Human Rights Watch Traveling Film Festival - Interview with filmmakers of Afghanistan Year 1380

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Interview with Alberto Vendemmiati,
Fabrizio Lazzaretti, and Giuseppe Petitto

What is your motivation as a filmmaker? Why did you choose documentary in this case?

Some stories ought to be told. The media often neglect them or just witness them with a journalistic approach that can't sense their inner humanity. Documentary films, and filmmakers pay more attention to the personal perspective of stories and characters. We prefer documentaries closer to feature films rather than TV journalism pieces. We prefer those focusing on emotions rather than informations.

What generally inspires your interest?

There isn't a precise rule. Marginality, pain, discomfort are subjects of great interest for being often censored by the media. They're often treated in a way that betrays their nature. Those are subjects that really matter, that really deserve to be treated. They often become personal and professional challenges. Sometimes they lead to an improvement of the reality you're dealing with, as it happened with our former film "Jung: war in the land of the Mujaheddin". In those cases, your choice makes even more sense.

What inspired you to make "Afghanistan Year 1380"?

It is a sort of second act of a former film started in February 1999, and completed in spring 2000. Seven months spent in Afghanistan in three different journeys shooting "Jung: war in the land of the Mujaheddin".

The film tells the story of the construction of a surgical center for civilian war victims by the NGO Emergency. Started as a report of the situation in Afghanistan, we realized very soon that the Hospital construction had to be the thin red line to be followed, though until September 1999 nobody really believed it could happen except us and the Emergency crew.

Through that story, we tried to take a close look to the real conditions in which the Afghan people were living. A people devastated by twenty years of war, and completely neglected by the international community. The two projects, the film and the hospital joined very soon. After the first three months of shoots in February to April 1999, we edited a first version of JUNG, broadcast in Italy on June 17 1999. After that broadcast, Italian viewers donated about 200.000 US $ for the hospital. It was built in the town of Anabah in December 1999. Then we filmed the realization of the hospital on the background of the rising conflict, and after September 11th we had no choice but going back shooting.

What were your goals in making "Afghanistan Year 1380"? And what would you like to see happen with it?

The main goal was that of narrating the war from the victims' point of view. The media too often deal with wars without focusing on their real consequences. They focus on the political-military aspects neglecting social and humanitarian issues. The price imposed by any wars is too high, and always paid by the same: innocent and unprotected civilians. That's unacceptable. We hope our films can contribute giving this statement a louder voice.

What are you currently working on or what would you like to be working on?

We're developing some feature film projects, along with documentaries. Fabrizio Lazzaretti as director and Giuseppe Petitto as producer and editor have just completed "A danger to society". It is a documentary about the criminal mental hospital of Aversa near Naples. In fact, this is the last Italian concentration camp, where prisoners-patients are treated as 'almost human' beings. Fabrizio Lazzaretti is also working on "A fight for justice", a portrait of actual Colombia through the trial for the murder of a young Italian man.

Giuseppe Petitto has also just completed "Sanpeet - poison". It is a portrait of a six years old boxer living in North-Eastern Thailand. Sanpeet fights on improvised rings in the forests between Thailand and Laos, surrounded by people betting on the fights. The lower the weight of a boxer, the higher the stakes; this makes Sanpeet, with his sixteen kilos, an interesting opponent. Giuseppe Petitto is also working on "Rooms Are Never Finished". Kashmiri people's grief, struggle, and expectations in these days of excalating violence seen trough the magnify lens of a great Kashmiri-American poet. He's also working on "Shelter Europe", a survey in Southern Italy, the open doors of Europe for the thousands of immigrants that reach the shores of Calabria, Sicily and Puglia every summer and autumn. This is preliminary to a feature film project on the same issue. Alberto Vendemmiati is working on "Sex of the soul". It is a portrait of Nicole, a 42 years old man who decided to change sex within the next two years. Nicole is living in Venice and works in a Carnival costumes shop. She's facing the change in the hostile environment of catholic and conservative Italy, and trying to fight her mother's decision not to see her anymore if the change happens. The film is following her during the next two years, inquiring about the inner reasons for her decision and the way she will carry on her project. Alberto is also collecting information for a feature film dealing with the new wave of irregular immigrants, those deprived of any rights in Europe and particularly in Italy.

"Afghanistan Year 1380" is the second film about Emergency and Afghanistan that you have made. What is it like to film in a developing country like Afghanistan? What are some of the difficulties you have experienced filming in Afghanistan? What is it like to film in a war zone? How do you hold your emotions back and film suffering like this?

We shot for about ten months in Afghanistan, and we had no real experiences of war torn shooting. It was interesting considering the way we reacted in such dangerous conditions, as a group and as individuals. Time is the key when you're dealing with such projects. You need time to get people's and authorities' trust. You need to learn how to optimize your resources: Finding clean gasoline for a small power generator for battery charging, getting your body used to local health diseases, getting used to be living in a place where you can be blown away any step you take.

This implies also some obliged choices such as keeping the crew as small and motivated as possible. There were only us shooting, and we've also co-produced the first part in order to keep the budget as low as possible and gain the possibility to shoot some more time. Going to the front-line is always a dangerous experience. You get there conscious of the risks you're taking, and with a bit of madness that pushes you do things you wouldn't normally even think of. You know it's part of your challenge. You obviously need luck, and fixers you can trust.

We were very affected by some events, for example in the second half of the film, when the young child dies. It was a terrible event, obviously. We worried that we were concentrating too much on suffering and sensationalizing the war. We were also hit by another feeling - the realisation that we were becoming immune to it all, getting used to all the suffering. The fact that we were also building a hospital helped us stop ourselves becoming overwhelmed by the suffering we encountered. We were doing something very concrete. That helped us a lot. We knew we could change a little bit of the reality, a little bit of the situation. We were doing more than observing.

When you find yourself in front of such incredible violation of any basic human right, you realize that the only way for having other people in the West feel a bit of that tragedy is putting it on film. And it seemed necessary to us to do it in a very gripping way, using the rules and the suggestions of the feature filmmaking. That helped a lot in getting a bigger audience.