A fundraising screening for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, this sold out one of the Nova's large theatres, which has to be a good sign. I Know I'm Not Alone is a documentary, shot on hand-held camera and documenting Michael Franti's travels to Iraq and Palestine in an attempt to both reach out and to discover and present the effect of war and occupation on the ground, scored by Franti's music and put together quite roughly (although not affectedly so).
One of the film's strengths is the relatively low-key and non-polemical approach it takes; while Franti obviously has a point of view and the documentary's message isn't exactly veiled (it's both implicitly and explicitly dedicated to "the peacemakers"), it's pitched at a level of generality and presented in such a way - focusing on his interactions with the people he meets, be they soldiers, musicians, cab drivers or just plain folks - that it doesn't come across as at all strident, propagandist, or any of that bad stuff. (Moreover, I thought that it struck a good balance between Franti's celebrity and his desire to present a street level, relatively unmediated view of the societies and people he visits, mostly by acknowledging and even emphasising the centrality of music to his life and travels - and, thankfully, didn't push the authenticity [ie, "this is what it's really like over there"] line overtly at all.) Probably, though, that approach also undermines it to some extent by diminishing its impact.
At some point in Baghdad, Franti mentions that while he didn't have the time to write a whole song in Arabic, he thought he might still be able to break down some barriers by writing a song with just one Arab word - choosing "habibi", which apparently means something along the lines of "dear one" - and we then see him walking through the streets, playing the song as children sing along; later, it proves to be a hit in occupied Palestinian territory, too...for me, that whole thing encapsulates the documentary as a whole - eminently well-meaning and with its heart entirely in the right place, but somehow a bit too "be a world child form a circle" and just a bit wet.[*]
That said, though, my overall response was overwhelmingly positive; the world needs more films like this one.
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[*] This last phrase being Wei's, who was there with Gary though I didn't see them on the night. I actually went with some of the others from the human rights law group at work - Leana, Vanessa, Eugenia, Rachel and one James McCa-- - with Swee Leng also along; I'd had dinner with the first three of those beforehand, whereat we'd quickly gone through a couple of bottles of the house red, possibly (in retrospect) resulting in our reception of the film being somewhat coloured, I suppose...
