The Wake

Learning that 39.5 million people in the world have HIV or AIDS activates one part of your mind, but watching just one sufferer take a cocktail of medications and then retire to the couch with a lemonade will probably engage you completely. It may be a fault of humanity that a statistic alone does little for our sympathies, but by presenting issues of cultural indifference and isolation through stories and faces, art is created. The Walker Art Center’s Global Lens 2007 program presents films from the mountains of Chile to the markets of Mozambique, intending to open our minds not just to the issues, but also to the fact that there is a breadth of culture outside of the Hollywoodization of the planet.

Dam Street, a film from China, tells the story of a high school girl’s gradual estrangement from her baby. When she becomes pregnant, she is still a teenager writing in her diary and dreaming of becoming an opera singer. By the time her child, who has been given away, is ten, she has lost her innocent, loopy braids as well as her aspiration to sing traditional music. Instead, she sings brittle pop tunes in a small, folding chair-filled club, harassed by drunken men and their angry wives. The story itself sounds flashy and intense, but the cinematography leads the viewers in another direction. The scenery is rainy and gray, the camera angle far away and cautious, viewers witnessing the characters from inside dark dioramas. A pervading sense of isolation is created, resonating with the way characters intermingle: always seeing one another through holes in the walls or constrained social interactions.

In an opposite manner, O Jarim do Outro Homem, a film from Mozambique, tells of women being forced to sleep with AIDS-infected teachers in order to pass biology class, but has the easy-breezy pacing of Saved By the Bell. The music is cheerful and there is almost as much focus on teenage romances as there is on the obvious issues at hand: disease, lack of awareness and sexism. The way that the film mediates between the grave nature of the situation and the tranquil spirit of the country helps viewers to see Mozambique for not just its problems, but also for its personality.

The series of Global Shorts, seven 15-minute films shown one after the other, is a particularly poignant view of world cinema. Broad Day, from India, recounts a true story of a girl who was raped on a train in Mumbai. The film is almost song-like, as the intensity increases with the chugging of the tracks and the progressively louder weeping of the victim. The film is also subtle, showing only her hair and feet at first, instead concentrating on the bystanders’ facial expressions, forcing the viewer to understand that indifference is the real perpetuator of the crime. En Ausencia, from Argentina, narrates a story from the perspective of a woman sitting on the toilet, undressing as she waits for a pregnancy test. As she lights up a cigarette, the viewer is shown reflections of her past, when she let her hair down and cuddled in bed with her husband, a time before her family was violently exiled from their home.

The Global Lens 2007 project begins on Wednesday the 11th of April, and goes until the 22nd. Everyone from the prospective backpacker to the polyglot has a new perspective to gain.