WE ARE TOGETHER (UK/USA, 2007). tbcWednesday, 15th October 2008WE ARE TOGETHER
UK/USA, 2007. Directed by Paul Taylor and written by him and Slindile Moya.
Photography (Colour): Paul Taylor. Music: Dario Marinelli.
Certificate: “PG”. Length: 87 minutes.
Featuring the children of Agape and ‘Grandma’ Zodwa Mqadi,
the Moya family including Slindile and Sifiso and with
Zwai Bala, Alice Keys and Paul Simon
It says something about the state of cinema to-day that this film opened in London without making much impact despite favourable notices and has, so far as I am aware, been little seen in cinemas around the country. The cause for this surely lies in the fact that these days the number of film releases in London each week is likely to be between seven and ten. This means that many films get booked into only one cinema and that critics due to limited space in their papers and magazines often deal with many a new film in a single paragraph and even, on occasion, in a single line. This is no help in building up a film that arrives without hype and with no big names attached and in consequence it can often happen that a movie opens one Friday and closes seven days later, its fate having been settled if the box-office takings are disappointing during the first three days.
Paul Taylor’s uplifting documentary fell victim to this situation, although on paper its prospects had been good. It had received its European premiere in Amsterdam at the International Documentary Film Festival where, with the highest score in the festival’s history, it duly walked off with an award. History virtually repeated itself when it was given its first screening in America: this was at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York in 2007 where, in competition with 156 other features, both documentaries and works of fiction, it won the over-all Audience Award. That was just the start since it went on to win two more audience awards – at Edinburgh and in the Amnesty International Film Festival – while also gaining three Special Jury Prizes, three awards as Best Documentary and the Grierson Award named after that great figure in the world of documentary film John Grierson. Few films win so many prizes and that in itself is evidence of just how much this film has to offer to audiences – all of which makes it sadly ironic that so few British cinema audiences have seen it.
Although I rarely quote from the Daily Mirror, it is worth noting that they described the film as being “cinema at its most inspirational”. Indeed, the story behind how the film came to be made is itself striking. Paul Taylor, who had never made a feature film, was simply a student in a film school in 2003 when he decided to take a summer break in South Africa. He spent three months in KwaZulu Natal during which time he helped at the Agape Orphanage as a volunteer. This involved getting to know the children there and hearing them sing. At the time Taylor had no thought of making a film there but he was greatly affected by what he saw, by meeting its founder ‘Grandma’ Zodwa Mqadi a former HIV and AIDS counsellor and by the children themselves. Most remarkable of all was the impact of hearing these children when performing in their choir.
It was a year later that he returned with the idea of filming a feature that would have at its centre the singing of the children. It was not only Taylor who had realised that there was something special here since plans were also in hand for the choir to make recordings and a local pop singer had become involved with them. While the singing helped the children themselves – their energy and enthusiasm when performing offering the greatest possible contrast to the suffering and poverty of their background – it was also realised that creating a CD and publicising it abroad would be valuable in helping to raise funds for the orphanage which, for all its splendid work, was suffering from limited space and inadequate resources. Before long, contacts were made that would enable the choir to travel abroad, to England in fact, in order to promote their recording. By then Taylor’s film was well under way and what we now have on the screen is in fact the result of his filming over a period of three years. During that time not everything worked out as planned and the experience of watching this film is enriched if one shares with the participants and without prior knowledge the sometimes unpredictable course of events.
There have, of course, been other films that have captured the heart-warming appeal of singers who love performing – Buena Vista Social Club is one that comes to mind. Achieving this is certainly part of this film’s immense appeal, but We Are Together actually offers more. I don’t know who invented the term “feel-good movie” but it has certainly become a familiar phrase which, not surprisingly, is usually applied to a film that makes the audience emerge in better spirits than when they went in by feeding them escapist entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with that as we were reminded this summer by the success of Mamma Mia!. Much rarer, however, is the feel-good movie that sends you out in that way while also confronting harsh realities and that is what is achieved so remarkably by We Are Together.
If Taylor was himself attracted by the inspirational quality of the children’s choir, he has certainly succeeded fully in conveying that impact to the audience who view this film. But, while the sound of children’s voices heard en masse can in itself be uplifting, the fact that these children achieve what they do despite the desperation of their lives and those of their families adds both to the poignancy and to our admiration for them. This background is never softened in the film and to Taylor’s credit he controls things so as to avoid becoming maudlin or falling into sentimentality. In this respect the fact that the music composed for the film by Dario Marinelli is applied so discreetly confirms Taylor’s good judgment, This being a first feature, it is not a work that makes one hail Paul Taylor as a great new director, but it does invariably get the tone right and that is what matters. Taylor himself has modestly commented on vital help that he received by saying this: “Fortunately we had two wonderfully talented editors in Masahiro Hirakubo and Ollie Huddleston. They were able to carry the theme of the duality between sorrow and joy throughout the whole structure of the film and to continue this sense of contrast and balance in a way that was much more than I could have really dreamt of, so any credit for this should really go to both of them.”
Since it is best for the audience to discover the film in their own way as it appears on screen, I will say no more about its contents save to add that a crucial part of the film’s success stems from the decision to feature the Moya family. In particular there is Slindile Moya an orphan who has been at Agape since losing her parents at the age of eight and is one of those who sing in the choir. When Taylor started filming she was twelve years of age and is now sixteen and her involvement in the project was such that Taylor shares his writing credit with her. She appears on screen as somebody who is growing up before our eyes and she emerges as someone who instead of being crushed by tragedy is able to learn from it. No less than the singing of the choir the example she sets is both uplifting and inspirational and it is central to the ability of We Are Together to give us a renewed sense of hope for humanity.
“A life-affirming testament to the power of music” – The Times.
“Genuinely heart-warming” – Total Film.
“Affecting documentary, winner of countless awards on the festival circuit” – Evening Standard.
“You’d have to have a heart of stone not to be touched” – Daily Telegraph.
Programme Note by Mansel Stimpson.
