people - there are normal human beings and there are tourists. There are luxury hotels that only American and European tourists stay. One of the main subject, Leonelli, a beautiful and bright little girl wants Sauper to sneak her and her friends in to the hotel so they can use the pool on the roof. They have a plan. Sauper will pretend they are his kids.

The director's whiteness and his camera adds another dimension to the film. Sure he has been invested in other parts of the world and their people. He speaks their language. But ultimately, he is a foreigner. How do you reconcile that he is there making a film? How much of a blending in really make you a 'normal people' instead of a 'tourist'?

Sauper ties the idea of modern day Cuba, full of intact 50s archetypes - cars, buildings as fiction that provides false narrative for tourists and of cinema: how they resemble, by way of presenting fiction, tourism. Cinema is all make believe anyway.

Unlike his other documentaries, Epicentro is filled with sense of joy and buoyancy. The flow of tying ideas together - past/present, reality/fiction, normal person/tourist, seems natural and even spontaneous. These ideas are imbued in the presence of Oona Chaplin, a Hollywood actress and a granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin and daughter of Geraldine. She enacts scenes with Leonelli, sings impromptu Spanish songs with her guitar, an attends the screening of a Chaplin film to the delight of kids.

Epicentro is an intimate, fluid, ethereal film while still being sharp edged in condemnation of the globalization and colonial history. It's one of the truly great documentaries of 2020.

Epicentro launches in Virtual Cinemas on August 28.

Interview: Hubert Sauper on His Intimate New Documentary, EPICENTRO

Austrian filmmaker Hubert Sauper, known for his scathing documentaries on devastating effects of post-colonial, globalized world - Darwin's Nightmare (Tanzania) and We Come as Friends (South Sudan), changes his direction and focuses his attention on Cuba this time with Epicentro. While the island nation has been a constant subject for cinema for a long time, Sauper's film blends in the commentary on globalization and cinema history through the voices of extremely articulate and bright children. The result is a engrossing, intimate documentary that is poetic and playful as well as biting. This 2020 Sundance Grand Jury prize winner is seeing its virtual opening in the US on 8/28.

I caught him as he was traveling by rail in France. Even with bad reception and constant background noise, I was able to ask him questions about his filmmaking and the world wide pandemic we are experiencing right now.

It’s a crazy time we are living in. I was thinking that this worldwide pandemic seems like a good subject for Hubert Sauper, since you make films about globalization of the world. What do you make of the current state of the world?

Hubert Sauper: It is a crazy situation because the last three years I’ve been making this film about the beginning of cinema and Covid seems to be the end of cinema.

Yeah this is very much true.

The New York premier of the film was the night before the city shut down. I was locked out of New York and it was really crazy situation. So what do I think of it? I don’t really know what to think of this situation. Even what I talk about Epicentro, for us it was a poetic and fantastic way to communicate life and the quintessence of cinema is not just moving images but it’s a collective work and collective experience.

Right.

It’s a collective journey. And now it is questioned right? That’s the crazy thing. The thing is Covid doesn’t care about any of this human endeavor. So I really don’t know. There’s so much emphasis on where it comes from and every politician is using it as their gain. Again the reason why it was communicated so quickly was moving images that spread around the world. That’s the power of images.

I get the feeling that if any filmmaker could tackle this, you would be the one who can interpret the situation from a globalization angle.

One of the things I thought in the beginning of it was that I saw two patterns and posted two screenshots on my facebook page –One was a graph showing the spread of covid and the other of the international air traffic. It’s from a website called flight rada. And they were identical. It was almost synchronized. You click on flights and the Covid bubbles of the destinations of those flights blowing up. It is a global phenomenon. It’s very simple as that.

So you made two films on the effects of Colonial past and globalization in Africa (Darwin’s Nightmare and We Come as Friends), but this time it’s Cuba. Why Cuba?

I was interested in figuring out the ground zero of moving images where it became super powerful and important. And it led me to ‘Remember the Maine’ and I built it upon that. It was defacto of moving image industry and business were born. Cinema was just like any other technology. And it was used to drum up the support for the war.

I’m not saying your last films were not personal but Epicentro comes across as much more personal and intimate than your other work. Is there any personal relationship with Cuba?

Well, I’m not alone in saying that I love Cuba. I’m not the only one who is fascinated by Cuba. One of the things I am particularly fascinated by it is that it is a society that is very much isolated and extremely well educated. The roles it plays in political geopolitical arena, repeatedly is also extremely interesting. On top of that, it’s the Cubans’ reflections on the world that is so acute. Whenever I talked with and listened to them, it was a jaw dropping experience. Those little kids, Chigas, that I interacted daily--

The little prophets (the kids in Epicentro are credited as that on the credit roll).

Yes, they became friends for life! I talk with them on the phone constantly. Maybe it feels more personal because for three years of being there and making this kind of film, there’s no way not to be over-contact with your subjects and they are all over the place.

‘What the fuck am I doing here?’ was the question I wake up with every morning. You will have a café latte, which cost 3 times the average day salary of a person there. That alone is a great justification. That alone is cynical way of saying that Cuba is a paradise. It is a paradise if you have means. All these questions and paradoxes exist in Cuba. And that’s what interested me. I don’t have answers for these. I just ask questions.

I was thinking about that while watching the film. I mean, as a white European filmmaker making a film about colonialism and tourism in Cuba, how do you reconcile with that paradox? I find out from the movie that you were a son of an innkeeper in Austrian resort town.

How do I come to terms with the paradox of life? What I am saying is that the chief of Green Peace has flown more on airplane around the globe while talking about air traffic and its emissions. How do you…I mean… at best I am saying I’m a filmmaker and I’m not gonna apologize for making a film, you know?

Yep.

But of course there are situations that are very critical, for example, we are filming the photographer, poring in somebody’s backyard almost pushing the kids around to stay in focus and I am just another idiot behind the camera at that moment filming this other guy exploiting someone’s privacy. There is no difference between me and that guy in the eyes of Cuban people.

Yeah there is.

And there were about 30-40 people around us when we were there. My point is that the next day I showed them the footage and they were laughing about that footage. It was around my neighborhood where I was living and I asked them permission to shoot in advance and everything.

I was privileged to be paid by European Union to hang out in Cuba for two years.

Two years did you say?

I lived there for 3 years yes. 2 years teaching a class in film school so I could get a legal status and lodging, but all in all three years. I had a studio set up so I was writing, shooting and editing at the same time there. I’d shoot in the day and come back to the flat and edit at night.

Did you have a lot of footage to work with?

Yeah it was physically about a hundred to one.

Wow.

Right. About 200 hours of footage to make one movie.

It’s ok. I shot a lot of characters. But it’s complex process. How do you portray the psychology of empire. There are a lot of characters saying similar things but you try to get some different angles some are more eloquent than others and some are more interesting as characters. The characters are…I don’t know how to say it, sometimes it takes a form of casting. Sometimes it’s more true…. You are a cinema person. You write for cinema right?

So, I can tell you one thing which sets apart. You remember a group of children at night. One kid says I wanna chew down the other one while telling the story of Cuba, remember that?

Yes.

That was the moment, I met Lionelli for the first time in my life. Lionelli was among 10 kids who were mostly bigger than herself. She made herself to be heard. And we follow her after that: her figuring out herself in school and blah blah. But she was such a character and always wanted to be in front of the camera, she became my friend. And she became one of the figures in the film.

I love the scene where she asks you to sneak her and her friends in to the fancy hotel pool so she can swim.

“I need to pee.” As soon as she went into the pool. (laughs)

Why you like it is because at that point of the movie, you already know her and you realize that she has something to say and you feel that relationship. How do you say? Disobedience. Cuban Revolution is romanticized because of its disobedient spirit against the powerful. It’s her disobedient nature, going to the pool when she is not allowed to and pissing in the pool, I see the exact the same spirit.

By the way, I took a cab to the train station and she is all over Paris now (on the movie posters -Epicentro came out last week in Paris). It’s a kind of miracle. She wants to be a movie star and she wants to visit Paris. And she has done that now.

I really like your approach in Epicentro in weaving cinema history with Cuba. It is kind of epitomized by the presence of Oona Chaplin. The Grand daughter of Charlie and daughter of Geraldine. How did you get Oona to be involved?

Oona is a very close friend. She spent a part of her childhood in Cuba because her father’s refugee status. When Lionelli was watching Chaplin movie in the film, I hadn’t thought of Onna yet. That scene triggered me to call her. I sent her the footage to LA where she was working on Avatar movie. And she saw the footage and fell in love with the kids. So I said come on over and she did.

Wow, that’s awesome.

It shows that she is not only beautiful and talented, but a very free person. I think she enjoyed to be involved in it too. It was kind of a miracle too, having Oona coming out of nowhere watching her grandpa on the screen with the children on the rooftop in Cuba. It wasn’t in the script that I wrote originally. By the way, my first trip for Epicentro was not necessarily about Havana. It was the idea of Utopia and birth of cinema.

Well, I enjoyed the film a lot. I think it’s one of the best documentaries I’ve seen in a long time. But this pandemic is still raging. So stay safe and hopefully you can make a film about the Covid experience, maybe?

I think I’m gonna be OK, if we can keep this magic called cinema, going.


Epicentro opens virtually on 8/28. Please check Kino Lorber website for more info.

Interview: Hubert Sauper on We Come as Friends and the Perils of Documentary Filmmaking

Talking to filmmaker Hubert Sauper is a dangerous proposition. Friendly, humble yet extremely charismatic, you feel like you can talk to him all day. You don't feel the passage of time listening to his riveting stories. His ease and nonchalance with himself let your guard down the first time you see him.

Even with the heavy subject, the newly founded South Sudan and his new film We Come as Friends about the country, our conversation was full of laughs and giddiness. Only later you realize how gifted a communicator Sauper really is both with film and in person.

We Come as Friends opens Friday in New York. Please visit IFC Center website for tickets. *Sauper will be on hand for Q & As for Friday and Saturday screenings.


You've done films about Rwanda (KISANGANI DIARY), Tanzania (DARWIN'S NIGHTMARE) and now South Sudan. Your interests in Africa goes way back about 20 years. Can you tell me how it all started?

I went to Africa in 1997. Before then, I knew about Africa as much as most Europeans, which is almost nothing, except what everyone knew already - that those poor people needed help, that we should send them clothes and food. And I understood pretty quickly that...what it means to be European and how everything was intertwined, that our continents are extremely connected over thousands of years and that this dialectic about north and south- as in Asia and Americas, is kind of pathological and unbalanced.

And I got interested in Africa not because it's 'Africa'. But because it's kind of collision line, as I say in my films- between forces, cultures, regions in terms of the world's economic interests. So I'm basically interested in human condition, not necessarily Africa as some kind of an object. But of course I feel somehow connected to it for some reason. I feel, so to speak, at home. It sounds very colonial I know. (laughs embarrassingly)

So yeah, all my films are not about Africa. What I can see is not always obvious but some times I can see things because my odd life (as a filmmaker) that other people can not, because they have other things to do. They have a job within the UN and work on the seize-fire and I don't know it's a different kind of...life.

But also I'm more and more interested in the discrepancy between 'what is' and 'what is told' as history is not 'what happened' but 'what is told what happened'. This all notion of North/South, globalism, slavery, colonialism narrative is, in my point of view, so off track from what I can see and feel as I discover in my, so to speak, adventures you know which in itself is an appendix of colonial-

Do you really feel that way?

Oh yeah. When the early pioneers, explorers and settlers were part of the equation then I am too as an European. As a kid I was fascinated by Star Trek, going to new planets every Saturday night and experience the perils of the other world.

That's in this film, right? You start it with...

The narrative of advancing space and time then actually of course taking over and possessing and getting rid of bad guys.

So all of these ideas were what I was playing with, gravitated toward and confused about. Maybe I wanted to bring in that confusion into something that seems to be too clear. Maybe it was also about adolescent feelings about the establishment...it's always refreshing and great thing to be able to be doing this at almost fifty and screwing the lives of warlords and... (I laugh)

Three films in almost twenty years span. Does it take a long time for you to make one project?

Yeah. Well, the gap between Darwin's Nightmare and this film is extreme because, first of all it's a way of life and it's a long haul - the thinking process and money and financing and you have to establish all these access in an inaccessible world.

But this was extreme because I had to get rid of so much very threatening forces against me after Darwin's Nightmare. I couldn't really believe what was happening to my life. The film became very successful after it won bunch of awards and got nominated for an Oscar and all that. It was two years after the film was made. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Because I needed that Oscar (nom) to get financing for my films and I got suddenly this exposure so all these wrong people saw my film. These are powerful people- gun runners in Africa and so on. They decide to go after not only me but also people in the film. They were persecuted and imprisoned and had death threats and lawsuits from very dubious groups of people who had a lot of money.

So my life was literally upside down - I had to get people out of the county, my friends had a direct threat against them and their house was destroyed and they were imprisoned.

Oh god.

So I had to do undercover operations for years to understand what happened and counterattack the core group of people who were running this hate campaign.

They were claiming many things in the film were not true. I don't know if you are interested in this but they claimed those fish bones in the film are not for humans but for dogs.

But it's there in the film that kids are eating them!

The second claim was purely mentioned by filmmaker but you don't see the guns. So there was no gun running - you don't see them so nothing happened.

Crazy.

The third claim was that those street kids were actors. They were actually from good homes but they were dressed up miserably for the camera and acting for me to...

Exploit them?

It was just insane. Any intelligent person can see that what they are claiming is bullshit but when the film is running for the Oscar and when it was in the press, so shit hit the fan. This triggered then, the (Tanzanian) government going down to the people to...

Wow.

So I had to take care of this and it took so much time and energy that We Come as Friends was delayed for years.

But...I don't now regret it. I went after these people in France. The head of the defamation campaign was found guilty of defamation which is a very heavy crime in France and they shut down the campaign finally. But I had to go all the way to protect all the people who were involved in it.

That's a crazy story Hubert. But the thing is you went right back to South Sudan to do this film!

Yeah but I mean, when you go through something like that, you get stronger. After that I was clearer about my convictions and my ideas, not that I'm sure I know the truth but I have certain convictions that are stronger than before.

But also after that, suddenly I understood certain dissidents better- when it's your own skin, own life that's threatened, it's very different.

True.

It gave me a realization that I need to make a movie that stands itself against all the scrutiny.

The thing about WE COME AS FRIENDS is its scope: you are charting the whole Sudan conflict in one film. Not that your other films are any less expansive, but with this one, you are really painting the big picture.

There are couple of elements that stood out for me. I found the Christian missionaries part very interesting. It's obvious that they are doing a lot of damage to the fabric of the Sudanese society. But was there any debate in your mind to weigh pros and cons of what these missionaries are doing there?

Well, if you are living in a village in Sudan and over head there is a bomber plane from Khartoum, from Islamic regime. And bomb your village and kill your daddy or your mommy and a week afterwords, somebody from Texas and they feed you and give you socks, you would be happy too, no?

Right.

The fact that a lot of these missionaries are so sure about their belief in their world, I find that quite fascinating and of course scary too. They are basically antiquating (the native culture). They are just a tip of the iceberg. They are from our industrial, Judeo-Christian world. They are just doing their job you know. They are sent by our military industrial complex which needs to go out and dress the naked people. How could they be around guarding our oil field if they are naked? They need socks and they need uniforms you know? This is the mad wheel of... this is what exactly the film is trying to describe.

When I got to South Sudan I have to admit that someone said that this is a country with almost no roads. And I can see that people are naked. We are uncomfortable because they don't fit in our picture that they are not controllable.

That was an absurd scene to see them putting socks on a baby even though they live on the dirt floor.

I remember growing up getting taught by everyone that we need to send clothes to Africa. It was the most normal thing to do, "of course everyone needs clothes." There is no second thought. It's fascinating to think that we don't give a second thought. The settlers live there and go to fancy parties and stay at the poolside and sip cocktails. They are part of the system.

Speaking of no roads, the film starts with that rickety plane that you are traveling on.  How dangerous was that? It seemed very unsafe given the history of air travel in that region. I know many politicians died in a plane or helicopter crash, presumably shot down by their enemies.

The problem with the politicians is that they tend to die after they sign a peace agreement.

Yeah exactly.

So they don't want to sign any peace agreements. (I laugh)
You laugh but this is no joke. When they say, "OK, let's put down our gun." There are others who want to keep fighting. They say, "You are dead. We don't need you anymore."

That's how John Garang died.

Yeah. Supposedly it was an accident but many signs point to the fact that some didn't want him alive. But nobody knows. I don't want to know. I don't want to put my nose into their affairs.

Understood.

I know Rwandan president died that way, the head of the UN (Dag Hammarskjöld) died in congo and there are many other cases.

But I didn't sign any peace agreement so... (I laugh)

To give you an answer to your question, that plane seems more dangerous in the film than it actually was. But in many cases we were in very uncomfortable situations with the soldiers and restrictions, really frightening moments and actually the plane got us out of those situations. We said that we were going to do repair on the plane, go back to the plane, and just take off.

In the air, we were flying high enough not to be shot down by any missiles or RPGs. It was like we are in our spaceship, joking and laughing and land somewhere and get arrested and imprisoned for days.

So of course there was a risk of engine failure and fall into a crocodile infested swamps. But I get scared in retrospect only. One thing is for sure: if you are in a civil war, jumping one place to another, there is a bigger chance to get shot in the face with Kalashnikoff than die in a plane crash. You have many checkpoints  and there are young guys with guns on drugs...

Do you think it helps you in those situations for a fact you are white european?

You know in the colonial heritage by the way there was this belief system that they can't kill white people because if you do, then the ghosts or spirits of the white men will haunts you. Until the point in history when French rounded up thousands of Senegalese to fight in WWI against Germans. They had to shoot at Germans who were white. And they got back after the emancipation process and told their people, "OK, we can shoot the white guys."

That's absurd.

No, it's not. That's how they got independence after the World War I. They shot the governor and found out there were no white ghosts following them.

But in Sudan, to answer your question...when you feed it into the protocols, when you have a uniform on - then you are potentially part of a bigger group. Then the question they ask is, "who are you with?" I usually answer them that I am with them.

There was another thing that struck me in the film. Whenever you land, people were asking the question if you were Muslim or Christian. The intensity in their eyes scared me.

But I'm neither. I am nothing.

I think they want me to wrap up, even though we just started. I have a friend from Congo. He kept saying that the time has come for the Africans- Everyone had their spotlights: the Europeans,  Americans and the Asians had their day. He believes it's time for Africans to experience the power and wealth in the world. I told him jokingly that it is possible only if we don't destroy the world before then. Are you hopeful for the Africans or do you see their problems too big to overcome because of the shadows of colonialism still hanging over them?

Very much so. But to be honest, I'm not a pessimistic person. If Africa had its moments- I wouldn't say it's impossible. But it is more likely that the world is on fire and they have lands and cows and they could live off the land, then they will be OK. Then that would be their time.

There is a song at the end, "Tomorrow is My Turn" I gave the song script to the singer, Malia, and told her to look at the kids in the film in photos. She put the photos in front of her near the microphone. The song is her singing for the kids.

But even if, lets say Africa becomes superpower, it's just the group of people who'd get very rich within Africa.

True.

New/Old Colonialism

We Come as Friends (2015) - Sauper

Hubert Sauper, a Paris based filmmaker known for his searing eco-disaster exposé in Tanzania, Darwin's Nightmare (2005), continues to document the African continent in his new documentary, We Come As Friends. This time, he sheds light on the post-referendum era Sudan. And it is a damning indictment of new-old colonialism that casts shadows on every corners of the youngest country in the world - South Sudan.

Sudan's decades long civil war claimed estimated 2.5 million lives and created the biggest humanitarian crisis since WWII. In the West, Sudan became synonymous with child soldiers, Lost Boys of Sudan and various Human Rights violations.

After decades of the bloody conflict, South Sudan's Christian majority finally broke free from Khartoum's merciless Islamic government and voted resounding yes to the cessation in 2011.

Still, as Sauper examines, that the newly founded country is riddled with many serious problems. He makes a broader claims that the chaos stems from the colonial past. He draws parallels with then and now, with British and French drawing the line in the sand throughout the continent and Chinese and American companies competing for dominance securing the country's natural resources - the oil fields that precariously borders the north and south.

Sauper, seen on the fields documenting and asking questions, shows that the control for oil fields are still raging among different factions. The oil revenues buy more weapons to fuel the conflict. Chinese oil and mine companies buy up the lands from locals who don't have the concept of land ownership exploit the land and don't take responsibilities for environmental damages. It's jarring to see garbage strewn road to the oil company compounds and seeing so many Chinese workers living in workers camp in the middle of nowhere. There are no contacts between them and its native inhabitants nearby.

With animosity between Muslims and Christians are scarier than ever and the threat of violence is regarded a necessity between them. Whenever Sauper and his crew lands their rickety plane, the first question people ask is whether they are Muslim or Christian, the intensity of their question and stares barely contains the possibilities of violence.

Stock footage of group of white settlers and dignitaries chilling near poolside is juxtaposed with modern day missionaries and foreign dignitaries. Farmers and other inhabitants are losing their land to 99 year leases for Christian missionaries and their western style schools. Children in their traditional garb are banned from attending schools. And well meaning white settlers are seen giving out T-shirts and putting sox on a Sudanese toddler on the dirt floor.

Just like Darwin's Nightmare some years ago, We Come as Friends points out overwhelmingly dire circumstances the post-colonial Africans find themselves in. We see the human cost of up close and personal and its devastating. The film's a little unwieldy and expansive, but one should give Sauper a credit for trying to encompass everything that's been going on for decades in a country still riddled with open wounds of the colonial past in 1 hour 40 minutes. It's another strong case against the long lasting effect of colonialism.

We Come as Friends opens August 14 at IFC Center. Please check IFC Center website for tickets & more info.