Show Focusing on Uganda's tango of beauty and brutality Nelson Pressley Special to The Washington Post Filmmaker Sean Fine bristles at the suggestion that his strikingly handsome new documentary War Dance is too pretty to tell tella a gritty story r Im sick hearing of of hearing when something looks beautiful it cant can't be real Fine offers broaching the subject himself and tired of seeing documentaries that look bad War Dance which Fine shot and directed co-directed with his wife Andrea Nix Fine certainly looks great even as it deals movingly with the lives of displaced kids in northern Uganda ganda A low-grade low war has been simmering there for 20 years with children often being conscripted by a rebel group known as the Lords Lord's Resistance Army This was news to the Fines with significant international experience who me met t while working at National Geographic and in 2003 3 married and formed their r own film company Th The e issue struck a chord with h them in part because the they y had just had their first child they now have two both i napping in the next room a athe as s the Fines talk in their Chev Chevy y Chase Md home What they learned was that the refugee camp is populated b by y roughly people ye e who have been displaced displace d de by the conflict Like themore the themore themore e more more conspicuously activist t Darfur Now WarDan War Dan Dance e finds finds' an upbeat t way of looking at a grim seemingly intractable African dilemma in this s case by watching o camp school kids prepare oe e to compete in the country's country s prestigious annual music musi c and dance competition Not that regional Ugandan Uganda n politics are the focus of the e film which opens Friday and which is mostly tol told d through three children i ithe in inthe inthe n the refugee camp The kids Nancy Rosand Roseand Rose Ros Roseand e and Dominic often Dominic often relate e their stories directly to th the e camera creating yet another r aesthetic hot-button hot issue e for the film We wanted t to o push the envelope o of f documentaries Sean says In doing so the filmmakers filmmaker s 5 received the documentary ry t directing award at th the e 2 Sundance Film Festival 1 l earlier this year They als also o received complaints fro from m i critics that the films film's visual al 1 achievement distracted from m i its serious source material A V few days after the Fines s sat at t for this interview Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times War Var Dance has the polish of ofa a richly hued impeccably composed illustration You wonder why the filmmakers felt obliged to shoehorn so many pretty sunsets into the film which appears to be admiring itself in a mirror Its a gift to be there says Sean who filmed in Uganda while Andrea contributed from home They put the film together in their basement studio But we have a talent and we damn well better put allour all allour our craft into it Some of the films film's technique was a product of plain dumb lut lu luck k Sean had planned on interviewing the kids the traditional way conversationally with the camera observing neutrally fro from the side But the kids were shy and seemed to relax only when they could tell their detailed often harrowing stories of terror tenor and murder directly into the camera The floodgates opened says Sean in the camp had been through similar things no one asked them before People dont don't ask you what happened or how do yo you feel And they just kept talking and talking He argued on the phone about it with his wife who supported the approach even as he worried that it would look contrived But Andrea said When a kid is looking at you you cant can't turn away In the film Dominic whose skill on a rudimentary wooden xylophone is I I I 4 J r Y Photo courtesy of Think film The documentary Dance War pairs artistic effects with ith the solemn stories stones of war scarred children in northern Uganda mesmerizing tells an especially wrenching tale of being conscripted by rebels as a child soldier and the atrocities he was forced to commit The emotional flash point comes when Nancy is taken to her fathers father's grave with her mother triggering a long meltdown from the heretofore compo composed ed 14 year That the cinematographer says was his genuine angel devil moment I know when to put the camera down and we know when not to push it Sean says but that day gave him pause His wife says that when he called home that night that was the most rattled Ive I've ever heard Sean on a film We talked a lot about it whether to use the footage but at atthe atthe atthe the end of the day they are such survivors If you dont don't know they grieve this way do you send a message that they get used to it Naturally by now the filmmakers have opinions on a political situation that they say the American press has not been on top of and that they describe as mystifying yet fixable War Dance mostly financed by Shine Global a nonprofit childrens children's interest group is doing its bit to help by donating a portion of the proceeds to nongovernmental organizations working for kids in the region But they believe highlighting those politics in the movie would have played into the usual dynamic rendering the problem and abstract while reinforcing notions that so many Africans live in perpetual conflict and ineffable squalor Not so says the film in image after image And any concerns concerns that the picture is almost soothingly lovely Andrea labels as patronizing The homeland isan is isan isan an Eden Sean adds But they cant can't access the way they want to live And its it's not as if the kids necessarily dream of fleeing or being adopted into the mythical idyllic West Sean says Some people ask us Can I adopt those kids Im I'm sure they want to leave i It And actually they dontI dont I asked Dominic Do you want to travel around the world Do you think you'd want to just leave and go goto goto goto to the United States He said J J want to visit but I want to come back This ismy is ismy ismy my home This is my land I Ilove Ilove love this place |