The
African island nation of Madagascar has been romanticized so often in the media
that its realities are a stark surprise to anyone unfamiliar with its history.
Director Cam Cowan and Sohei Productions spent four years filming the
documentary MADAGASIKARA, following
the lives of three incredibly practical Malagasy women who, in their own words,
tell the world what Madagascar is actually like, and what it means to try
building a life there. The injustices against the Malagasy people are many,
starting from the oligarchic government seizing power despite the will of the
people, causing its international aid to be halted and forcing the population
into extreme poverty – eighty to ninety percent of the Malagasy live well below
the poverty line, and its children are suffering the consequences of
malnutrition and stunting as a result. These are people forced to endure the
world having largely turned its back on them, and while recent developments
attempt to get aid to them, the damage done is irreversible.
Cowan’s
film tells the story of these people, focusing on three women ranging in age
from sixteen to around forty, each of them with families they must feed,
clothe, and protect with the very little they have to work with. Lin, fiercely and uncompromisingly raising her
six children (and a grandchild) all by herself despite her lack of resources,
wishing nothing for them but for a better future than the one she feels saddled
with, wherein she launders clothes for less than a dollar a day and must trade
sex for rice and meat to feed them, though she has dreamed of being a lawyer
since she was a little girl. Deborah, a mother of two at only sixteen,
tearfully recounts how she sold her body beginning at age twelve so that she
could pay for an education, before she was given aid only to be forced to quit
her schooling at thirteen when she had her first baby – a fact which she
laments, wondering aloud how she will afford school fees for her two little
ones, but determined that they will achieve something great in their lives. And
thirty-two year old Tina, whose body is bent and aching from her years manually
breaking gravel in a quarry – even when she was pregnant – moves to the
countryside with her children to join her parents in a community where they are
related to most of the people who live there, freed from the need to pay rent
but still faced with the expenses of education and failing health.
It is difficult
to watch mothers pulling parasites from the feet of their crying children. It
is sobering to watch little boys and girls clamber over trash in a landfill
looking for something to eat. It breaks the heart to see a peaceful
demonstrator take a bullet and fall down dead right in front of his family. It
is painful to hear a woman talk about her young child’s deteriorating health
and the limited help there is available to her. But the film is truly powerful
when it allows these women to speak for themselves, showing a nation of people
who perform back-breaking tasks and struggle for basic survival so that they
might help their children strive for better conditions, who use what they have
to keep pushing forward despite nearly constant political upheaval and
staggeringly widespread poverty. This is the reality of the rich taking
everything they want from those whose labor created what they have, this is the
reality of how children suffer, how mothers bury their months-old babies just
so those who already own the world can have just a little bit more. This is the
reality of what it means to turn a blind eye when a nation needs has its livelihood
stripped away, and the people are left with only hardship and scarcity.
If the
documentary suffers, it is when it moves away from the intimate lives of the
women and their families; while the explanations of Madagascar’s political
climate are vital to the viewer’s understanding of the people’s tribulations,
these sections of the film are largely presented with text onscreen, which is
cumbersome to read and slows the narrative. Far more effective are scenes
depicting a protest, as peaceful people approaching the presidential palace are
gunned down in the street simply for having and raising a voice for the
children they are trying to create a future for, and contributions from those
who have been trying to help understand the problems Madagascar faces as a
nation.
During a
time when so many people the world over are fighting against injustice, trying
to survive a global pandemic, and facing how inequality permeates every aspect
of political actuality, this is an unflinching picture of a country and its
resilient people too fraught with the needs of daily life to dream. The
Malagasy people – symbolized in the bodies of Lin, Deborah and Tina and their
families – are strong, beautiful, and deserving of so much more than the world
has given them. MADAGASIKARA illustrates
their boldness, their resourcefulness, and the joys and sorrows through which
they navigate with honesty and sensitivity, and it asks those of us in
positions of privilege to consider them, to revisit our own lives and the
things we find important. It asks us to position ourselves in their
unevenly-sized flip-flops, and stand up against oligarchy, inequality, and
tyranny. Giving the people a voice to tell their stories is a step in the right
direction, but there are still so many miles to go.
--Dana Culling