Election Section

Berkeley filmmaker Tom Weidlinger wanted to make a documentary about international aid workers fostering self-sufficiency rather than dependency. In 2003, Weidlinger visited Action Against Hunger amid stifling heat, scorpions and malaria-carrying mosquit oes in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. He decided he had come to the right place and found the right people. 

The result is Heart of the Congo, which will be shown at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco on Friday at 8 p.m.  

After the screening, Adam Ho chschild, author of the best-selling King Leopold’s Ghost about the Congo and the newly released Bury the Chains about Britiain’s abolitionist movement, will moderate a discussion with Weidlinger and Sophie Fournier, Action Against Hunger’s U.S. executive director. 

Then, Congolese singer-songwriter Samba Ngo, whose music is heard on the film’s soundtrack, will perform. Tickets are $10 for the film, or $35 for the whole event, including wine and dessert. All proceeds go to Action Against Hunger. 

The latest estimate of deaths in Congo from war, disease and starvation is 3.8 million in the past six years. That’s 15 times the number who died in the tsunami disaster, for which AAH is a major participant in relief efforts. That’s also a lot more than died in Rwanda, even in a genocide, or in Darfur, so far. 

As a friend, I was aware of Weidlinger’s mission from the beginning, suggested possible topics (luckily my advice was rejected) and received sometimes grim reports by e-mail while he was well beyond the w orld of telephones. 

My concerns were: Would the day-to-day activities of aid workers in an unattractive section of a faraway country turn into an interesting narrative? Would Tom actually live through the experience? (He got malaria and pneumonia.) Can y ou really complete a documentary by turning the cameras over to your subjects as you are being evacuated to a hospital in South Africa?  

The hour-long film speaks for itself. Western and Congolese aid workers feed children who are heartbreakingly malnour ished, but other children race joyfully through a nearby village. Wells are dug, because clean water is a basic need. Hygiene is taught. Nurses are trained. Fake nurses are discovered. Clinics are set up. Clinics are pillaged. 

In Congo, there are highs a nd lows, and one has to adjust. Sometimes, the colonial master-servant relationship reasserts itself. Tempers flare. Requests are made for gifts that, as a matter of policy, cannot be given. The gulf between those who have nothing and those who have “ever ything” is evident. 

Always, there is the shadow of terrible history—of Leopold’s atrocities and Mobutu’s dictatorship, of civil war and invasion. The current state of affairs is neither peace nor war. 

“The most important thing we can do for the Congoles e is give them courage,” says an aid worker, referring not only to violence. He is talking about facing the future in a harsh land where tomorrow is not guaranteed. The adage “teach a man to fish…’’ is applicable. Action Against Hunger establishes clinic s; Congolese will run them. 

Two expats stand out in their dedication, competence and grace under pressure—the engineer Mariona Miret and the nurse David Doledec. They also help to complete the filming. And once in a while, they even kick back. It is a re minder that they are young and that they are not Mother Teresa.  

Before Heart of the Congo, Weidlinger made documentaries about transition in Czechoslovakia (After the Velvet Revolution), bullying (Boys Will Be Men), collaboration between American and Vi etnamese theater companies (A Dream in Hanoi), and the civil rights movement (The Long Walk Home). I asked him what effect he would like his latest film to have. 

Weidlinger replied, “I hope the film will encourage people to think more critically and more deeply about the issue of humanitarian aid. As a result of the Southeast Asia crisis, there’s a tremendous outpouring of goodwill and concern. I hope that some of that concern can be transformed into a more sustained awareness of the need to respond to h unger and extreme poverty worldwide. 

“Humanitarian aid shouldn’t be just about feeding people. Charity should be linked to change—to helping people toward a self-sufficient future. We need to get away from aid which is just a Band-aid, which is primarily politically motivated and which is too easily derailed by donor countries’ political and strategic interests or, conversely, by corruption among the power structure of the recipient countries.’’  

Berkeley resident Lewis Dolinsky is a former editor and foreign affairs columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. 

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