“Darfur Now” – and Celebrity Activists

There's a scene in Ted Braun's documentary Darfur Now that tells you everything you need to know about the current craze of celebrity activism: George Clooney in his Beijing hotel room, ironing a shirt to wear the next morning to a meeting with Chinese officials to discuss the situation in Darfur, particularly a request for China to divest itself from dealing with companies that do business in Sudan.

George Clooney is commonly referred to, amongst other things, as the world's most eligible bachelor. There are plenty of fun ways for him to spend his spare time. But ironing your own shirts in a Beijing hotel room? Isn't that what middle management business consultants do on the fourth night of a five-night road trip across the American Midwest?

Furthermore, the scene is shot not by an anonymous cameraman, but by Don Cheadle, Clooney's activist partner-in-crime, who was forced to China by the last-minute nature of the trip - Clooney called Cheadle two days prior to ask him to meet with Chinese officials to discuss divestment in Sudan. Because Braun and crew couldn't possibly have assembled the required visas and plane tickets in 48 hours, Cheadle ended up doing double duty, attending meetings and shooting the trip. (Oscar-nominated actors do somehow seem to possess superpowers when it comes to last-minute travel.)

Director Braun, an articulate, earnest 46-year-old Los Angeles resident who grew up in Vermont, chats about Cheadle over a pot of tea at the Park Hyatt in Toronto, where three days earlier he debuted Darfur Now at the Toronto International Film Festival: "He gets a [Director of Photography] credit in this film, incidentally. He's very proud of that. And I'm very proud, too. And some of his interviews from Beijing are incredible!"

Darfur Reality on Film

Darfur Now, Braun's mesmerizing documentary about the conflict, focuses its lens on what is possible rather than miring itself in the coulda, woulda, shoulda of how, and why things sometimes go horribly wrong in places. By exploring the conflict through the stories of six different individuals involved in trying to stop the genocide in Darfur, Braun has created a rather remarkable document: This literally is a film about how to change the world.

There's the war crimes prosecutor (Luis Moreno-Ocampo), who lived through the horror of the Argentine military junta of the 1970s and is determined to bring justice to Sudan; Adam Sterling, a California waiter who spends his tip money printing postcards encouraging Californians to force their state government to divest their state pension fund from companies who do business with Sudan; Pablo Recalde, a World Bank employee whose job it is to get food convoys through to the victims in Darfur; Hejewa Adam, a rebel whose child was killed by the "Janjaweed" (devils on horseback), who arms herself to fight back against them; and Don Cheadle, who, together with George Clooney, lends his celebrity to the aim of raising the public profile of the fight against the genocide in Darfur.

Darfur Now was financed by Warner Independent Pictures and guaranteed a theatrical release (Nov. 2), so Braun was able to film with the cinema in mind, and it shows. Weaving together footage and sound shot and recording with local crews, he creates a seamless chronicle of six people (plus Clooney) in search of a common solution to a horrifying situation. Once in a while, such as when California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signs a bill prohibiting the State of California from investing its pension fund in companies who do business with Sudan, the paths of Adam Sterling and Cheadle and Clooney cross; otherwise, each operates in isolation from the other. And, despite the relative rankings of celebrity, Cheadle receives no special treatment. His is one aspect of a complex story that demands action from many angles.

Or, as director Braun so eloquently puts it, "It's clear to the people I spoke with that the (Sudanese) population needs help from the international community on the level of basic justice. This was a cry I heard repeatedly - and without justice, human beings lose their dignity."

Hejewa Adam in director Ted Braun's documentary: "I will die for Darfur."

Force of Personality

While each of the subjects works towards the same goal, each toils alone - sort of like director Braun, who has fashioned what must surely be the world's first upbeat genocide documentary.

So... Question: Can famous people use their celebrity status to change the world? Whether it's Cheadle, Clooney, Matt Damon and Mia Farrow on Darfur; Steven Spielberg on China; Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and Madonna on African poverty; or Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore on the environment, celebs over the past five years have made a canny commitment: using the magnet that is their celebrity to attract attention to some of the worst places on Earth. And they have been able, bit by bit, to change our perception of those places.

At the very least, they have forced us all to open our eyes and watch, to bear witness to the horror instead of remaining comfortable - and oblivious - in our carefully cultivated First World cocoons.

In 2005, Angelina Jolie secured a meeting with Sierra Leone president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, with several Sierra Leone civil rights groups in attendance (the first time they'd ever been granted an audience with the President), to talk about the impact of that civil war on its citizens.

"I see Angelina as the perfect humanitarian advocate," said Sierra Leone activist Gavin Simpson, in an interview with San Francisco Chronicle reporter Jonathan Curiel. "She brings an immense amount of international focus and attention with her, but she never seeks to use it for her own benefit. On the contrary, she sends the spotlight directly to civic society advocates and makes them more effective and powerful in their own society."

"It was Cathy Schulman (Crash co-producer), who has known Don for years, who suggested that Don's own activism on the Darfur issue might qualify him as a subject in the film," Braun says. "I hadn't originally considered him as one of the characters in the film. As I got to know Don, and understood how his interest grew out of making Hotel Rwanda, how I saw how he approached this with such humility and human curiosity, I thought he, as a person, would be an interesting subject because he, as a human, interested me."

Would any of that have happened if the producer (along with Cheadle) hadn't just produced Crash, Academy Award winner as Best Picture of 2006? Would Warners have been just as enthusiastic about guaranteeing theatrical release to a documentary about a genocide in Western Sudan without the comfort of having a familiar movie star take us there? It's tough to say.

Fame and Focus

What's indisputable, however, is that things are changing there. In Toronto, Clooney gave a press conference where he, by turns, promoted his new film Michael Clayton (a thriller about corporate malfeasance), riffed about celebrities who become famous for doing nothing at all, and delivered updates about the politics of divestment in Darfur.

"It's a tricky time right now," Clooney said. "China's finally stepping up a little bit. You've got the first real movement in two years." Then, addressing the issue of trying to negotiate with the government of Sudan, some members of which have been indicted for war crimes in the Darfur situation, he said, "Listen, I'd rather have people talking, even if you don't like them and they're unsavory. I'd rather have them sitting in a room talking."

Braun - who was part of a Darfur panel at Toronto that included Cheadle and actor Danny Glover as well as Sterling and Ocampo-Moreno - wants to set the record straight for those who question the motivation of celebrities who use their fame to promote activist issues, something which cuts to the heart of the cynicism of the western world on the subject.

"Most people think celebrities get involved with political causes or the Third World in order to draw attention to themselves," he says. "What they don't understand is that they already get plenty of attention. They figure if the cameras are going to follow them everywhere, why not point them towards something that needs it?"

One of the saddest things about wars is they suck up manpower, media attention and political will that could be better spent elsewhere. While Iraq burned, Darfur fell to pieces; since 2003, more than 200,000 have died and 2.5 million have been displaced in a dispute that no one wanted to talk about until movie stars got involved.

It isn't easy to change the world. This movie helps make that happen.

And check out the current issue of Moving Pictures magazine (The Global Issue) on newsstands now for more timely and timeless, and provocative, articles.
Photos © 2007 A/W Documentary, LLC and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Top photo by Lynsey Addario. Homepage image of Don Cheadle by Samantha Casolan.