Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2016

The Current Transcript for September 12, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

They’d been at sea for seven days. They were dehydrated, malnourished, exhausted. This boy is covered in burns. We see so many of these—chemical burns from the fuel.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Well, the translation of Pietro Bartolo, the only community doctor on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa. That's put them on the frontlines of a prolonged humanitarian crisis. You have seen the pictures in the news—overloaded boats of desperate, dying and dead refugees arriving. For more than a year, filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi captured life there, juxtaposing tragedy with the often banal lives of the locals. At a time when the plight of refugees is caught in a political swirl of electioneering, suspicion and concern, we're turning to one filmmaker who's found a metaphor on this dilemma in the day-to-day chronicles of one tiny island. You can hear him in half an hour. Let's just stay with the discomfort of the silver screen, shall we?

SOUNDCLIP

I was so excited to see and support Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation. But recently I decided that I will not be spending my money to support the film when it comes out in October.

AMT: Nate Parker's The Birth of a Nation was always a film to address historical trauma and inaccuracy. It's the real story of a slave rebellion in Virginia and it takes the same name The Birth of a Nation of the epic and racist DW Griffin film. It also focuses on the same character as a sixties novel that played with fact. But the director's own history involving a sexual assault charge and acquittal now dominates the chatter around this film. In a time of Black Lives Matter, of Oscars So White and the issue of consent, the choice of whether to see this film is raising complex questions. We've got that discussion in half an hour. But we're starting today with a different mix of fact and fiction.

SOUNDCLIP

[Through translator] Through this nuclear test, the artillery units of the Korean People's Army have reconfirmed the capability and force of a standardized nuclear warhead for launch on a ballistic rocket.

AMT: Well, translation from the North Korean government there. What do we really know about North Korea's nuclear weapons potential? We're starting there. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Back To Top »

'Be very afraid of North Korea's continuing quest for nuclear weapons': analyst

Guests: Bruce Klingner, Katy Oh, Melissa Hanham

SOUNDCLIP

[Through translator] The North Korean regime must realize that it will gain nothing by focusing on developing its nuclear weapons, all the while ignoring the plight of the North Korean people. If North Korea continues such provocative actions, it will receive further sanctions from the international community and will eventually walk down the path of self-destruction.

AMT: Well, the earth had hardly stopped trembling before the fierce condemnation started rolling in from around the world, including the words you just heard from South Korea's deputy national security adviser. North Korea's nuclear test late last week—its strongest to date—was timed to coincide with the 68th anniversary of the country's founding. It triggered a 5.3 magnitude earthquake. Friday, the UN Security Council denounced that test. It said it would begin work on a resolution. The United States, Britain and France have all called for new UN sanctions. Yesterday, a US special envoy for North Korea met with officials in Japan and said Washington may take unilateral action. This is the fifth such test by the rogue Communist state and as it refuses to back away from a nuclear program, despite progressively tougher sanctions, today we're asking just how worried the world should be about North Korea's nuclear threat. Bruce Klingner is a senior research fellow for the Northeast Asia at the US Heritage Foundation. He joins us from Washington, DC. Katy Oh is a North Korea expert and researcher at the Institute for Defense Analysis. She is in Springfield, Virginia. And Melissa Hanham is a senior research associate at the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. She joins us from Marina, California. Hello everyone. Welcome.

MANY VOICES: Thank you for having me. Hi. Good morning.

AMT: Bruce Klingner, let's begin with you. How afraid do you think we should be of this latest nuclear test by North Korea?

BRUCE KLINGNER: We should continue to be very afraid of North Korea's continuing quest for nuclear weapons and refining and augmenting the nuclear arsenal. I believe they already have a nuclear warhead for their Nodong medium-range ballistic missile so that South Korea and Japan are already under a nuclear threat. And they're continuing to develop nuclear warheads for their missiles that could hit US bases in Guam and the United States. We're not as sure about the capabilities for those missiles, but if they don't have them today, then it's tomorrow, next week, next month or next year. So we certainly know what paths they’re on.

AMT: Melissa Hanham, how much can we actually verify about which weapons North Korea has?

MELISSA HANHAM: We can learn quite a bit about their missile systems because those are objects that we can sort of measure and analyze through video and still images. The nuclear warhead itself, it's very hard to analyze because even though we can take measurements of a kind of silver orb that Kim Jong-un is standing next to in some photographs, we can't tell what they're actually exploding at Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site.

AMT: And so how do they really prove to the rest of the world that they do have a nuclear weapon? How do you know? How do they prove it?

MELISSA HANHAM: Well, so, I think you know we can definitely say that they are causing explosions that are by a nuclear device. That's for sure. We've definitely had several tests now, where we've just detected not only the seismic but the radionuclide data. But what we're not 100 per cent sure about is whether it is a compact weapon that could fit on the tip of a missile. But like Bruce said, I don't think that we should wait and sort of twiddle our thumbs. I think we should prepare ourselves for a time when they are able to do this now.

AMT: Katy Oh, sanctions have been placed on North Korea over the years. Sanctions upon sanctions, there are now calls for more. Is that the right approach?

KATY OH: Sanction is an important measure and it could be effectively used, but the sanctions on North Korea is not working mainly because of China. In Pyongyang, there was a Pyongyang expo very recently and then there were some you know observers from Japan and Europe. And then they took the photos of these goods. These are all sanctioned items. They all come from China. So China behaves or pretends that they are a member of the sanctioned team as a UN member, but they don't control and they actually keep doing it. So without the China pitching in, I think sanction is basically a half joke.

AMT: And so what can you do about that?

KATY OH: Well, China is trying to be a great nation by 2050 and they try to be diplomatic leader and they try to be side by side with the United States as G2, although they've refused the idea. So I think you should have all these list and items and procured goods from China to be displayed, either YouTube or whatever SNS, or former channels like [unintelligible] or CNN, everybody just put the item and make a— shame sometimes that doesn’t work because China has a thick skin but nonetheless, we should have a clear understanding what China is violating, as well as Russia and some of the European private companies as well. We need a really serious investigative team to go through these thorough check and then to put out the list and then ask the world and the global community to see the reality.

AMT: Bruce Klingner, can you speak to that? First of all, the idea of shaming those who are breaking the sanctions.

BRUCE KLINGER: Right. Well, actually, to go a little bit into the sanctions, when people hear sanctions, they think trade sanctions and because the US doesn't trade with North Korea, they feel that there's nothing to be done. And it's only recently that we've really begun implementing serious, what's called targeted financial measures. The vast majority of all international financial transactions are denominated in US dollars because that's the centrality of the dollar to the financial system. That means those must go through a US Treasury Department regulated bank in the United States. I mean if you shift money from Paris to London, it actually goes through New York. And we know from the UN that the majority of North Korean transactions are still denominated in dollars. So that gives the US actually tremendous leverage to freeze and seize assets in the US that are being used by North Korea, impose a fine—we imposed a nine billion-dollar fine on a French bank for money laundering for Iran—and also precluding them from access to the US financial system, which is kind of the kiss of death for a financial institution. So it was used effectively during the Bush administration until after just a short period of time we rescinded the action and returned the money to North Korea. So people often have a mischaracterization of what sanctions are. And then of course, the diplomacy, the decades-long efforts of aid international agreements to denuclearize also failed in getting them to give up the weapons. But in the meantime, the targeted financial measures, they're serving other objectives of enforcing US law and UN resolutions, imposing a penalty on those that violate those laws and resolutions, putting in place measures to make it more difficult for North Korea to import and export the prohibited items for their programs.

AMT: And would that affect what's going on with China?

BRUCE KLINGNER: Well, what we can do with China is impose what's called secondary sanctions. It's sort of someone assisting someone in their crime. And to date, the Obama administration has not sanctioned a single Chinese entity for these secondary sanctions. So that's a way we can actually you know push China to do things. And what's interesting is back in that mid-2000 exercise against North Korea, the Bank of China cut off interaction with North Korea even though the Chinese government wanted them to continue to interact with North Korea, because the Bank of China had to do that for all those reasons I laid out.

AMT: Melissa Hanham, is there a role for diplomacy at this point?

MELISSA HANHAM: Well, I think the window for diplomacy is much smaller than it was back even a few years ago. But I think that it's still important to present some carrots along with all the sticks. North Korea is conducting these tests for a political reason. It's to serve some kind of need and if that need is security or stability of the Kim regime or financial or whatnot, it means that there are certain levers that the diplomatic community can use to find out what the underlying need is and work on that. It's a very tough call for the community though because the Kim regime is just deplorable. Its human rights record, all of it is just very hard to stomach. But that being said, I think that we had in the past some opportunities and you know the more I look back on what it was like back then, in 1994 for example, no one felt wonderful about negotiating with the Kim regime back then. But when I look at what it's like today, I kind of long for those days, to be honest. I think the bottom line is that the longer we allow them to continue to build up their missile and nuclear and chem and bio capabilities, the more we're going to regret not acting.

AMT: And Melissa Hanham, what is North Korea's intent with these weapons?

MELISSA HANHAM: Well, I think they've learned that because of their location geopolitically, they can have an outsized impact. So they have borders with South Korea, China and Russia and they're just a little ways away from Japan. So because they're located in this particularly rich environment around some of the biggest economies with some of the highest stakes, they're able to be a kind of destabilizing force that gets their will imposed even though they themselves have very little to contribute diplomatically or in any other way. So I think for a while they've played this kind of asymmetric game where they can push the envelope and get away with it because no one wants to disrupt business as usual in that area.

AMT: And Bruce Klingner, how much does China control North Korea?

BRUCE KLINGNER: Well, I agree with Katy, in that you know North Korea doesn't control North Korea, but they are certainly part of the problem rather than part of the solution. You know after the January nuclear test, there were some encouraging signs. The Chinese government was critical of North Korea. Chinese banks and businesses started to pull back from interacting with North Korea. But if you look back on all the previous nuclear tests, we saw the exact same pattern. So China will enforce the sanctions for about one to four months. That's the government. And unless we show the Chinese banks and businesses that there's a penalty or a cost to interacting with North Korea by say, imposing secondary sanctions on the Chinese entities or the Chinese violators, then they'll just go back to business as usual. So you know we can actually induce the—if not the government, the Chinese companies and organizations and individuals—from pulling back from engaging with North Korea.

AMT: And Katy Oh, if North Korea becomes a nuclear state with it a very potent delivery system, what would that mean—what does it mean for its own citizens?

KATY OH: [Chuckles] It's further continuing misery, maybe perpetuation of the current regime. They've been [unintelligible] hostages of one of the awfulest regimes under just one family. And Kim is basically pushing this for the both domestic and external relationships. Domestically, I am in charge, I am your leader and I created this, the WMD. And respect me and I'm here forever. So I think this is really tough for not the one to three million elite who have invested in the Kim regime, but other than that, all other people about 22 million, they are just continuing on with buglike lives. So implications for them is really perpetuation of the misery and in that sense, I think we've got to be really serious about how we handle this nuclear rising rogue regime. Not just a bad regime, but basically threatening and killing and kidnapping and sabotaging their own people and putting them in fear in the worse than Stalin era. So I think we have to fundamentally think about, other than sanctions in wars and all these limited options, the strategic use of the information going into the country and let the people finally recognize that they have to rise up.

AMT: What do we know about the level of dissent among North Korean people now, Katy?

KATY OH: Well, I used David Slinn, the first UK ambassador, now who is residing in Ottawa, and I met him a year ago. He’s a fine gentleman. He knew a lot of people in diplomatic circles. If you remember the instance of the defector from the UK mission, the [unintelligible] man Mr. Thae, David and Thae have been very good friends. And David Slinn returned to UK and he met him. And he wrote the beautiful interview with a Korean daily newspaper, basically Thae was changed man. Under Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong Il, there was a certain level of tolerance of accepting the regime but under this Kim, who is killing left and right more than 130 people and using the fear and punishment as the rule to control, it finally dawned on him. I have to leave. He didn't tell David, but soon after he is now arriving, he arrived in South Korea. So the sentiment of the elite is an important issue, not the starving people. Starving people go to China and all over to survive. But the elite technocrats, they finally my god, can I live like this? And I think it's an important symbol that we have to take.

AMT: Bruce Klingner?

BRUCE KLINGNER: Yeah, I agree. We should be using all the instruments of national power and when I'm advocating continued or expanded use of sanctions, you know it's one lane in the road. There's not a either or, of diplomacy or sanctions. It's you're supposed to use all the instruments in a comprehensive strategy. So as Melissa said, we should continue to have the door open for negotiations. What we're trying to do with the targeted financial measures is not only constrain or at least slow the development of their nuclear and missile programs, but it's trying to alter their calculus. Seeing that there is a real pain for going on the path they are, so that if they were to return to—in a meaningful way—to the negotiations, there are benefits that they could get if they were to begin to fulfill their many previous commitments to denuclearize. So we have to have the you know the door open. Another thing is, as Katy’s pointing out, we want to try to get information in and out of North Korea using any overt and covert means. Have the people realize that the regime is lying to them about you know their conditions in the outside world. That can have you know a corrosive long-term effect. And in the meantime, we also need to make sure we have suitable defenses for ourselves and our allies. And sort of the immediate issue right now is the US wanting to deploy a missile defense system called THAAD, which in South Korea, which is better than anything South Korea has or will have for several decades. So it's a way of better defending the US forces there, who are committed to defending Korea as well as better defending the South Korean people. So China has objected to it, saying it constrains their missile forces and their ability to launch attacks on the US and others. But you know if you do the technical assessment, the radar and the interceptors of this THAAD system, in no way it constrains the Chinese system. So China's sort of typically being more critical of US and South Korean responses to North Korean provocations than they are being critical of the North Korean provocations and violations themselves.

AMT: Melissa Hanham, could the North Korean nuclear program push its neighbours—specifically Japan, South Korea—to acquire their own nuclear weapons?

MELISSA HANHAM: Well, there's been—you know there's been talk about this by political pundits for a while now. I personally don't agree with that feeling. It's easy when you're polling or you're running for office to say that having US nuclear weapons returned to South Korea or indeed making your own would be a benefit. But I think the polling on that is pretty soft. You know when it comes down to you know where you're going to keep them, no one wants them in their backyard, no one wants to pay for them and no one wants to become a nuclear pariah just like North Korea. So I don't actually believe in this sort of domino effect.

AMT: Hmm. And Katy Oh, what impact is this having on the region? What are you watching for now?

KATY OH: Of this current nuclear—

AMT: Yeah. Yeah. And what do you want to do?

KATY OH: Since Kim Jong-un came to power including missile testing and nuke testing, speed, regularity and frequency really doubled and tripled and he's pushing very hard. So in a sense that, as Bruce said, that may be who knows, a month, two months, two years. But nonetheless, they are pushing, like a very, very steady and gradual development. So I think even though Melissa’s point is right and I agree with her, I think South Korean entire debate on nuke, now some of the serious and senior elite who are well-educated, urbane, sophisticated, understanding of proliferation issue, they are writing books and seminars and workshops going on. And recent polling says basically South Korea, not like Japan, facing very menacing and aggressive China and it is deplorable North Korea is pushing nuclear weaponization. South Korea's recent polls showed that 68 per cent of the South Korean elite basically saying that we should have a nuclear weapon.

AMT: Okay.

KATY OH: That’s an important point.

AMT: Okay. Well, we have to leave it there but that's a really important point to close on. Thank you all of you for this.

BRUCE KLINGNER: Thank you for having us.

AMT: That is Bruce Klingner, senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation. Katy Oh, researcher at the Institute for Defense Analysis. Melissa Hanham, senior research associate at the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Back To Top »

Birth of a Nation and Nate Parker: Can art and artist be separated?

Guests: Eli Glasner, Morgan Jenkins, David Dennis Jr.

AMT: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa is ground zero in the migrant crisis, the goal for so many overloaded boats perilously crossing the Mediterranean. When we see it on the news, it's usually for a few seconds, maybe a few minutes. In half an hour, I'll be joined by a filmmaker who spent more than a year on the island documenting the life of its migrants, its citizens and the legions of those there to help. But first, separating the artist from the art.

SOUNDCLIP

Brethren, I pray you sing a new song.

[Sound: Drumming]

Sing praise in the assembly of the righteous. Let the saints be joyful in glory. Praise the lord.

[Many voices chanting]

Praise the lord. Sing to him a new song.

[Sound: Whistles]

AMT: Well, from the trailer of The Birth of a Nation, easily one of the most anticipated movies this year and one of the most buzzed about titles at this year's Toronto International Film Festival. The film delves into an important chapter of American history. Nat Turner and a little known, or a little talked about now, an 1831 slave rebellion in Virginia. Part of what is generating so much buzz about this film is the personal history of Nate Parker, the black writer, director and star of The Birth of a Nation. Soon after the film sold for a record sum at January’s Sundance Film Festival, details began to emerge about a troubled chapter in Mr. Parker's past. As a college student 17 years ago, he and his roommate Jean Celestin—who also co-wrote the film—were accused of sexually assaulting a young woman. Mr. Parker was acquitted in the subsequent trial. Mr. Celestin was convicted and the conviction was overturned on appeal. In the last few months, it became public that the young woman involved took her own life in 2012. And so as the excitement over the new film has been growing, that incident from 17 years ago was looming large for many and overshadowing what would have been the talk of a must-see film. Eli Glasner is a national arts reporter and film critic for CBC News. He's with me in our Toronto studio. Hi.

ELI GLASNER: Hello.

AMT: So, it had its international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival Friday night. I was there as well.

ELI GLASNER: What stood out for me in the film is just the presence of Nate Parker. I think he's magnetic. I mean you can't take your eyes off him. He has that thing, that kind of “it” quality. He reminded me of a young Jamie Foxx. So you know, I was certainly—all the controversy aside—interested to see what he's like on screen and the film that he'd made. And I do find it is powerful in certain aspects, although rather strident in its message, but I think he has great potential as an artist.

AMT: And just let's go back to Sundance for a moment. In January, what expectations were there for the film when it screened at that?

ELI GLASNER: I don't think there were any expectations. I mean this is a guy who really hasn't been on the radar. He was in a movie with Denzel Washington earlier than that. So that was what was so amazing, is that he was kind of heralded as the next great thing. All of a sudden, almost out of nowhere to much of us in the industry, you have this actor, producer and writer and director who has created a you know fully formed movie about black slave rebellion. And so you know it seems there's a timeliness of this movie with the conversation around Oscar So White, so this is a vital and visceral film and I think that was part of the narrative, the excitement of who was this guy? Did you see that film? Then of course, the bidding war—literally as the audience were on their feet at the Sundance Film Festival, there was a bidding war backstage with Sony and Netflix and eventually Fox Searchlight, battling over the rights for this film—which was bought for $17.5 million US—which is a record.

AMT: Hmm. And how is Nate Parker addressing the controversy as details of his past began to emerge? It was really the suicide in 2012 that began to emerge

ELI GLASNER: It was a suicide but in that original article that really broke the story open, which was from Deadline.com, I think part of the problem originally was the tone that he struck and there was a little bit of umbrage there. You know him saying I don't want to have my life under a microscope and the focus very much on him and the future of this film and then of course, details are revealed, this woman committed suicide. And I would say up until Toronto, there was kind of an evolution in their strategy and that he did seem increasingly more and more contrite in talking about women and talking about he has much to learn. And that's what was surprising in that, when he came to Toronto, I think a lot of us in the media expected to hear more of that.

AMT: Because he was talking about the whole language of consent, he understands us at another level, he understands his power as a man in a way that he didn't back you know when he was younger. But then you had time with him Saturday. What happened?

ELI GLASNER: That's right. So Friday night screening, no protests, goes off wildly, I think the cast was overjoyed, long standing ovation here in Toronto at the premiere. And then Saturday morning, it's time to meet the press. And so this is a film junket. You go into a room and I was given five minutes. And I sit down to talk with Nate Parker and my first question basically asks him if he thinks the controversy is fair. And he dodges the question and takes it right back, pivoting to the positive, talking about the reception last night and just how happy he was at how it was received. And so I take another route and I talked to him about if he's frustrated that the controversy is devaluing the film. Again, back to the positive. Third attempt, I talk about Fox Searchlight and their strategy and how perhaps that's changed and that's when someone behind me—most likely a publicist—steps in and says okay Eli, we’re done. Now, the way it works here in this dark room but there's someone sitting in front of you basically showing you with their fingers how much time you have left. So I was pretty certain I had at least a couple of minutes left, at least another question left. That was not five minutes. Five minutes is pretty long for a film junket.

AMT: Yeah. And you’ve got the counter running on the camera too so you can—

ELI GLASNER: Exactly. And so—but you’re not—it’s not your camera, it’s not your tapes. You're sitting in their domain essentially, the film studio. And so, they ended the interview and we walked out and they cut it short. And we were of course—when we got back to the CBC—able to look at the tape and see well, you know we got to about maybe three minutes into that interview so we certainly had time left on the clock, but it was obvious that the studio or the publicist that was there in the room, they were uncomfortable with the line of questioning. And so, the interview ended.

AMT: You did speak with Gabrielle Union who plays one of the slaves in the film and she has spoken about her own sexual assaults a decades ago. Listen to what she said when you asked her about this controversy.

SOUNDCLIP

I know that he is learning as a grown man and I hope that I have drilled it—and other people have drilled it—about toxic masculinity, misogyny, sexual violence, rape culture because it's not like he's disappearing, you know? What happens from now on is really up to him but I want to make sure that I leave him in a different place than how I found him. And I hope with this movement, we can touch a lot more people who might have had some archaic ideas about consent as well as racial inequality.

AMT: Eli Glasner, what do you make of her remarks?

ELI GLASNER: I'm amazed they brought her on the junket, to be honest. I think they were very powerful words that she said. And just speaking openly and honestly and talking about her experiences as a sexual assault victim and kind of dovetailing the message of the film into her experience and talking about this as an opportunity and she's sitting there next to one of the actors. And everybody else on that junket—I talked to many of the actors—were very much on message, talking about supporting Nate Parker or talking about that we need to differentiate between the art and the artist. And there's Gabrielle Union and she's saying what she said, powerfully, eloquently. And it's interesting that—I think they knew what she was going to say because she did write that very striking editorial in the LA Times. We talked to a PR expert and actually she was saying there's a chance they may have actually brought Gabrielle Union on the junket to kind of distract from Nate Parker's message and I guess perhaps an alternative voice.

AMT: But some of the other interviews are going south as well.

ELI GLASNER: Yeah. I mean for example, I talked to Armie Hammer and you know very direct question, you know do you think it's fair, this controversy? And he just looks at me straight in the eye: “Eli, you know we're just really happy with the film.” And that was really indicative. Later the day, as the interviews continued and I think the uncomfortable questions continued, we actually heard from Entertainment Tonight Canada who called us to ask us if we received our media cards because they didn't get all of their cards. They also asked Armie Hammer—an actor who’s in this film—an uncomfortable question. They asked him essentially if he would have worked with Nate Parker if he had known what he knows now. And at that point, Armie Hammer said something along the lines of “Do I have to keep answering these questions?” Almost as an aside to his publicist or someone in the room. They weren't happy with that and they decided not to give ET Canada their cards. And so you almost get the impression you know they came to the Toronto International Film Festival thinking they could ride this out or thinking they could stay on that message track. And yet as the day progressed and they saw that these questions aren't going away, if you don't address the controversy that everybody's been talking about for weeks, the media is going to keep asking those questions and it seems like their strategy kind of went south.

AMT: Huh. Eli Glasner, thanks for coming in.

ELI GLASNER: My pleasure.

AMT: Eli Glasner, national arts reporter and film critic for CBC News. He's with me in our Toronto studio. You are listening to The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM and online at www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Well, the combination of Nate Parker's own troubled past coupled with an almost ignored past that The Birth of a Nation is bringing to the big screen has made the question of whether to see the film complicated. I want to get to that conversation now with two people. Morgan Jerkins is a writer and editor who wrote about this for The Atlantic magazine. She's in our New York studio. David Dennis Jr. is an adjunct journalism professor at Morehouse, a historically black college in Atlanta. He's in Mableton, Georgia. Hello to both of you.

MORGAN JERKINS: Hello.

DAVID DENNIS JR.: Hi. Thanks for having me.

AMT: Morgan Jerkins, what do you think of what you just heard about the question and answer that went on this weekend?

MORGAN JENKINS: I mean that was so much insight. I wish you could see my face right now. My eyes were wide and I was just shaking my head like wow. But none of that really surprised me. I think after the news reports came out, I think also after my article came out, this whole controversy around the alleged rape, I think Fox Searchlight and the whole PR team had to prep him with many different types of questions that were going to be asked and how he can pivot off of that. So yeah, I mean it was expected but to hear Eli speak so much about it and give so much detail, it’s just like man, you know? It's really eye opening.

AMT: David Dennis Jr., what are you thinking?

DAVID DENNIS JR.: Same thing. I was really—I was actually sort of surprised. He kind of seemed to—Nate Parker seemed to—turn a corner when he did a Ebony interview a couple of weeks ago and seemed to really put on a image that he sort of was understood and was ready to address what happened, addressed his role and now it seems like they are seemed woefully unprepared for these questions that you know they're going to have to deal with for the next few months.

AMT: And so Morgan, when you heard about Nate Parker being accused and ultimately acquitted in this incident of sexual assault that happened 17 years ago and then the later controversy, what were you thinking about the film and about all of this coming out?

MORGAN JENKINS: Well, initially like many other people, I was very excited for the film. I heard such great reviews about it after it premiered at Sundance and I believe it won the Grand Jury Prize. And I was happy because it was a narrative that had no white saviour. It was clearly a rebellion. And so I thought okay, great. A film about black liberation, that's perfect timing with the Oscars So White movement, as well as the Black Lives Matter movement that’s spanned across the world now. And when I found out that he was accused of rape and even though he was acquitted, I was like oh my gosh. I was so disappointed because I was like I know this is going to come up and it's going to bring up a lot of charged conversations, both in mainstream as well as in the black community. And so it was definitely a moment where I just had to sort of take a deep breath, roll up my sleeves and just get prepared, especially because I'm a writer as well.

AMT: Right. So suddenly you're faced with all these complexities that you have to confront.

MORGAN JENKINS: Right. And also, it arrived in a wave, I think. Because we were already having these sort of conversations around toxic masculinity, male entitlement, women's agency, already when we had to deal with the whole Bill Cosby fiasco. We were having these conversations. And then once that sort of diminished a bit, then it came back around and now it's through Nate Parker whose career is on the rise. So it's like man, once again. It's just going to keep happening, I believe. Unfortunately.

AMT: David Dennis Jr., there are those who say this is a distraction from what should be a very important film, a discussion around an important film and an often overlooked part of American history.

DAVID DENNIS JR.: Yeah. So there is the, I guess “conspiracy theory.” I mean there is a long history of black men being accused of rape and the original The Birth of a Nation film, you know kind of perpetuates that stereotype so there's a belief that okay, this is all too convenient. This came out to distract us from the movie. But I mean that's sort of—that's very diminishing to women and the things that women have to go through. But the fact is when you look at the case, there is something seriously—that happened here that we have to address. And it's not convenient for us to talk about, it's not pleasant for us to talk about, but that's how you break through and get rid of some of this toxic masculinity. You have to deal with it. We dealt with it with Cosby, with the issue oh, this is just happening because he is a wealthy black man. No, we really have to discuss like what's going on.

AMT: And you know in line with that and how do you talk about this and separate the art from the artist, I've got a clip here that I'd like you to hear. This is Cameron Bailey, the artistic director at the Toronto International Film Festival, talking about this.

SOUNDCLIP

I do think that we should be able to assess the art separately from the artist. But I think the artist does often inform the art. What I have been gratified to read is that in the subsequent articles and interviews with Nate Parker, he is clearly trying to educate himself. He has been talking to a lot of people who worked on his film. He said in one of the interviews in Ebony that some of the women who were part of Birth of a Nation were themselves victims of sexual assault and he has had to learn to listen, to understand what that means to them to be conflicted that way—to work on a film that they're proud of but then to also have that experience and to read what they are reading about him.

AMT: Well, what do you think of what he says, Morgan Jerkins?

MORGAN JERKINS: I think I would have to respectfully disagree to an extent. And I’ll elaborate on that. I think this film in particular is talking about black liberation. And if you look at through many different films, that's always promoted through black men and so yes, there’s a question of whether or not we can separate the art from the artist but when it comes to something about rape, when it talks about—when we're talking about the subjugation of women's bodies and yet this man is promoting a film that's talking about liberation of all black people, it's like well, how do you distinguish it? How do you extricate you know the art from the artist? And I know that he said as well as—how did he say it—the artist informs the art. And I think for a lot of women, especially a lot of black women with whom I've had this conversation, they've said they can't. They can't sort of divorce the two. And I feel like when I’ve talked to a lot of black men, they have said oh, I can. I'm still going to go see the film. I think what he did, the history is very shady, but I can at least not think about it for two hours or two and a half hours.

AMT: Hmm. Will you see the film, Morgan?

MORGAN JENKINS: I'm not sure. Because in the beginning when the news reports came out, I was like you know what, I don't think I can do this. I don't know if I can watch this film and know all that I know. But then when he had that Ebony interview, I realized that my position—you know my formerly staunch position on not seeing the film—it started to shake a bit. Because he came out and said you know when I was 19 years old, I didn't know much about sex and at 35, I'm still learning. And I'm like wow, this man has multiple children, he's married, he's been having sex for almost two decades, if not more. And he's saying that he still does not know all there is to know about sex and it's like man, that just opened up—that just widened the conversation even more.

AMT: Hmm. And it could have made it like—you’re talking about a teachable moment—

MORGAN JENKINS: A teachable moment—

AMT: See him grow in his own evolution and then other people can learn from what he's going through.

MORGAN JENKINS: I mean I didn't really see it as a teachable moment. I just thought of it as he's at a place where he had to say something and he just came from a place of I'm not sure. I'm not sure, I didn't know before, I still don't know now. And I feel like if it was a teachable moment, it just was exposing a lot.

AMT: Okay. I know what you’re saying, yeah. Now David, you were going to have your class watch this. Are you second-guessing that? What are you doing?

DAVID DENNIS JR.: Yeah. So when I made my syllabus over the summer, I said mark down the date, we're going to go see The Birth of a Nation as a class, we're going to write reviews of it. And then literally the weekend before class started was when all this stuff started to come out. And I presented it to my class. I said you know this is what's happening. They were all aware of it. I said do you guys still want to go see this movie? And we discussed it and we talked about the different aspects. And they feel sort of that you know as journalists, as blooming journalists, that it’s sort of their responsibility to see the movie and to sort of engage in the conversation in what the movie brings. But you know it sort of let me off the hook because I don't know—I'm sort of in the same position. I don't know if I would go see it on my own but the class is very—you know they want to engage in what's happening and you know they kind of feel like we have to watch the movie to sort of be a part of that discussion.

AMT: It wasn't the discussion you thought you would be having though.

DAVID DENNIS JR.: No, no, no. Not at all. I thought we were just going to go see a movie, write reflections on it, which we still do but now it has a whole another layer to it because it’s all a totally black class, there are black women in there, black men and so we now have more things to discuss. You know they're interested in what the toll this takes on black women. You know black women, whenever there's a liberation movement anywhere really, it seems like there’s a black woman that’s either victimized, ignored, left behind and they just kind of have to suck it up. And so it's kind of time to not have to do that anymore and this movie is kind of that—you know kind of brings that to light.

AMT: Now, David Dennis, we have seen controversies with directors in the past—Woody Allen, Roman Polanski—and issues of sexual assault. And then they go on to make movies and there is a controversy around them. How different is this controversy around Nate Parker from that? In your view.

DAVID DENNIS JR.: Well—

AMT: Or is it?

DAVID DENNIS JR.: I mean it’s sort of different a little bit in the fact that what's interesting is that black women are the ones who are sort of leading the charge and saying we need to hold this person accountable and we need to really discuss the role that black women play in these movements and how black women continue to be victimized and put to the side. And the question is if this were—you know in the case of—if Woody Allen had done this to a black woman or something like that, would white women, would the “white feminist movement” rush to the side of black women the same way? We look at what happened with Leslie Jones in the way that she was victimized on Twitter and her cast mates and you know a lot of feminists were silent about that. But you know black women are usually held just like—it is their job to hold people accountable. And so that's sort of one of the major differences I kind of see.

AMT: Morgan, what do you think of that?

MORGAN JENKINS: I think he's absolutely right. I'm here like just nodding my head like yes, it's true. I think when we talk about rape a lot of times and we talk about women's agency and just male entitlement, it often becomes a very divided issue. So when it's black women, a lot of times we're talking about this when it's in regards to Nate Parker and The Birth of a Nation, it's almost as if we have to choose between our blackness or our womanhood because if we talk about this alleged rape and what it demonstrates about toxic masculinity as Gabrielle Union put it, a lot of black men will say well, no, this is this is a conspiracy, you're trying to tear the black man down. And then that just further silences black women. And so it puts us in a bind because it’s like okay, so I have to advocate for blackness and black liberation which will translate into black men and then I have to put myself into a corner and I can't question and not—I could question this person's actions and how it relates to this film.

AMT: So what do you want us to think about, Morgan Jerkins, as this film rolls out across North America? Because you raise these really important points.

MORGAN JERKINS: I think we need to think about who gets to tell a story about liberation in regards to marginalized community and whether or not we can divorce the art from the artist when it comes to this particular subject. And if we can, how and who gets to do that and why should we?

AMT: And David Dennis Jr., what do you think we should think about?

DAVID DENNIS JR.: I think really the story here is how many times in history do we have stories like this in which black women—where are the stories in which black women are liberated in the same rate that everybody else is? Whether we talk women's suffrage movement, we talk civil rights movement, we talk you know any sort of movement—even the stories in the Nate Parker narrative itself—where are the stories in which black women and black men are elevated at the same rate? And if we can't find those stories, then how do we sort of create an environment where that happens?

AMT: Right. How do you nurture the people who can tell those stories and get them attention? There's a lot to think about with all of this. Thank you both of you for making us think.

MORGAN JENKINS: Thank you so much.

DAVID DENNIS JR.: Thank you.

AMT: That's Morgan Jerkins, writer and editor who wrote about this for The Atlantic magazine. She's in New York. David Dennis Jr. is an adjunct journalism professor at Morehouse College. He joined us from Mableton, Georgia. Let us know what you think about this. If you have seen this film or you are about to see this film, if you are struggling with whether you should and what you think about the ongoing controversy and the swirling stuff around it, e-mail us. We are @thecurrentcbc on Twitter. Go to us through the site www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Stay with us.

[Music: Sting]

Back To Top »

'Death is not easy to film': Documentary's unflinching look into Mediterranean migrant crisis

Guests: Gianfranco Rosi

AMT: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Please, faster. Your position, please. Your position.

VOICE 2: 32.1.

VOICE 1: And then? Under, under.

VOICE 2: Okay. 80.52. We have small children. Please can you help us? We are sinking.

VOICE 1: Madam, please calm down because we will send rescue. But you need to calm down. Okay. So save your battery. I will call you back, okay?

AMT: Well, desperate voices and pleas from a woman on a sinking boat in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe. The Italian Coast Guard receives SOS calls such as that daily, from people on overloaded vessels making the treacherous crossing from North Africa. Some 100 kilometres off the coast of Africa lies the Italian island of Lampedusa. It's a tiny slice of land. It's got a population of just over 6,000 and it's been a beacon for sailors since ancient times. And today, it is ground zero for migrants crossing the Mediterranean. Thousands have perished trying to reach it. And again this weekend, the waters were full of people in distress. The Italian Coast Guard says it counted 17 overcrowded rubber dinghies and a fishing boat just this weekend. Fuocoammare, or Fire at Sea, is a new documentary that just screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. It bears witness to the lives of the people who live on Lampedusa full time, as well as the migrants passing through and those trying to make a difference. Acclaimed Italian film maker Gianfranco Rosi is the director of Fire at Sea and he joins me in Toronto. Hello.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Good morning. Thank you.

AMT: It's so good to have you here to talk about the work that you did. A lot of journalists go to Lampedusa for a few days and they leave. You spent a whole year there.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: I spent more than a year. I spent one and a half years shooting and editing and then two months before, tried to understand if I could and I wanted to make that film, which you know I was asked to go to Lampedusa and somehow try to portray, try to produce in a different way, to change the point of view which Lampedusa was always told, you know it's always been related to big drama to tragedy to death to the migrants. And somehow nobody ever told this to a story of the island, including also the people of the island that lives there. And so somehow I wanted to switch the point of view and making—also representing the world of Lampedusa and the identity of this little tiny island in the middle of Mediterranean.

AMT: And you chronicle the everyday people who live there, including a 12-year-old boy. Tell us about him.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Well, Samuele, it's a fantastic little kid. He was 12 when I met him and when I was filming with him, 11 and a half when I met him. And I knew since the beginning, I wanted to somehow include a story, a point of view of a little kid in my work, in my film, because somehow was giving me certain kind of freedom not to go so deep on the migrant crisis in Lampedusa. So having this to a point of view of the kids would give me much more freedom. And then when I met him, I fall immediately in love with him, this little boy, very, very tiny boy with the mind of an adult, very dichotomy, how do you say—

AMT: Mhm. Yes. Yes.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: There was a dichotomy between his appearance and his way of acting on a daily life and I fall completely in love with him. You know like I said I started following his life and that will happen. I followed him for a long period of time, on this really daily basis, little movement of life you know that everybody has. But you know once you put the camera, there are things that you get a different dimension and get the different perspective. And what I realized with him when I was shooting was like he was always bringing me somewhere else. You know it was like he had almost an element of narrative, a very subtle interior world that he was creating, you know. So it was always a little metaphor for things that are happening outside the island of Lampedusa. And this was something at its core as I said where I was shooting.

AMT: And it is that dichotomy which really speaks to the island itself, that you have people living their regular lives and then you have this very surreal existence of others there with what's happening with migrants. But Samuele, he is just a kid, huh? Like he’s got a slingshot, he slurps his spaghetti, he's a regular kid in a lot of ways.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: He’s a regular kid. He hates to become a sailor. He hates the sea. He suffer of seasickness. [chuckles] So he has all the elements to be you know not in the right environment for him. So it's like—the feeling at the end is like a coming of age you know, it’s like the struggle of a kid which somehow represent the struggle of us towards the world that we don't know, right? The unknown. So it's like these two elements of narrative that, in a subtle way, they interweave. But what was interesting when I was in Lampedusa—this is very important to say—I witness a big change since I was there for the first time, the big change of how the migrant arriving to the islands. Because since the two years, the state, the Italian state, introduced [unintelligible]. So basically, the border of Lampedusa was moved in the middle of the sea. So all the boats that are arriving from Africa, from Libya, are somehow intercepted in the middle of the sea and then people are rescued and then brought into the island and then from the island, they’re brought into the centre, and then from the centre into Italy. So since the last two, three years, there is no more interaction between the island and the migrants like it used to be before in the past because Lampedusa has been there since 20 years. Four hundred thousand people pass Lampedusa because as you say it was a beacon of freedom.

AMT: Right. So they would almost wash ashore and now they're taken.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: They’re taken into the island.

AMT: That’s right.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Somehow it got more institutionalized, the whole process. And somehow that’s why I want also to accentuate in the separation between the two wars. People ask me why there is no interaction between the island and the migrants—because it’s not.

AMT: And that’s the point too, right?

GIANFRANCO ROSI: This is also a metaphor of what’s somehow happening in Europe. These two worlds that they barely touch and they never somehow interact. And in between these two worlds is a beautiful figure in my film, which is the doctor, Dr. Bartolo.

AMT: Well, I was just going to ask you about him.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Sorry for anticipating.

AMT: No, that’s okay. No, go right ahead because he treats the locals and he also deals with the migrants, dead and alive. He’s the only doctor?

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Well, he’s the doctor, doctor that come from Palermo on rotation. But he’s the main doctor of the island. He’s the head of the little hospital that is there. And he’s the one that since 20 years, visited over 400,000 migrants that have passed from the island. He's the one somehow pushed me to make this film when I met him for the first time you know. Because as I say, I was very doubt—I had too many doubts on how to make this film. I thought it was to be a very, very complicated journey—which in a way it was—but somehow he gave me the push to go back to Lampedusa and make this film.

AMT: Well, I have a clip of him. And in this, he's showing you some photographs of the migrants he has treated—

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Yes. Photographs that he collected over 20 years.

AMT: That’s right. And I should say some of what he says is quite upsetting and graphic, even in the language, but it's really important to hear this man. Let's listen to him now.

SOUNDCLIP

[Through translator] There was 840 on this boat. They were in bad shape, especially in the hold. They paid eight hundred dollars. They were in third class. When I got them ashore, there was no end to them. No end. They'd been at sea for seven days. They were dehydrated, malnourished, exhausted. This boy is covered in burns. He was very young, fourteen at the most. We see so many of these—chemical burns from the fuel. Many of my colleagues say you've seen so many, you're used to it. It's not true. How can you get used to seeing dead children, pregnant women, women who have given birth on sinking boats, umbilical cords attached? You put them in the bags, coffins. You have to take samples. You cut off a finger or a rib. Then you have to cut an ear off of a child. Even after death, another affront. All this leaves you so angry. It leaves you with an emptiness in your gut, a hole. These are the nightmares I relive often. Often.

AMT: He's very affected by all that he’s seen, huh? How does he process at all? He sees so much.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Well, he has an incredible strength, you know? He's a man that sleeps every three hours a day and between the duty that he has to do as being the doctor of the island, and whenever there is an arrival—which is almost every day—of migrants mostly at night, he has to be there in order to visit each of them at least to see that you know there's no particularly emergency or things. And most of the time, there's also emergency which also he has to take care of. Sometimes there are some dead bodies arriving straight to Lampedusa and he has to do all the—

AMT: Why does he have to cut off the fingers?

GIANFRANCO ROSI: For the DNA samples.

AMT: Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Because they want to—if someone's claiming for the things that they want to have a DNA and you know to do all the pathological routine things you know, so they have to take a little piece of a body in order to make all the analysis. I don't know in detail all that, but it’s a ritual, that’s another ritual that kind of things that have to be done.

AMT: When he became a doctor in Lampedusa, that’s not the work he thought he would be doing.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: No. It wasn’t. It started 20 years ago. But what is amazing is like Lampedusa was always there on the frontline and nobody ever talked about Lampedusa. People of Lampedusa, they always embraced people arriving from the sea. And only one year ago, or one and a half year ago, Europe suddenly—once they had one million people walking up the Balkan and coming towards Germany and Austria—and Europe, for the first time, realized that oops, there is people moving you know. Let's build up a wall and barrier. And this is terrible what Europe is doing right now. As I say, Lampedusa was left alone for 20 years. Now they say well, that's their problem you know. We don't want to talk about it. And when I asked Dr. Bartolo the generosity of the people in Lampedusa and how you embrace for so many years in the silence, never complain, what made you so special you know, as an island, to accept all this without ever complaining? And he said well, we are people of sea. We are fishermen and fishermen always accept things that come from the sea. So we have maybe to learn ourselves to become like you know fishermen and to accept things that come from the sea and not think that it is the unknown that fears us.

AMT: You also include a very touching scene where he's trying to explain an ultrasound to a woman from one of the boats.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: The woman was raped, unfortunately. She was raped because that's another terrible thing that happened in Libya. There’s like women raped.

AMT: Let's listen to a little more of Dr. Bartolo. This is the scene with the woman who is pregnant with twins.

SOUNDCLIP

DR. BARTOLO: [Speaking Italian]

AMT: So he's trying to—he’s wearing a lot of hats there—trying to work with all of those people.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Oh, it’s a moment of joy to discover the life of two newborn or going to be born. But also we discovered later this woman didn't have anyone with her, didn’t have a husband and she somehow was raped on her journey to Libya and then to Lampedusa. And so there's a lot of this tragedy you know and nobody is doing anything on that. That's why I say—since I finished the film, there were like 6,000 more people death in six months in the Mediterranean. And it's a terrible situation that Europe is not doing absolutely anything for this.

AMT: Given the time you spent there and the time you spent on this film, I hear your frustration, I hear— like you've been up close with it just chronicling, shooting—because you do your own shooting too, do you not?

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Yeah. I’m a one man crew, yeah.

AMT: So how have you thought differently about this or how have you been more galvanized in your way of thinking because of what you’ve seen with your own filming on Lampedusa?

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Yeah, of course, in the film I did include all the things I saw and I witnessed in that year. I saw death so many times. I saw small children’s bodies in the sea. I saw really harsh things. [inhales deeply] And when I encountered death [exhales] one day in the middle of the sea and we found out that under this boat there were 50 people that died, basically they died with the fumes of the engine. So they were kind of in a chamber gas, you know it was horrible, this. And I decided that moment, first I didn’t have any more strength to keep making the film and this moment that I had to start editing and to see what I had up to this point. And I wanted the world to see this tragedy and I decided to include this piece of film, this moment of tragedy in my film, which is a very hard decision you know. To show death, is not easy to film death, you know? But I wanted to do that. So the whole film was somehow build in order to arrive to that moment and to live from that moment and somehow having a moment of mourning from that scene. I was always hoping that you know the audience will watch the film, will never judge that moment as voyeuristic or pornographic or excessive, you know? Because as I say, showing death is a very, very thin line there. How do you do that?

AMT: You want people to sit up and understand.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: It’s like being in the Second World War and being in the chamber gas and not filming because it’s too harsh. It is harsh. It’s not easy to film but has to be shown. That was my decision.

AMT: And again, it is that harshness against the juxtaposition of life on the island.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: The figure of Samuele allowed all this to be accepted, you know somehow, because this incredible grace on his daily life and this harshness on the other side that somehow gives to the [unintelligible] different perspective you know? Juxtaposition, as you say.

AMT: And Dr. Bartolo, of course, is treating Samuele as well, in fact, for anxiety. Let’s listen. We’ve got one more clip of him.

SOUNDCLIP

[Through translator] I feel like I have trouble breathing. I have allergies to dust mites. Sometimes I can't breathe but not always. I can’t get the air in.

AMT: I don’t know what to think. It is that—sort of the banal with the tragic.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: This is a very beautiful scene in the film. I love this scene very, very much. When I was filming, I couldn’t believe it was happening. It was funny and dramatic at the same time. But also there, the anxiety of Samuele is our own anxiety, you know? So Samuele would always bring an inner state of mood, somehow which is our mood. The unknown. The anxiety of Samuele becomes really our moment of an anxiety towards the unknown because that’s what Samuele—being such a sensitive little kid, he has this incredible way of transferring this private moment into public moment.

AMT: And we can think about how we also react to one thing versus the other thing. We talk about the people who live there. What struck you most about the people who arrived on those shores?

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Well, it struck you when they had the first—and there is a moment in the film that I showed that—where there is that eye contact you know. Because we forget very often that these are people and not numbers and we are just used to number. Three hundred die, 1,000 die, 800 die, 600 die, 150 and become number. There's a scene in the film with the radio that gives the news of a tragedy and the Maria, Auntie Maria, she's there doing her daily work and she hears this radio and she says oh, poor people. And that's what we do every day. Poor people, poor people. But then we keep doing our own things, you know?

AMT: Mhm. She’s in the kitchen cutting the fish.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Yeah, exactly. And that’s exactly what happen in daily life, you know? You just hear now the radio, something happens, oh, and you keep going on in your own life. So this is what it is, realizing that these numbers are people and this is a big—it seems very banal but it's a very strong things you know. And so for me, when I had this first encounter with the faces and the eyes, it was very, very strong, you know? Inside of me, there are faces that I will never forget. Also in the moment they had their picture taken for identification, that's a moment of extreme vulnerability. There are someone’s taking picture with a number and when there is the body search of all of the police or when there is a you know a moment of aggregation, these are whole moment that I tried to leave. And it was very hard, and I think somehow there's definitely imbalance between how I portrayed the island, how I portrayed the migrants because it was very hard to spend time with them. Because they arrived in Lampedusa, they spend two or three days and then left the island immediately to go to the mainland. So it was difficult to have a very strong relationship with them. It happened only once when I was able to film the Nigerian group that they had were coming from the tragedy again where people died. And I was in the sea with the coast guard. So I had the chance of meeting them. I spent three days with them. And then at night, there was this prayer that they did, with the chant and with the song, the gospel and the rap gospel, that I think that moment somehow was synthesized like thousands of interview I could have done, you know? Because it's such a strong moment. It tells the whole story.

SOUNDCLIP

[Group singing]

VOICE 1: This is my testimony. We could no longer stay in Nigeria. Many was dying. Most were bombed. We were bombed and we flee from Nigeria. We ran through the desert. We went Sahara Desert and many died. In Sahara Desert, many were dying. Raping and killing many people and we could not stay.

AMT: And you have another scene. This is some of them playing soccer in the dark at the detention centre. Let’s listen.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Soccer whistle]

REFEREE: [Alternate language]

[Crowd chanting and singing]

AMT: Gianfranco Rosi, it’s again that juxtaposition. They’ve been through so much and then there’s this scene of the—

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Yeah, and this is a moment of joy and what does strike me about that scene is that there are countries—Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, Libya, Syria—all countries at war, you know? Most of them are—Somalia and Sudan, they are like in war. Eritrea and Sudan are in war among themselves. And so this moment with football is a moment of aggregation [unintelligible]. And there was a moment of happiness. These people, again, a few days ago they were on this—day before, they were on the sea. They were like—they didn't know if their life, they would have die or live. And then suddenly they arrive in this little island and they are alive and there’s hope there. So that moment is like to me, very short, is again a representation of a state of mood that somehow is linked to the island of Lampedusa which as I say, when I arrived there, there's hope and then somehow we destroyed that hope.

AMT: I find it so important that you help us see individuals because we don't—we do hear numbers. And we need to understand, that's like one person going through the terror of will I even make it when the person next to me does not. And why’d you name it what you named it?

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Because first, Fuocoammare is a song that I heard since I arrived in the island. It’s a beautiful, very light song that plays everywhere. Like when there is like a festive or when there is [unintelligible] fisherman, it’s always this very, very light song. Very, very light song. And then I liked it and it came into my mind. And people whistling that song. And then one day I ask what was this song and then somehow I discovered that this song was related to a big tragedy. Like during the war, there was this ship on fire and the island was like full of fire. So it was a tragic moment somehow told with a very incredible lightness, you know. The story of this ship that sink in front of the island and it was on fire and the island was all on fire. This film is very tragic but somehow there's always light moment in the film.

AMT: Well, you're trying to give us—again, you're trying to juxtapose the real life and you’re letting us see it. You’re not preaching at us.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Yeah. I leave a lot of space to the audience. Sometime people get oh, I’m so frustrated. I would like to know more about where these people come from. But now we live in the time that we have so much information. I have the phone in front of me. And in just three seconds, I am able to find all kinds of information I want through this phone. So for me now with filmmaking and documentary, I like to close the door more than opening and leave a space of interpretation or leave the audience with a wonder, leave the audience with—so the difference that there is between a poem and an essay—a poem leaves space of interpretation, a few words between two words is so many way of interpret that meaning. And if you read it an essay, you have just go through and you have boom, boom, boom, boom. You have a point. So I like to go more in the other way you know and create a space of wonder. Also from the audience point of view, sometimes it can be frustrating that, but I rather leave that space of frustration.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Can I tell you I'm grateful for it because we see so many things that people just talk over. And it's important for us to absorb it and—

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Yeah. And to have a moment of silence. To find also that is important is the silence between the notes. I wanted to break the separation between documentary and fiction you know. For me, it’s a film, you know? I don't think I'm doing an documentary or for me, it's a narrative. I have to tell story. So for me from the beginning, it was always a way of breaking that separation between documentary and a feature film. I remember when I was a student at NYU, it was like late. It was 11 o’clock. It was a time where still you rented movies and VHS probably was, or still a DVD or whatever. And there was a mother with a daughter, she was maybe 14, 15. And their shop was closing down, it was late. And the mother said listen, if you don’t make up your mind in the next minute, I’m going to rent a documentary. [chuckles]

AMT: Like it was a threat.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: This boring thing. Documentaries don’t have to be boring.

AMT: Not at all.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: So they have to be also like you know, watching a film.

AMT: And how do you process all that you saw in this film? What stays with you? I know you're talking about it and you're taking it and you're letting us see it. But at the same time, what do you think about? What keeps you awake sometimes at night about what you saw with this film, what you witnessed?

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Well, you know I witnessed death in this film. I encountered death at the border of Europe and it was terrible. This changed completely my perspective on things. And I want the film to be—I know that filmmaking cannot change the world you know and art cannot change the world, a book cannot change the world, a song cannot change the world. But I hope that with this film, I can create certain awareness, you know? Because for me, it is a cry of help, this film. I cannot accept the fact that people die in the process of reaching freedom and we know it and nobody is doing anything about that, you know. And what happening around Europe—you look at now in Germany, in Austria, in Hungaria, in Poland, in France—the politics is turning [unintelligible] and people are raising wall and creating the separation and we know in history that wall did never lasted. So this politics is very frightening for me because it's creating this enormous separation between us and them. And this is going to have a huge consequence in the future.

AMT: Well, your film speaks volumes and it helps us understand. Thank you for your work.

GIANFRANCO ROSI: Thank you so much.

AMT: That is Gianfranco Rosi. His new documentary is called Fire at Sea. We're leaving you today with the Italian song, Fuocoammare, Fire at Sea, which Gianfranco Rosi uses in his film. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

[Music: “Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea)”]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

September 12, 2016 full episode transcript

More Stories Like This