The documentary opens on the mountain village of Ifri in Morocco. There's minimal agriculture and no industry of note: mostly breeding and herding of livestock with some collecting of nuts and timber. We soon cut to a government crew coming out to the village after stopping in the market of a nearby town stocked with consumer products likely in their second or third lifetime. The government electricians make it out to the village with some difficulty - the last part of the journey is on foot - and tell the residents that they'll be back to bring electricity when the seasons allow. They don't have time to stay for tea, but do have the opportunity to hear that while electricity is fine what the residents really want is a road.
My mother and I wanted to see this film after witnessing a similar tale in Egypt. Director Jerome Lemaire's motivation was similar but much more audacious; he went into the extraordinary four-year film project after observing the electrification process in other places. As you might guess, getting on the grid has a wide variety of implications: it requires improvements to the road with free labor from the villagers, it adds light to the nights and learning to read need no longer be done by candlelight, cell phones become a practical possibility albeit with poor reception, television arrives and with it knowledge of a wider world and consumerism, and the minimum expectations for life change as even the poorer residents add a few light bulbs. Part of what makes this story fascinating is that the people of Ifri are not naïfs; the men of the village are well aware that change will come and that some of the changes will exploit them. One of the residents and more interesting characters argues for bargaining for lower prices and no flat fees by adopting village-wide solidarity as he has heard has been done elsewhere but there's few takers.
The film is done in the modern style where the director takes a light hand and his voice is rarely heard except when he's asking the locals questions. I think this approach works well, as we get a fuller picture of the villagers in their own words and it greatly reduces the temptation towards didactic story-telling. I'd say the only weakness of the style is that it denies us some pieces of the larger context and at times reduces the amount one can learn from the first viewing. Seeing a map would allow us to better track the villagers use of local government equipment for road building and track the progress of the electrical towers. An interview with electrical officials would reveal that the villagers are right and that the electrical project will pay for itself from the government's perspective after five years of use, a fact that only came out during the Q&A. Finally, name and date overlays would help us track a wider range of villagers and better understand the pace of change. That said, I think it can be reasonable to use footage out of sequence, so perhaps clear divisions between the four years would not have been possible.
This film is effective, well-organized primary source material; it allows anyone interested in development see it in progress in a way that even many field workers may miss. Just imagine gathering footage over four years in a village that lacks electricity! For me the key takeaway is that this is how a transition from a informal economy to a formal economy works. The villagers of Ifri ended up trading their labor to make infrastructure improvements as well as some of their farm animals to pay the connection fees and buy light bulbs and such. Poorer villagers could effectively get discounts, not just by having fewer light bulbs but also by doing some of the installation work themselves and by disguising their limited ability to pay as long as they could. The rural poor often have more localized assets than you might imagine - that's a good part of why they haven't left for areas with better condition - but in the Q&A Lemaire said that he expected with the arrival of television more of the children would head to the cities to get work. That said, the downsides of rural life are not glossed over: we see funerals during the film and the work of the parents, both male and female, looks arduous and in the long term backbreaking. I'd gladly see a sequel to this charming, humorous, and often lovely film that looked at what happened over the next four years to Ifri after the initial glow of the television had faded.
Source: Silverdocs tickets from my mother. Thanks Mom!
Image credit: Promotional poster taken from Cinenews.be. Remaining photos are of electrification in rural Luxor, Egypt. They were taken by myself and my mother, available under a creative commons license.
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