The Island President, an award-winning documentary about President Mohamed Nasheed’s environmental campaign at the Copenhagen Climate Summit, has been screened in Aspen Colorado ahead of its upcoming US release.
Several pre-release screenings were held in Male’ last year, to generally positive local reactions. Overseas, the film has been compared to a humanising version of Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, which catapulted climate change to the top of the public agenda on its release.
“An Inconvenient Truth put a lot of inconvenient, and disturbing, facts and predictions in front of viewers. But the film, which earned the Academy Award for best documentary, didn’t put much of a human face on the environmental catastrophe of which it warned,” wrote Stewart Oksenhorn for the Aspen Times. “Featuring the wooden Al Gore alongside the PowerPoint presentation of statistics and forecasts didn’t do much to humanise the issue.”
“The Maldives, a nation of low-lying islands in the Indian Ocean, could be well considered the canary in the coal mine regarding rising temperatures and waters. The Maldives is also a tiny country, and combines the lack of influence with Nasheed’s small physique and sing-songy voice, and he comes off not as a bully but as an unlikely, and easy-to-like, voice in the environmental movement.
“’He’s real,’ said Director Jon Shenk. I’n a funny way, he’s an everyday guy who says everyday things. He’s not an untouchable figure like Gandhi. He’s willing to compromise.'”
“‘He plays like he has nothing to lose,’” said Shenk. “’He’s been pushed to the edge with torture. I think of him as this guy who wakes up every day and says, ‘Well, here’s another day I wasn’t supposed to have — what am I going to do with it?’”
“'[The film] is as much about leadership and political issues,’” he said. “It’s not uncommon for people to watch ‘The Island President’ and say, ‘Wow, I wish I had a president like that.’ You dream about this guy as your next leader.”
The pre-release premiere of the Island President opened last night in Dharubaarge to packed audiences.
Tickets that had originally been sold for Rf 80 (US$5) were selling for Rf 150 (US$10) on the black market yesterday afternoon. Such was the demand that organisers squeezed an extra 50 chairs into the auditorium at the last minute for on-the-door sales.
The film details the lead up to President Mohamed Nasheed’s election and the introduction of multi-party democracy. This is by no means an objective film: former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom is treated harshly by the filmmakers and portrayed as thoroughly creepy, as in one scene where he stares unblinking at the camera while soldiers goose step past and a tinny patriotic song plays in the background.
Neither is it propaganda – rare archival footage of brutal military crackdowns and photos of the battered body of Evan Naseem lead up to one of the film’s strongest moments: time-lapse footage of the tin shed in which Nasheed was incarcerated in solitary confinement for 18 months.
“You walk in your mind,” he explains. “Even if you can only take 4-5 steps, you walk it over and over again.”
Nasheed’s seriousness on the subjects of democracy and climate change is given contrast as the filmmakers home in on endearing personal touches – the President’s assistant struggling to do up his tie, Nasheed’s request that the Muleaage staff fetch his mother’s spicy fish recipe, his bitter asides expressing frustration with diplomatic bureaucracy, his phone call home to tell his mother he had secured a deal in Copenhagen, and photos from the days he sported an afro.
The film portrays him as a very human and accessible leader, qualities which are sure to make the film a success among the liberal university student demographic when it is released to cinemas in the US in February.
Foreign audiences with more interest in global climate politics than in the Maldives will find much to take from the film. Nasheed serves as a fascinating behind-the-scenes ticket to the Copenhagen Summit and the diplomatic wrangling of 192 world leaders. In one scene he bullies the President of Grenada into rewriting a document on the climate change ambitions of small island states, in another he disappears behind a palm tree to speak to the Australian Prime Minister over the phone – the filmmakers follow.
Descriptions of The Island President as ‘the West Wing of climate change’ are apt – in one scene, a Chinese diplomat is filmed asking a protocol officer to identify the Maldivian President. “Your government should know this,” she snaps.
The impact of the film locally will be hard to predict. Whatever the politics of the viewer, there is a great deal for Maldivians to be proud about in The Island President. In one scene, Nasheed and Environment Minister Mohamed Aslam argue bitterly about whether to compromise on 1.5 degrees in order to at least secure an adaptation deal.
“People listen to you. We don’t want to look like we’ve been bought,” Aslam insists. Nasheed’s explosive reaction quickly dispels any doubt that his is a calculated attempt to milk foreign aid – he is clearly convinced the threat is existential, but is forced to come to terms with compromising his global ambitions for the sake of his country.
The first screening last night was predictably brimming with Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) supporters, but the second session was a mixed – and younger – crowd. With 40 percent of the population aged between 15-24 and many disenfranchised by the ‘he said, she said’ nature of Maldivian politics, the film could well have political ramifications in 2013 if it proves popular with this set.
Eleanor Johnstone:
“The Island President” sets a mood of gravity and hope. Using footage and interviews original and historic, television broadcasts, and moments intimate as well as highly public, the film offers a cinematic collage of President Nasheed’s pursuit of democracy and in putting, and keeping, the Maldives on the map.
A combined sense of crisis and action dominates the film, particularly on the environmental issue. But threads of hope are strung throughout, most notably in the Maldivian government’s negotiating style. Regularly confronted with the baby-step methods of many foreign powers, Nasheed’s strident style may unnerve his own delegation but it presents him as a man of action, keen to keep his word.
Everyone knows someone who disdains politics as a sport of chatter and show. Nasheed is one of them. At Copenhagen he regularly vents of the slow-moving discussions and hesitant delegations to his own group of ministers. The Island President might leave Maldivians in fear for their homeland. But with a leader who speaks his mind without reservation, the country has more than many world powers can boast.
Extra showings of The Island President will be held at Athena Cinema on Friday
and Saturday, following unprecedented demand.
Friday 25 November at Athena Cinema: 14:30; 17:30; 20:30; 23:30.
Saturday 26 November at Athena Cinema: 17:30; 20:00.
Tickets can be bought from Athena Cinema between 16:30 – 23:00. Planned screenings for Dharubaarge on Thursday will be moved to Athena Cinema to meet demand. Ticket hotline: 9797356.
Tickets are on sale for pre-release screenings of The Island President, a documentary feature film following President Mohamed Nasheed to the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit.
Screenings in the Maldives will be subtitled in Dhivehi for the local audience. Director Jon Shenk will attend the premiere.
The film, which has a 9/10 rating on IMDB (Internet Movie Database) and received the People’s Choice Award for Best Documentary at the Toronto International Film Festival, will be released in cinemas across the US in February 2012.
The Island President has been warmly received by film critics overseas both for behind-the-scenes look at international climate politics, and Nasheed’s candour in his dealings with foreign heads of state.
Reelfilms criticised the film for its 101 minute length and “dry, overtly political final half hour”, but praised director Jon Shenk’s opening of the film “with a whirlwind look at Nasheed’s journey from political prisoner to public official.”
“It’s ultimately Nasheed himself who compensates for the movie’s uneven atmosphere, as the remarkably even-tempered politician comes off as a tremendously likeable and engaging figure who seems universally beloved by his people,” wrote reviewer David Nusair, following the film’s airing in Toronto.
Toronto weekly entertainment publication NOW described the film as “a fascinating look at an extraordinary personality”, with Shenk given “impressive access to this humble head of state”.
“Unfortunately, the director undermines the urgency of his material with poor choices including flashy visuals and a soundtrack featuring Radiohead that feels completely out of place,” wrote Radheyan Simonpillai.
The film was funded by several American charitable foundations, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Ford Foundation, John D. and The Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Atlantic Philanthropies and the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund.
It has also appeared at the Telluride Film Festival, a documentary film festival in New York, and will be be aired at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam this week before travelling to the Maldives.
After the Maldives, the film will travel to Goa, to be screened at the International Film Festival of India.
The Island President premieres at Dharubaaruge on Wednesday night at 8:30pm Tickets are on sale at Raalhugandu point and Athena Cinema from 4:30pm to 11:00pm.
It will also be shown at 11:30pm on Wednesday, and at 8:30pm and 11:30pm on Thursday. The film will also be screened at Athena Cinema at 8:30pm and 11:30pm on Thursday. Tickets for the Athena showings must be bought from Athena Cinema.
An Oscar and Emmy-winning film production company based in San Franscisco, Actual Films, has produced a 90 minute documentary charting the Maldives’ efforts to raise awareness of climate change in the lead up to the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Summit.
The Maldivian government was approached by Actual Films in early 2009 seeking behind-the-scenes access to President Mohamed Nasheed and cabinet ministers.
After two years, US$1.5 million, 140 hours of footage and a soundtrack by Radiohead, the company has produced a 90 minute documentary ‘The Island President’, to be released in cinemas later this year.
The film was entirely funded by the US Ford Foundation, American Corporation for Public Broadcasting, MacArthur Foundation, Atlantic Foundation and the Sundance Institute.
The Maldivian government insists it had no editorial input into the film, which was left completely to Actual Films and Emmy-winning Director Jon Shenk.
“It felt a bit weird for the first two hours but after that the ministers seemed to forget the cameras were there,” said a senior government source.
“It is unprecedented for a documentary maker to be given round-the-clock access to a head of state, probably for very good reason.”
The source, who was shown a pre-release version of the film, described it as “somewhat like a real-life episode of the West Wing”; giving a unique perspective on the high-level machinations of world powers that would make it of interest to politics buffs as well as environmental activists, “and it will probably do wonders for tourism.”
“Everyone who’s seen it so far says it’s made them proud to be Maldivian,” the source said, adding that it was the first time a film about the Maldives was to be shown at international film festivals.
The film will be released in US cinemas later this year and aired in the Maldives in early 2012.
(0)Dislikes
(0)