At the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, 189 world leaders claimed that an end to poverty was achievable, and signed a declaration to uphold their eight goals by 2015: eradicating hunger; universal education; gender equity; child health; maternal health; combating AIDS; environment; and global partnerships.
To tie in with the project, French producer Marc Obéron set to work with eight international directors to emphasise the urgency. Naturally the UN gave the resulting film, imaginatively titled 8, a big inky stamp of approval – until the premiere of Mira Nair’s segment made them sweat in their velvet seats and they reached for the Tipp-Ex, withdrawing their support. So much for artistic freedom.
Ironically, Nair’s short – deemed offensive to Muslims – is one of the few that resonates with any vigour.
It opens on the scene of a brown-skinned man forcing himself onto a writhing wife who turns away in disgust. But of course: Muslim men are dominating and oppressive! But Nair suddenly flips on the light and we’re caught red-handed in assuming that there is nothing but submission beneath the burkha.
While her husband and child can only watch and weep, she ties her headscarf firmly, picks up her bag and leaves to start a new life with a married man. Offensive? Please. Live in the real world and unveil your own vision.
Jane Campion’s environmental segment is a slice of impassioned genius, where every touch and teardrop is filled with beauty. An Aussie township is drained of life as obstinate clouds refuse to weep over their dry lands to water dying spirits – only the children are the ones left to fix what the grown-ups have broken.
On the downside Gaspar Noé gives a masterclass in lazy cinema, filming a soundless AIDS sufferer from different angles with the man’s voiceover narrating his repetitive tale. It feels like Noé looked at his watch and thought, ‘Yeah, I’ve got 10 minutes before lunch, let’s do it.’
Similarly, Gus van Sant follows a bunch of young boys on skateboards, full of joie de vivre (presumably while other children suffer skateboardless) as statistics on American calorie consumption flash up on-screen. Weightless, uninspiring and thoroughly unmemorable. All I remember thinking was that I’d once scraped my chin falling off a skateboard.
Abderrahmane Sissako highlights the perils of extreme hunger through Tiya’s Dream, which tells the tale of a bright, cheery little Ethiopian girl, always late to school as she sews shirts for her ill father before leaving the house. As she zooms into school she still remembers to pick up two pieces of fruit, which she drops out of the window to a waiting child who devours the fruit hungrily. This is the stuff that makes you well up. Not the empty facts, figures and shocking stats, but the human touches that remind us of the need to glue together our shattered sense of oneness.
As the curtain went down on the Marrakech Film Festival, my ticket to the Dior after-party lost its Willy Wonka gleam and the free champagne its fizz. In a time where we feel our world is rocked at the foundations and falling down around our ears, 8 reminds us what suffering really is.
