The Power of Media

“Slumdog Millionarie” is sweeping up awards and nominations around the world as people fall in love with the scrappy kid who wins it big in India’s version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”
Danny Boyle and his crew did an excellent job of capturing life in the slums of Mumbai. The grittiness of life there, and the desperation of slum dwellers is evident in many of the scenes in the movie.
Today, the news talks of some of the child actors from the movie who actually live in the slums. Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, who plays the young Salim, elder brother of the film's central character Jamal, recently had his slum neighborhood razed and is now hoping for an actual house.
His father, Mohammed Ismail Mohammed Usman, who sells cardboard to eke out a living, said that since the movie came out, "The only thing that happened was that I became well-known because of my son. That's it. Nothing else changed. My kid became a hero and I'm living like a zero. This is my shack," he said.
The power of a film like “Slumdog Millionarie” is the power to get public attention focused on a subject like abject poverty. These people were acting, yes, but when the lights went off for the final time and the camera crew left, not much changed and the world is taking notice … at least of the few who appeared in the movie.
I really don’t think our documentary is going to sweep the world in quite the same way this movie did (but I can always hope). But our movie, like this one, will do its bit to help focus public attention on a subject that really needs the public’s attention. Mohammed, mentioned above, gathers up cardboard in hopes of getting enough money to live on. The Alquino family in Manila does that too. So do several families I shot in various parts of Nicaragua. As do people all over the world and yet the vast majority of these people will never be featured in a theatrical release or a documentary film. That doesn’t make them any less important. It just makes them less known.
Meanwhile, this very popular movie will eventually come out on DVD, then move to the “old” section of the neighborhood movie store. Eventually our documentary will come out, perhaps make a splash then also fade from the scene.
But the poverty won’t fade away, and if projections are correct, the one billion slum dwellers will grow to two billion and maybe more.
The power of media is to focus that spotlight. But that’s where it ends. To actually do something about it takes people who are committed to seeing real change.