I met Karim Chrobog in the Summer of 2006. We were introduced by a mutual friend, John Butler. At the time, I was on the tail end of promoting “Swing State Ohio” (2006), and was looking for an office space to work out of in DC. It just so happened that Karim, who at that point was in the development stages of a documentary which he described as “about a former-child-soldier-turned-hip-hop-artist from Sudan”, had an office in Adams Morgan with a lot of extra space. So we struck a deal. I moved in almost immediately, and over the next 6 months we shared the office and a friendship grew out of that experience, as we would often confer about our respective projects or just share ideas.
Fast forward to the present, about 14 months later, and Karim is now in the later editing stages of his feature-length documentary about Emmanuel Jal.
Who is Emmanuel Jal and why on earth would he be worth Karim spending almost 2 years of his life to tell his story?
Jal is a young musician of Sudanese origin in his mid to late twenties: tall and wiry,skin the color of a dark roast, short dreadlocks hang wispily atop his crown. He speaks softly and without exertion, his words lilting mellifluously off the tongue in a melodious cadence. His limbs flop around, his physicality exuding a surfer ethos of not forcing anything, no need for tension or forcing things, just let it flow.
Like many artists, Jal has a performance persona and a private persona. On stage, he is outspoken, both lyrically and physically, as he delivers poetic outbursts about the travails he has witnessed in his homeland of Sudan, meanwhile flailing his limbs and breaking into impromptu dances. His private persona is subdued, and he exhibits a calm curiosity, taking a Taoist approach to the world around him, looking, touching, and asking. Occasionally he breaks out into song or philosophizes about women - Karim kids him about one girl who had approached after a show, cajoling him to ask her out. Jal wryly responds “You should not touch those whom you inspire.”
On a Saturday morning Karim and I pick him up at his hotel and drive out to Virginia to visit a friend’s farm for the day. I bring along a football (of the American sort), and Jal immediately picks it up and feels it shape, contour, and then asks “Is this a rugby ball?” “No my friend, this here is an American football.” When we make a pit stop we toss the ball in the parking lot on the way into a restaurant, and I show him a trick where I flip the ball vertically from my palm to the back of my hand, and back into my palm, without ever losing contact. He makes an attempt to do the same, and offers a mild tongue-in-cheek curse at not being able to do it, but it doesn’t stop him from playing.
A couple days later I have the chance to attend one of Jal’s speaking engagements at Georgetown University, and hear him tell his life story before a crowd of strangers. I then understand why it is that Karim has focused on this young man as a subject for a feature-length documentary – what he went through to get where he is today is a confounding series of luck, perseverance, and faith – key elements to any survival story.
The essence of Jal’s story as I heard it (if you can distill a man’s life into a paragraph story) is the following: he was on the verge of death, at least spiritual, if not physical, while fleeing to Ethiopia from his native Sudan, and prayed that his life be spared at a moment when many around him had already perished of starvation. As he tells it, almost in that very moment something happened that appeared as an answer to that prayer. That was followed by a series of events that drastically changed the course of his life, and led him to where he is today, acting as an advocate for Sudan and pursuing a career as an artist in a genre that probably fits somewhere between soft hip-hop and reggae, perhaps even spoken word.
His advocacy work is comprised of dedicating a significant amount of his time “testifying”(as he calls it), or telling his story to those who would listen. He lived through a nightmare, the details of which are poignantly represented in the documentary. His mission now is quite simply to tell his story, partly on behalf of those who did not survive or are still in the midst of the conflict, and partly because this is how he holds up his end of the bargain with his Higher Power, who answered a prayer in a time of need.
The documentary is itself a testimony to his experience transitioning from child soldier to world-renowned musician. The film features a poignant return to his native village and reunites with his beloved Grandmother, blind and hobbled by years of living in poverty, but somehow holding onto life until his return. Their reunion is happy, not necessarily momentous, but refreshingly real, as they laugh and hug, Jal amused and childlike in his affection for this matriarch.
Karim in Jal are in a way kindred spirits, as Karim is something of a survivor himself. In 2005 he and his family were kidnapped in Yemen and held captive for five days by a tribe that was hostile to the Yemenese government. Their release was ultimately negotiated, but one can’t help but wonder whether Karim’s current work is payback for an answered prayer of his own. If you asked him, he would never tell you, but then again, what motivates him is not really anyone’s business but his own.
As a fellow filmmaker though, I applaud Karim for persevering with a project that I think has great promise as a truly moving piece, a piece that rests on the shoulders of a young man on a mission to spread the good word, battle his inner demons and touch people’s hearts and minds, which is ultimately the work of any true artist.
Film Web-Site: www.warchildmovie.com
Jal's Site: www.guaafricaonline.com
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