Tomo Kriznar Co-Director of Darfur War For Water

Darfur war for water is a challenging combination of guerrilla reportage, TV news excerpts, many-sided interviews and unexpected breaks of poetical intimacy. How did you end up with such multi-dimensional material?

TV news on Darfur since 2006 forms a sort of a backbone for the film. Intercut with chronological reports on Slovenian political and humanitarian actions - inspired by the late president Dr. Janez Drnovšekas, there’s footage I filmed in the same period wandering by myself on the battlefields in Darfur, in the refuge camps, among desperate civilians. You can see them for the first time intimately, talking in private. Trusting in us, that we would do something to stop the troubles.

What are the dynamics of the Darfur conflicts?

Darfur is nowadays the theatre of the biggest humanitarian catastrophe of the whole planet. The president of Sudan is accused of three of the biggest crimes against humanity, including genocide. Europe is sending aid and looking away; Americans are only active in supporting Minni Minawi’s Sudan liberation army and therefore pushing the government of Sudan – but only because it’s under suspicion of hosting Osama bin Laden. China is importing 80% of Sudanese oil and in return, together with Russia, supplying the national army with guns. The conflict for water between Darfurian African farmers and Arab nomadic pastoralists started as a direct consequence of climatic changes, and was then exploited by big companies to control the Sudanese oil. The mess is complete and absolute…

What flows underneath?

In TV news reports we see Darfur as a desert covered by refugee camps waiting on aid. But there you have also the huge mountains of Jebel Mara (3100 metres), an extinct volcanic crater filled with water, rivers and waterfalls, green fields and forests - where indigenous African Furs live. Darfur, in Arabic, means in fact “Land of the Furs”. They sit on the biggest water reserve between the Nile and Niger: enormous underground lakes of drinkable water, which can take away the thirst of the whole Sahel. And this is why they are in the biggest trouble. All the other Darfurian tribes, escaping the advance of the Sahara (approx. 7 km per year), are pushing the Furs higher and higher into the mountains. They cannot escape and you cannot go there, because they are surrounded by soldiers. In the mountains of the Fur there are no African Union observers or reporters.

Except you…

I discovered naked tribes in the Nuba Mountains in 1979. I always enjoyed living close to nature, so I left a very good job as product manager in a prominent Slovenian company to travel the world by bicycle and work as a volunteer in refugee camps. In 2003 I was sent as a special envoy of the Slovenian president to the Darfur rebels; instead of returning home after being called back, I advanced illegally across the border, from Chad into the unknown.

You shot your documentary with a handycam and a bunch of mini-DVs; do you think that small & cheap audiovisual equipment could be a helpful weapon in these kinds of disinformation-based conflicts?

I believe in light. I love light in the heart of darkness. Light is picture, footage, anything that carries the crying of innocent people for help. The sacrificed ones are sacrificed by all of us, because we’re not aware of their struggle for life. We don’t know what is happening in our neighbouring continent. Young people who need confirmation could go to Africa to find the challenge with a camera in the hands. Thanks to the contributions from mega concerts in support of Darfur, we’ll try to equip some youths and brave Darfurians so that they can film atrocities themselves and send the footage via satellite directly to mainstream media all around the world. Light, cheap audiovisual equipment can change the apathy into great support and end the war; as happened in the case of Nuba (central mountains of Sudan), where the war for water and genocide started earlier, and our activist documentaries helped to activate the masses as well as the politicians in the USA.

Alberto Angelini