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The Chicago International Documentary Festival kicks off this Friday. Of the 70+ features on the slate, a number of the best focus on the continent of Africa.

Darwin's Nightmare (Apr. 2, 5 & 6), directed by Hubert Sauper, concerns the area surrounding Lake Victoria in the African country of Tanzania. The lake has been over-run by the Nile Perch, which was accidentally introduced 50 years ago. This has created a huge supply of fish for export to Europe, but the species has decimated the eco-system, including the smaller fish that used to provide much of the food for Tanzania's population.

Sauper does a nice job of giving the feel of the lake towns, interviewing everyone from the owner of the fish factory to the pilots who fly the food back to Europe to the homeless boys who eke out an existence on the street. He spends much more time with the marginalized Africans than the ecologists and economists who are often trotted out in these kinds of movies. This helps us understand how the problem has impacted the native people, though it makes it harder for us to understand the full scale of the problem. We see the particular rather than the general.

The documentary is shot in ugly-looking digital video, but certainly the format makes it easier to get the range of interviews Sauper does. He spends a great deal of time shooting the apparently empty planes that fly into the local airport. At first, it seems as if he's emphasizing that Europe doesn't provide anything to Africa in return for the food. But he finally gets around to the presumption that illegal arms shipments are actually flying in. That's an even more provocative argument--that Europe takes Africa's food and offers only warfare in return--and the film would've been helped if that argument had been made earlier on. Still, this is a compelling, heart-felt look at an area of the world we rarely hear from, and its examination of the impact of globalization is strong. 

Instead of focusing on a contemporary problem, Shake Hands with the Devil (Apr. 6) contemplates one of the most horrifying events in Africa's recent history, the Rwandan genocide. Director Peter Raymont follows Romeo Dallaire, the former UN commander in Rwanda during the first six months of 1994, as he revisits that country for the first time in ten years. Though Dallaire was a common scapegoat for the UN's spectacular failure at the time, his reputation has been rehabilitated in recent years, as it's become clear his command was ham-strung by world leaders who simply turned a blind eye to what was happening. Nonetheless, Dallaire, who went back to his native Canada after leaving the UN, is still haunted by the events that he couldn't forestall, and returning to Rwanda only exacerbates his discomfort.

Having such a sympathetic central figure gives the audience a powerful way to travel back in time. Raymont integrates news footage from 1994 (some of which will be familiar to those who've seen Hotel Rwanda) with present day interviews. And while the film doesn't offer much of a sense of what Rwanda is like today, it provides an even clearer picture of what happened in 1994 than Hotel Rwanda, with its love story framework, can. The predictable focus on talking heads and back-and-forth interviews doesn't make for the most exciting formal structure. But Dallaire is an exceedingly interesting man, and his story is one that's worth telling.   

While the current AIDS crisis in southern Africa can't be described as a genocide, it will probably end up killing more people than all of that continent's wars. In South Africa alone, 1,000 people are dying every day, and there are already 750,000 children who've been orphaned by the disease, a number that could grow to 2 million by the end of the decade. Orphans of Nkandla (Apr. 7 & 8) portrays three sets of siblings who've lost their parents to the epidemic. 13-year-old Mbali and her seven-year-old brother Sne lost their mother the previous year, and now their father is wasting away. Nobuhle, a girl who looks to be around nine, has to care for her stricken mother as well as several brothers. And then there are two cousins of eleven and nine who have lost both sets of parents as well as almost all of their extended family. Only a 16-year-old uncle and a desolate grandmother provide any support.

As you might imagine, Orphans is a challenging documentary to watch. While directors Brian Woods and Deborah Shipley beautifully capture the surrounding countryside with its rich, red dirt and gracefully rolling hills, the conversations with the various children are simply devastating. One girl remarks with torturous understatement, "We don't have a nice life. We have a terrible life." What makes it even worse is the enormous stigma attached to the AIDS virus. Children can't admit to their classmates that a father has died, for fear of the ostracization that would follow. And parents who could qualify for much greater government help won't get tested for the disease, preferring to delude themselves and bring their families to the brink of starvation.

Holding the narrative together is Sister Hedwig, an African nun who also acts as the local hospital's social worker. Her no-nonsense attitude and great compassion provide a ray of light in an otherwise bleak situation, but she can't do it all. At one point she convinces a couple to take in Mbali and Sne (a surprising moment of hope), but then we hear how the husband hasn't been able to find a job in months and how the government bureaucracy has held up the aid payments that could provide food for the six children now living under his roof. The camera is uncomfortably intrusive in moments like these; a funeral scene becomes too painful to watch. But Woods and Shipley, who were commissioned by the BBC, evidently want to wake up the "wealthier Western nations to act," as Woods puts it. This documentary is a good start.   

It's a shame that all of the African documentaries are resolutely pessimistic. Lost Children (Apr. 4 & 5) is especially grim, detailing the lives of children as young as eight who are abducted to fight against the government of Uganda. As I watched these films, I longed for the joy that shows up in ABC Africa, a documentary that also portrayed the problems of AIDS orphans but celebrated the resiliency of the human spirit at the same time. Still, in a news environment that cares more about the divorce of Brad and Jennifer, these are powerful testimonies of the real tragedies of life.

The festival runs through Sun., Apr. 10, with screenings at various sites around the city. Check out www.chicagodocfestival.org for a complete lineup.

J. Robert Parks