I wrote about Andrew Berend’s film in March 2015. Berends’ was the embodiment of grit, stamina, and dogged persistence. In collaboration and cooperation with his subjects, he revealed and shared stories as offerings and testaments to the generosity and resiliency of the human spirit. I believe he hoped and trusted in the responsibility of the viewers to expand their consciousness, and to be involved in changing and challenging narratives that lack nuance. Rest in peace, and thank you for your example.
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It can be surmised that it’s precisely the endearing and refreshing nature of Andrew Berends that granted the filmmaker physical and emotional access as he captured not only the depth and intensity of Sudan’s persisting conflict, but the hope that prevails for a brighter future. With strong themes of community, persistence and truth, the MADINA’S DREAM audience itself was an extension of community, as over half the crowd contributed to the film’s Kickstarter campaign.
During a Q&A at the IFC Center’s Stranger Than Fiction documentary series, Berends described himself as “obsessive about sound.” Sound is one of the many reasons MADINA’S DREAM resonated with its audience, as sound is central to the film’s sensory experience. In MADINA’S DREAM, the sounds of reeds and drums beckon a spirited and rhythmic call to life. A sense of disquiet and tension floods the desert landscape when thunderous bombs and menacing planes disrupt the skyline, razing the land and driving the rebels and refugees on the ground off to their homemade bomb shelters. They clutch each other for safety and comfort until those sounds subside.
Though the Sudanese Civil War has ended, conflicts remain. Rebels and refugees battle to survive in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains. Refugee camps in South Sudan have become a permanent fixture, and the film conveys a sense of entrapment. A Sudanese audience member said, “Today the situation over there is worse…if you don’t die by bombs, you die of hunger.” The government of Sudan has been bombing the inhabitants of the Nuba Mountains, and though the Nubian people work through endless grief, hunger and heat to salvage the land in order to be self-sufficient, it proves a Sisyphean task. It’s difficult for humanitarian aid to bring food because of limited access to the remote region. When there is no food the people eat leaves from the trees to fend off starvation. Poet Khalil Gibran said, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” In the one scene that represents how scarce food drops are, when a plane is able to drop bags of provisions, it is specifically because it ignites a celebration so immense, and so joyful, that makes it a painful signifier to the viewer of what’s on the other side of that joy.
The scope and detail covered in MADINA’S DREAM does not recoil from the labored raggedy breaths of a dying child, with bones so prominent they look like they might dissolve right through her skin, nor does it waver from the alarming number of stones that mark the civilians killed by airplanes. Crucial to the film though, is the ubiquitous desire of the refugees and rebels to thrive, to live a better life than the one that is essentially, forced on them. Young Nubians like Madina, the film’s namesake, dream of getting back their land, and Madina wants to study and fight to do so. When Madina’s mother dies and she’s away from school, her friend takes her notebook and copies everything she learns for Madina, explaining, “I just want our land to be liberated. This war separated us from our families. We will never quit until the government of Sudan is changed.”
Berends said, “They’re not uneducated, they’re not helpless, as awful as what you see in the film is, I don’t want to paint that picture, they’re the opposite of helpless, like if I had lived there I’d be helpless, but they don’t need to be reeducated, and if they weren’t bombarded and starved, they would be fine.”
Media coverage has been scarce. “I’m not going to say nobody but there were almost no journalists there,” said Berends, who is often asked how he was able to film the rebels. “In my life this is kind of the third time I’ve been with militants, rebels, once was in Iraq, once was in Nigeria--and what I’ve learned is that rebels like journalists, they want their story to be told.” Berends could not get a visa from the government to access the front line as he said they do not want journalists covering the story. He did obtain a visa from the rebels though, who have offices in South Sudan, and he joked that it’s because he was so persistent “that it was like, ‘alright if we don’t let him go then he’s just going to keep on doing this.’”
Berends articulates his revelations that while the general view is that Arabs and Blacks are fighting, when he meets the Nubian Rebels prisoners of war, he did not expect them to also be Nubian. During the Q&A Berends continued that “it illustrates what it takes for a war like this to be able to happen, that it’s propaganda, it’s disinformation, it’s being told your enemy is different, when in fact in this case, many of them are Nubian.” These prisoners are treated well, and in the film, when they express surprise at the mercy they’re being shown, a rebel commander says, “Why should we kill you? You're one of us. We only kill those shooting at us. There's no point in losing hope.”
http://www.madinasdream.com/
