Stand Together as One: The Famine, The Music, The Impact with Chip Duncan and Salim Amin
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Cathy:Welcome to late boomers, our podcast guide to creating your third act with style, power, and impact. Hi. I'm Cathy Worthington.
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Cathy:Hi. I'm Cathy Worthington welcoming you to a new episode of late boomers. I'm here with my cohost, Mary Elkins, and we are so pleased to bring you two guests today, Salim Amin and Chip Duncan, the filmmakers who are bringing us a new phenomenal documentary called stand together as one, the famine, the music, the impact. I was privileged to attend the Los Angeles premiere, and the impact was palpable.
Merry:And I'm Merry Elkins. Salim Amin is the son of Mohammed Amin, the photojournalist who shot all the footage of the famine in Ethiopia in the nineteen eighties that introduced the crisis there to the rest of the world and started the activism of the British effort Band Aid and The USA For Africa recording of We Are the World and Live Aid. Salim is the founder and chairman of Camera Picks and has delved into the archives and come up with amazing footage of the suffering of the arrival of goods in Ethiopia and the effort to try to help. Chip Duncan has been making documentaries for thirty five years in 40 different countries and is the founder of Duncan Entertainment. He's also the author of a book, a different war.
Merry:Welcome.
Cathy:And Saleem is coming to us today from his home in Nairobi, and Chip is in The US in Wisconsin. Welcome to both of you.
Chip Duncan:Thank you.
Salim Amin:Good to be here.
Merry:Great to have How
Cathy:did you guys decide to do this film now, and how did you team up, And why this film right now?
Chip Duncan:Well, I had the pleasure of meeting Salim about twenty years ago when we began working on a biopic about his father, Mohammed Amin. And I was brought in by some well known people to help write the screenplay, but also because I have a background that's somewhat similar to Muhammad Amin's as a photojournalist. Why now is a question Salim can answer. He knows it as well as anybody.
Salim Amin:I mean, we started this film many years ago with the aim of having it ready for the fortieth anniversary to commemorate the fortieth anniversary because it was such a huge Of We Are World. Of We Are the World and of the famine itself as well because it was such a huge story at the time. We didn't realize that the timing would be so appropriate as it is now where the world is in a very precarious place. The US is in a mess. Many places in the world are in a mess.
Salim Amin:And the message of We Are The World and what it brought is more needed now, I think, than even forty years ago. And so, you know, we are you know, it's unfortunate that that is that timing has happened, but it's very good for the film to come out at this time to show people what is possible when humanity comes together for a common cause. That though those events in nineteen eighty four, eighty five changed the course of history and and led to many wonderful things and and many people doing amazing things for all sorts of causes over the years. But we seem to have forgotten that part of our humanity, I think, and and this is a reminder about that.
Merry:Oh, Salim, you're you're giving me chills because I I so agree with you. Humanity really needs to come together. I have to ask you, though, what was it like growing up as the son of Mohammed Amin who was one of Africa's most iconic photojournalists? And at what point in your life did you realize you wanted to follow in his footsteps?
Salim Amin:I started taking pictures when I was about eight years or nine years old, and so I think I got bitten by the bug then. But he was never wanted me to do this, wanted me to get a a real job, in quotes, you know, to to to said this is not a this is not a career that you wanna do. And but it's all I ever had the passion for. But it it was a you know, I didn't have enough time with him. Unfortunately, you know, he died when he was very young.
Salim Amin:He was only 52 years old. And, you know, I didn't get enough time to spend with him, and I didn't really appreciate the work that he did and the contribution that he made to the world until after he was not around. And Chip and I began exploring his life and his archive and the work that he did and doing our own films, looking at some of those events that he covered over forty years in Africa. And he made an important contribution, but it was I feel privileged that I've had the opportunity to continue his legacy and remind people of the work that he did and showcase the work that he did because it's so important to history that we don't forget some of these events that he covered. Not him in particular, but the events that he covered are very important, especially for Africans to remember their history.
Salim Amin:And young people on this continent really don't have a clue about what our continent's history is. And I think his content will help remind them of that.
Cathy:That's good. True. And Salim, your father is so known for capturing powerful and sometimes devastating images. So how do you navigate the ethics of visual storytelling today, and how did your father's work shape your view of Africa and your role in telling its stories?
Salim Amin:So I unfortunately, I never got a chance to see this content until, you know, in the only the last sort of ten years. I mean, I know you know, I was never taught this content. We never used we were never taught African history in school, you know, being whether it was in in primary school or high school, I never learned Kenyan history, African history. Our history was British history because it was we were a colony. And so what they taught us in in in in the the schools that I went to was, you know, the the Tudor kings and Henry the eighth and, you know, the the the you know, that that was the history that we learned, you know, the battle of Hastings and things like that.
Salim Amin:We never we never did African history, and I really wish I had known what I know now back then because I think it would have really changed and shaped the way that that I looked at this continent and engaged with this continent. And but, yeah, so I I didn't get a chance to really be influenced by his work when I was young. And he you know, now I'm I'm far more aware of it. Then when Chip and I go through the archives, you know, we're always discovering new things. And it's it's always for me, it's mind blowing the number of places that he went and the number of events that he covered in a time when it wasn't easy to get around the continent.
Salim Amin:There was no mobile phones. There was no Internet. There was no very little communication. But somehow, you know, he managed to get a lot of content. And and while we while he was best known for his news coverage and and some of the very graphic images of genocide and famine and war in Africa, he also published over 75 coffee table books on the beauty of the continent, you know, on the people and the culture and the tribes and the flora and the fauna because this was his way of balancing the picture.
Salim Amin:He didn't have the Internet, and international media organizations were not interested in positive stories out of Africa. All they ever wanted was was the negative stories. So he had no way of telling a balanced picture other than to do these beautiful coffee table books that showcased the beauty of the continent as well as the horrors. The horrors existed. Nobody can deny that they were all there.
Salim Amin:But there was a whole other side to Africa that nobody ever told or talked about internationally. And so he wanted to balance the picture as best as he could given the tools that he had at the time. And books were sell you know, he sold books in their tens of thousands, you know, coffee table books at a time when people did read. Unfortunately, they've stopped reading as well now. So the books don't get printed anymore.
Salim Amin:But yeah, that was so for me, it was that balance that was really what motivated me to do the work that we're doing now is to make sure we tell balanced stories about the continent and we go and expose the beauty as well as the tragedies.
Cathy:And was his home base always in Kenya?
Salim Amin:Yes. He was born in Kenya and grew up in Tanzania, but then lived in Kenya most of his life.
Chip Duncan:Can I just throw in too, Yes? As a student of Mo's life and work, he was more than a photographer, much more than a photojournalist. When you look at him through today's microscope and understand the hats that he was wearing, I would say he was an extraordinary producer, not just a photographer, not just a videographer. He was able to build the relationships, the networks, the contacts, to go in and accumulate content all over the continent in a way that a producer would do today. He was also an exceptional editor.
Chip Duncan:He knew what was good, what wasn't good, what was true, what wasn't true. And then the last thing that I think I would celebrate the most about Mohammed Amin, and it's theme that permeates the documentary Stand Together as one is he was courageous. He was courageous in the same way that Harry Belafonte and Ken Craigen were courageous when they went into the hot spots that we feature in this particular film in Northern Ethiopia. At a time, Mo in particular, when he went in on the first shoot in October of nineteen eighty three, eighty four, he was in 1984, October of '80 '4, he was going into the middle of a war zone. And not only was food being used as a weapon, but every other tool of war was being used as well.
Chip Duncan:It was a very dangerous journey. And he and Mike Burke and Mike Waldridge and Claire Birchenya, they were all courageous in a way that we rarely see today except from frontline journalists. So it's a major part of his personality.
Merry:Yeah. Well Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Chip, about film, filming, which because filming in a way is becoming the the book to show everybody what is going on.
Merry:And people aren't as you said, Salim, people aren't reading as much anymore. But so your film is a way to show them it's in a way, it's a huge, big, beautiful book to show what was going on and what could be. And on that note, tell us a bit, Chip, about Stand Together as One, and what inspired you to make this documentary? And before you tell us anything, talk about the title, and please explain it.
Chip Duncan:Well, the title Stand Together One is one of the lyrical lines in the song We Are The World. Obviously, We Are The World was taken by the song. So But conceptually, Stand Together as One is not just referring to the artists who came together in Los Angeles to record the song. Of course, that's the obvious link. But it also refers to the whole notion of how are we as artists, as filmmakers, humanitarians, nurses, doctors, how are we going to help in this particular situation in Northern Ethiopia in 1984, 'eighty five?
Chip Duncan:And the only way to do it was to stand together as one. So if you look at the power of personality, I would say in particular with Harry Belafonte leading this effort, he was able, and to some extent Bob Geldof was able to circumvent government and bring humanitarian relief at a time when these factions were at war. So you can only do that if you have the kind of reputation that Belafonte had at that time. The film itself, one of the hallmarks of this film, and I should preface this by saying a lot of your listeners and viewers have probably seen Lionel Richie's film, The Greatest Night in Pop, that covers, does a wonderful job covering the recording of the song. It does not cover the famine, and it does not cover what happened after the song was recorded.
Chip Duncan:That's what we're calling our prequel and sequel in this film. But we divide the film into three parts, the famine, the music, and the impact. And so it's a very different telling of the story. So you're able to really see what it means, the horror behind using food as a weapon, and how the government in Ethiopia at the time did that in the middle of that civil war. The rebel forces were also accused of it.
Chip Duncan:I don't think anybody comes out clean here. But when you see this compelling footage that Mohammed Amin shot, the video and the stills, and you see the suffering, It's you know, is it going on today? Yes. We can talk about that. But at the time, these images were unprecedented.
Chip Duncan:Nobody had ever seen anything like it. And the BBC, to their credit, ran a seven minute nightly news story that changed the history of what journalism does. And so that's the famine. Then the music obviously is not it's not just We Are the World. It's also Band Aid and Live Aid.
Chip Duncan:And then act three of the film really covers what happened to the money. And you see the extraordinary efforts of USA for Africa and how they were able to change the course of history at the time, but also continue to do extraordinary work on the continent today.
Merry:Yes. Today, which is so impressive. So many people don't understand that getting all the supplies and the money and food there is very difficult to do. And as you mentioned, Belafonte could go in because he was a world leader in his in his fame and was able to make it happen along with Ken Craig and Bob Gildoff and the others.
Cathy:Yeah. I wanna ask your father and I Yeah. I wanna ask Chip and Salim to answer what what was your main goal with this project? Were there any specific issues you hope to raise awareness about? You could just take turns on that one.
Chip Duncan:I'll just say that there's there were really two things driving it. One is the power of the story itself. This is a narrative that we really haven't seen before. It's not only in the three act structure, but we just rarely see and rarely have the visual support to show what heroism is and what these people were all able to achieve. When you look at Claire Birchinger, the nurse who was working with the International Red Cross at the time, this is the greatest humanitarian I've ever met.
Chip Duncan:It's pure service. I mean, it's the kind of thing, and it's not tied to any kind of religious perspective. It's a human being making a choice to help others in a time of need. I think that's a really compelling part. And the part I'll throw back to Salim is you also see the transition, I would say, in character of our main character, Mohammed Amin.
Chip Duncan:You see what the impact of the famine on him, how he changed as an individual and was able to elevate his own kind of empathy and compassion and need to serve. Salim, maybe you can talk more about that.
Salim Amin:Yeah. Mean, it's not so much on him. I think in general, just highlighting the importance of good journalism, which is severely lacking in the world at the moment, where media is really not doing its job. It's not performing the service that it's meant to perform to keep people informed in an objective, unbiased way. It's all been compromised in the last decade or so.
Salim Amin:So I think, you know, trying to go back to good journalism and the impact it can have in in society and in the world. And then artists, the the power that artists have to actually make a difference and and understanding their own capacity to make a difference and a a huge difference in the world. And I think artists today are not doing enough to change I think, again, they have become compromised. I think, again, they have become they're chasing the money. That's all they're doing.
Salim Amin:Whereas the the heart and the and the passion of the artists in 1984 that recorded those songs, both do they know it's Christmas and we are the world, I think that that compassion and that heart was was they didn't even understand how how powerful their voice was going to be, but they all showed up. They all turned up because they had huge respect for Ken, for Harry, for Quincy, for Lionel, for Michael. They had huge respect when the phone rang, and and and they picked up the the call. They didn't even ask why are we doing this. They were just said, listen, guys.
Salim Amin:We're putting something together. Come. Just be there. And they came because of the the the the the feelings of that. I don't know if that would ever happen again today.
Salim Amin:And, also, the importance of, you know, USA for Africa was never supposed to be around for more than four or five years. It was supposed to be for famine relief, you know, to to to do things. But forty years later, it's still going, and it's still doing things on the continent. It's simply because the song is still generating revenue, which is, to me, is still incredible Mhmm. That forty years later, the $3.04, $500,000 a year is still generated by We Are The World from downloads.
Salim Amin:It's mind blowing that a song has that much impact. And and and all credit to to the USA for Africa board and Marcia Thomas that they have kept finding projects in Africa and other parts of the world, even in within The US, you know, doing things, following up with the Hands Across America project and and and and and with homelessness and and poverty in The US and other places, they've kept going. And that to me is it's it's a real lesson for what what we need now. So those were the reasons for making. We didn't realize the world, like I said earlier, the world would be in such a bad place by the time the film came out.
Salim Amin:But those were some of the motivating factors was to to tell these stories, to to to give people hope. And and I remember COVID came in between our production on this. So, again, COVID changed the mindset of a lot of people, and a lot of people lost hope. And I I you know, I I we would hope that this film would would give that back to people to to know that each individual can make a difference. You don't have to go and save a million lives, but you can be a better person to your family, to your community, to the people around you, and you can make a difference that way.
Salim Amin:And I think we've lost a little bit of that compassion.
Chip Duncan:And I'll throw out one thing. We haven't necessarily explained this, but the proceeds from the song We Are the World, everybody worked nonprofit. The proceeds from that song helped create the nonprofit called USA for Africa, which is who we're talking about here. And and when Salim says, you know, they thought they'd be around four or five years, they're still going strong. Part of what they did, and I think this is extraordinary, is the way they chose to give away money on the continent was to empower nonprofits on the continent.
Chip Duncan:It's not like the typical NGO where, you know, they're coming in after an earthquake or a fire or a civil war. Literally, they look for grassroots organizations on the continent and help bring the financial resources to them that they need for empowerment of women and girls, for literacy, for food security. And that was revolutionary as well. So the blueprint that we talk about in this film is it really is journalists, healthcare workers, and then how the nonprofits, the musicians of course, how those nonprofits work after they've got the money in their hands. It's one of the most successful organizations around the world in terms of truly empowering people in one particular Yeah.
Cathy:I also wanted to tell our listeners that my husband was Ken Craigen. He's passed away now, but he's the one that made all the phone calls to pull the artists together for We Are The World. And, yes, when they started the board and he's on the board and years and years go by and they kept trying to disband the board, more money came in, and so they just kept it going and he was on the board when he passed away and the board is still strong entity that really cares what they fund and who they fund, and it became a whole second career that he had to assimilate into his life. It was really amazing. Salim, what were the challenges and obstacles in making this documentary?
Salim Amin:Oh, I think, well, Chip's probably better better answer that. One was was finance. I mean but but, you know, I'll I'll take a stab at it. One was obviously finance. We we financed this whole thing ourselves.
Salim Amin:We we were hoping to get financing from various entities, and it didn't happen. COVID interfered with it. We were in the middle of production when COVID happened. That that that went through, you know, the greatest night of pop came out and and that, you know, everyone assumed that that's the same story. And so why why would they wanna give to another story not understanding the difference between the two documentaries?
Salim Amin:You know? And and so that was a challenge. And also getting hold of all these people. I mean, Chip spent, you know, months looking for Claire. And Claire Burchinger turns out to be the, you know, really the the the one of the centerpieces, not the centerpiece of of of the film, but finding her and getting her to agree to talk was, you know, months of months of work on Chip's part.
Salim Amin:You know, getting Harry's last interview, getting Ken's last interview. Those were just we were lucky to get those because we happened to be in the right place at the right time. And they both agreed. They both agreed to do it, I think, simply because of the friendship that they had with my father. And that was the the the reason that they agreed to sit down with us.
Salim Amin:You know, Harry was, you know, very elderly, very not very well when he gave that interview, was very reluctant to do that. But I think just did it as a favor because of his his his memories of my dad. And at the time this went together, Ken was was really not well when when when we did that interview. He's he was in you know, his back was giving him a lot of problems. He was in a lot of pain that day, Kathy.
Salim Amin:You'll remember when we were when we came for the thirty fifth anniversary.
Cathy:Thirty fifth anniversary of We Are The World.
Salim Amin:Of We Are World. Yeah. So he was in a lot of pain, but he, you know, he like a trooper, he sat through he sat through that whole interview for I think it was almost an hour that we were that we were interviewing him in that theater at at A and M Studios. And and, again, I think a lot of it had to do with, you know, with with the fact that they'd all been in Ethiopia with my dad. They'd all they'd all traveled together.
Salim Amin:They'd all spent time together, and they'd stayed in touch, you know, until dad passed away. I got lovely notes from Harry, from Ken, from everybody when he passed away in the hijack, in plane crash. And I think it was just I think it's that was a lot of goodwill went into making this film. But, you know, it's still financially, you know, has almost bankrupted both of us in making this film. So we hope at some point we'll recover something.
Salim Amin:But if we could, you know, use it to help people do better things, then that's reward enough as well.
Chip Duncan:And I'm going to actually do something that's probably a little less typical on podcast like this, but I'd like to ask both of you, Kathy and Mary, for your impressions of Dame Claire Birchinger, the nurse that we're talking about. And the reason being that she never sought any publicity. This, for the listeners and viewers, when the BBC crew arrived on the fields of Quorum and in the city of Michalay to document this famine, the one person that was providing healthcare for hundreds of thousands of people was a nurse for the International Red Cross. And she has never sought any attention whatsoever, but to me, she's the soul of the film. And I just wondered what what you guys thought when you saw the film in terms of Claire and what she brings to the production.
Merry:Yeah. First of all, I think you mentioned it, Salim, perhaps you did, Chip. Her life was service. She was there, and I think the most gratification that she had in her life was the fact that she could make a difference to help all of these people and to try to make sure that the people that she was able to feed and help in their medical care try to assure that they would go on and survive. And I know you had a man in the film who was a survivor, and I don't know if it was because of her help and service, but I was very impressed with that and her dedication, and also the fact that she said that they had to choose the people there because there were so many people who were starving and ill and talking about what a choice to have to make in life to choose people that would live and die.
Merry:That was powerful, and it's frightening to think that that may still be going on today. And I was very impressed with her because of her dedication and love for the people in the country and justice.
Cathy:Well, having lived through Ken going over there and going with the supplies and telling me what it was like was very I didn't have any footage like that to look at. I never knew about Claire. I'm not sure whether Ken met Claire, but he probably did. I just was so shocked that one person could do that much. I'll start crying, I was just really, really shocked and flabbergasted that she's by herself, helping people, trying to put food in babies, trying to just decide is this one, can we give this one the food or is the other one worse off?
Cathy:Is the one we have to feed the one that's better because they can get better? It was just like life decisions that she was having to make every minute of every day and doing it month after month after month. How long was she there, Chip? I missed that piece.
Chip Duncan:She was there over two more than two years. I'll tell you, this is a stunning I mean, when we interviewed her, I knew a lot about her. But this woman came to Northern Ethiopia with very little experience on the continent from two years as a nurse for the International Red Cross in Lebanon during their Lebanese Civil War, eighty two, eighty three. So she went from one war zone to another, and when she left Ethiopia, she went to Afghanistan. So the arc of her career, I could be wrong, but I believe she's the first nurse who's been more or less knighted by the crown in England.
Chip Duncan:She's Dame Claire Birchinger. And it's so compelling to me that the country finally recognized what I consider some of the greatest traits that any human can have, which is to put your own needs Obviously, you have to sustain yourself through food and water and sleep, but to put her needs to the side to be able to help all of these people for as long as she did, and not just in Ethiopia.
Cathy:And how amazing is it that she's still alive on the planet being in these war zones? Completely amazing that she survived.
Chip Duncan:And never took quite a break.
Salim Amin:Yeah.
Merry:Yeah.
Salim Amin:But like Michael Buig said, to make those choices, what you said, Mary, to make those choices at the age of only, you know, 23, 20 four years old, to have to decide who lives and who dies, it's not it's not something that anyone should ever have to do. And not not just for a day, but to do it for a period of two years or maybe more in different war zones. It's it's it's not acceptable. I mean, it's something that the world we never should have to to to put people in that situation. But as again, nothing has changed.
Salim Amin:Unfortunately, nothing
Chip Duncan:with the world has changed.
Salim Amin:If anything, it's even worse. If you look at what's happening in Gaza now
Chip Duncan:And Sully mentioned
Salim Amin:look at Ukraine.
Chip Duncan:You look at than we could
Salim Amin:have imagined. You look at Sudan. You look at all of the Ethiopia. It's all happening. Again, it just don't seem
Chip Duncan:to right now. With things like Elon Musk with a chainsaw cutting, cutting, cutting indiscriminately, And the antithesis of that, the counterpoint to that is Claire Berchinger, Harry Belafonte, Ken Craig, and artist Bob Geldof, who are saying, I'm here to help. I'm not here to cut. I'm not here to take away. The empathy that comes through in this film, the need for compassion and the importance of it, think is what's really driving this production.
Chip Duncan:And that's why when it hits people in these big group environments, and they wanna people it's kind of fun when you're done watching it, you wanna talk about it. And you wanna say, what can I do in my community with my family, with my friends? Is it working with the Boys and Girls Club or the food pantry, or helping teach someone to read, or Humane Society. Everybody has within them the possibility of finding a niche where they can volunteer, and they can be of service, and they can help. And you can do it through your mosque, your church, your synagogue, or just if you're not religious, do it the way you wanna do it.
Chip Duncan:And Clare just embodies that. And I think Harry did too. I mean, Harry, his whole life was like that. And Ken, when he, you know, he went from this to Hands Across America, and they understood the importance of number one, food, clean water, you know, reproductive rights, you know, all of the different things that that, you know, each of us needs, civil rights, human rights, it's all in the film. It all comes through.
Merry:You know, that's the question I asked myself after I saw the film. What can I do? What can I do even just for a little niche somewhere to make the world a little bit of a better place? And on that note, Chip, as far as all the people who were in the film, how did you get the rights clearances for those songs and the footage? Was it difficult like finding Claire?
Merry:How did you find Claire? And getting the rights, and how did you also, as far as making the film, how did you and Salim divide up the tasks that were involved?
Chip Duncan:Well, the rights are an interesting issue. So USA for Africa owns the recording and the behind the scenes footage and all of the different aspects of We Are The World. So they're not our partner in the production, but they've been our collaborators from the get go. And so we knew we had clearances for all of the We Are The World material at the time we started the production. We did not know what amount of material we would use from Live Aid or Band Aid until we started editing the film.
Chip Duncan:And they've been delightful to work with. They understand the same importance that we do, which is, like Saleem mentioned, that we didn't get paid to make the film. We're making it and marketing it in the same spirit that Bob Geldof did and that We Are The World team did. But with the Live Aid, Band Aid charitable trusts, we've worked out a deal with them where if there is revenue, a percentage of it goes back to them for their ongoing work on the continent as well.
Cathy:Yeah. Because you had some amazing Live Aid footage.
Merry:Yeah.
Cathy:You've got Queen, and you've got Everybody's
Chip Duncan:in it for just a matter of seconds, but it does it is a who's who's realize the importance of Live Aid is is without question the greatest concert in history. I mean, literally 40% of the world watched some part of that concert on on broadcast television. It was way before streaming or platforms.
Salim Amin:Yeah. Right.
Chip Duncan:But then, of course, the footage we use the most, which is both the famine and then the food distribution that comes after these musical efforts, is from camera picks. It's material that Salim's father, Mohammed Amin, created. His colleagues were there. They helped create it. There's the sound engineer, Abdul Ramadan, other colleagues, Duncan Willits, all of that Camera Pix team played a role here and continues to to this day.
Chip Duncan:So I was sitting in the Midwest working on the editing, but I'd be on the phone with Salim saying, hey, do you guys have pictures of the graveyards on the Coram Plateau? Do you have footage of Harry and Ken distributing food a year later? All of that was back and forth, back and forth. And Camera Pix archive is truly, other than the Duncan Group archive, I mean, it's one of the finest archives in the world. Both Salim and I work really hard on maintaining our archives and making them preserve both preserving for history, but also making them digitally friendly and available.
Chip Duncan:So Mo's work is so the film would not exist without Mo's incredible coverage of these events.
Cathy:And I was so surprised and happy to see that footage of them arriving in Africa because that's something that hasn't been shown that I've never seen, and it is stuff that Moamine shot, and I didn't even know that still existed. It's very exciting to see my husband with Harry Belafonte and Bob Geldof walking into the crowds in Ethiopia. I mean, very moving.
Merry:Very. It will sound Yeah.
Chip Duncan:Know, it's interesting because in audience responses, it's almost to be expected that some percentage of an audience will shed a tear or several tears watching the first act because you're seeing, it's almost as if, and I think this is an apt comparison, it's as if there were cameras inside the Holocaust. This is that kind of event. More than a million people starved to death. Mo able capture that in a way that is so heartbreaking when you see it. But almost everybody, including me when I was editing, when the real tears come when the food arrives.
Chip Duncan:And know, when you see, when Claire is at the little tiny airport and points out the airplane coming. Those sorts of things are so emotionally moving, and all of that is because of camera pics having that footage and shooting that footage. So like you, Kathy, when I saw Ken and Harry are walking in the crowds in Tigray province, it's unbelievable that that footage exists.
Cathy:Yeah.
Salim Amin:Even the press conferences and, you know, doing the stuff in Ethiopia, the press conferences, we didn't I didn't know we had it until we started searching through the tapes and viewing everything. And and then, you know, you asked about challenges earlier. One of them was restoring all of this archive, which was all done in Milwaukee with Chip, was restoring this content, which is 40 years old now and shot on tape and, you know, getting all the glitches. Some of the footage was not completely we weren't able to completely restore it, and you can see, you know, the tearing in the screen and stuff. But That must have scary.
Salim Amin:To the authenticity of it, but we did try and repair it as best as we could so that it was usable. But, you know, that's that was also we also discovered a lot of new content when we were working on this film.
Cathy:Yeah.
Salim Amin:And like I said earlier, we seem to you know, in this archive, we have, you know, 8,000,000 images and twenty two thousand hours of footage. So we're still discovering every time we go into it. We still find new things that we had no idea existed because it's not all digital. And so we're still going through the physical negatives and slides and tapes and and film reels, even 16 mil Yes. Film reels.
Salim Amin:And we don't know what's on them until we most see and and view them. And what is best way it? So, hopefully, we'll be able to make many more films together on on some of these important historical events. Well, I I think, you know, I'll speak for Chip on this as well, is that we want as many people as possible to see this. Mhmm.
Salim Amin:There's obviously an audience that remembers Live Aid, remembers We Are The World and the recording, and remembers the famine. And for them, it's nostalgia. It's look going back and looking and reliving some of that those events. But there is two generations that probably have no idea that these events ever took place, or they might know the song We Are The World, but they have no idea of the origins of the song and why it was recorded and what made it happen and who were the people that put it all together. And that's, that's very important, we think, for them to see this film and to understand how that generation, our generation made a difference, such a huge difference at that time.
Salim Amin:So universities, schools, I mean, pretty much any audience, I think it's important anywhere in the world, not just Americans, but Europeans, but Africans, They need to see this film because everybody was a part of this movement in the nineteen eighties. There wasn't any part of the world that wasn't affected by what happened, and every one of them had their own versions of We Are The World or Do They Know It's Christmas? There was a Canadian song. There was a German song. There was a Dutch song.
Salim Amin:Everybody copied what was done by USA for Africa to to to contribute something. And then Marcia was telling us that that to date, the largest contributions to the song come from Japan. You know, Japan seems to love this song, and that's where the majority of the downloads happen, the majority of the money comes from to this day. So this was truly a global event, and and it seems, unfortunately, with technology, which should make things like this much more global, it seems to be the opposite. It seems the more information we have and the more access to information we have, the more misinformed or uninformed we are than we were forty years ago.
Salim Amin:And that's, to me, that's a tragedy because I think young people have the ability, they have too much choice now, so they have the ability to filter their information. They have the they are they are they they can they can put their own algorithm so they only receive what they want to receive, whether it's music or sports. They don't really want to know about a civil war in Sudan or about the devastation in Ukraine. Young people, majority of them are not interested in this. But in the 1980s, and I'm old enough to remember that, and and you guys are just slightly younger than me.
Salim Amin:But, you know, but you'll remember that in America, there was three channels. There was ABC, there was NBC, there was CBS. You are either a Brokaw fan, a Rather fan, or a Peter Jennings fan, and you watched your favorite broadcaster at 6PM, and you watched the news. And you have the whole family sat together and watched the news. And whether you liked it or not, you had to watch your twenty minutes of local news and your ten minutes of international news, and you had to know.
Salim Amin:And then people had dinner afterwards, and they discussed the news and what was going on. And so young people were so much better informed than they are now because now they're all doing their own things. Nobody sits down at dinner together anymore. They're all on their own devices, watching their own things, doing their own things. That culture has gone, and it's never gonna come back.
Salim Amin:But I think we're we're poorer for it as as a society.
Merry:Hopefully, the film breaks
Salim Amin:through to all audiences. Trying to get people to to remember and understand the importance of coming together is one. Emotional impact is is very important for this film. The is the important message for the from this film.
Merry:I know that we were just discussing editing, the editing involved, but was there anything in the film that you had to cut that you wish you could have kept in?
Chip Duncan:That's an interesting question. I would say no. And the reason being that if we were constrained by budget, obviously, but also, we stayed on task. I mean, the three act structure that we outlined at the beginning I think is a big part of it. We knew that we were gonna come up against dollars if we exploit it, tried to exploit Live Aid in any more significant way.
Chip Duncan:We also knew that Lionel's film came out before ours, The Greatest Night and Pop, and we were we were very well set on not covering the same ground. So it's a lovely film. You know, hats off to that production, but we didn't wanna have to redo the same thing or retell the same stories. I think the power of journalism and the power of service really come through strongly in the way that we created it. And as much as we use the Camera Picks archive fully, we probably, I would say we covered it as exhaustively as we could.
Chip Duncan:If there was anything that I wish we could add, it would have been, which was mostly a budget consideration, it would have been to cover more of the programs of USA for Africa on the continent. We didn't have the resources to do it, but when I was talking earlier about their approach to giving, I've been on a lot of nonprofit boards, and I love what they've been able to do. I've been on a board in Nicaragua called the Roberto Clemente Health Clinic, and they're very similar. The money is generated here, but it's facilitated without overhead directly to Nicaragua in that case, or in this case, Ethiopia. So it's a rare thing, I think, to see a nonprofit operate that way.
Chip Duncan:But I guess if anything, I would have added more about USA for Africa if we'd been able to.
Salim Amin:Yeah. We would have gone to travel to some of these countries that well, we weren't
Merry:able to go through all the continent and actually film a lot more
Salim Amin:of programs and interview a lot more of the people who benefit me. So You know, years of US as a photojournalist. And with these programs and their giving.
Chip Duncan:One of the things that you see a lot of media cover is the the the specifically the death and destruction, the crumbled buildings, the corpses lying under rubble, those sorts of things. And I think this film in part will succeed because we show acts of kindness, we show acts of empathy, we show acts of compassion. We're trying to make sure that we come away with a different narrative. And in that regard, I wanna mention specifically for your listeners or viewers that while we're recording this, Sudan is going through one of the worst atrocities on earth is getting almost no media coverage because it's a civil war. It's not that journalists are unwilling or in any way afraid to go in and document it.
Chip Duncan:They're simply being held at bay. You can't get in to do the coverage. But we know that about 20,000,000 people are struggling with food security in Sudan right now as we're recording this. And so the death toll from starvation in that country may far surpass what we saw in Ethiopia. It's hard to say.
Chip Duncan:But the challenges remain. And ultimately it comes down to will. Really, Salim was talking about young people, but it comes down to teaching. If you don't have empathy within you, if you don't feel compassion within you, then it's up to all of us to say, let's reinvent that wheel and make sure that people understand the power and the importance of those emotions and those gestures so that people can really help each other. I mean, we know who gets the media spotlight in The United States, and neither of the two main players right now, or three or four or five or you name it, their message is the opposite of this film.
Chip Duncan:And this film is really it it it really works hard to show what's possible when we stand together as one.
Cathy:Mhmm. And the theme of unity is central to the film. And Celine, what do you think the film says about the importance of community in today's world?
Salim Amin:I think it can't be said more aggressively than in the film that as a community, as individuals, we can do only so little. But when we all get together and we combine the talents of so many different sectors of society to come together and do something, you can change history. I mean, little children in 1985 raised close to $50,000,000 children under the age of 10, because they saw this footage and they told their parents that, you know, don't give us pocket money for the next six months. You know? Don't we'll go and do bake sales and and and lemonade sales and do this, and we'll go and raise money because these children are dying in Ethiopia because they watched that footage.
Salim Amin:They saw that. And yet those children had empathy and a sense responsibility that they had to do something. So we all have it in us. We all, I think, fundamentally are good people. I would like to believe that we are deep down, we're all good people.
Salim Amin:It's just we seem to have lost our way. And COVID, I thought, would bring people together more, would give a sense of empathy and community. But I think it was the opposite almost. We realized we became more selfish and more self centered and realized we could actually live without each other and survive. And I think we lost a lot in COVID that we need to get back.
Salim Amin:And hopefully films like this can rebuild that sense of community and solidarity. And, you know, like in Los Angeles when the fires happened, communities came together to help each other to, you know, people who had lost their homes or the things that were taken in, that were looked after. You know, communities came together because you have that sense of of of
Cathy:Mhmm.
Salim Amin:Wanting to help and wanting to do something. But yet, in conflicts like Sudan, Chip mentioned, you know, people don't care because they don't know. In conflicts like Ukraine where they do know or in Gaza where they do know, they still don't care because, again, these are maybe people of a different of a different color or of a different religion or of a different, society. And I think in 1984, 'eighty five, this wasn't the case. We weren't as divided as world.
Salim Amin:We were not divided like we are today, unfortunately, to politicians mainly, not not for you know, politicians have succeeded in dividing us. But in in nineteen eighty four, eighty five, people did not look at your religion and your color and your faith and your and geographic location. It was simply, you know, why don't these people have food when we have everything here? Why don't people have the basics? And that shocked people.
Salim Amin:Also, the 1980s were a time of great prosperity in the world. Now it's a time of great it's not a time of great prosperity. People are struggling everywhere in the world to make ends meet. So the troubles of people on the other side of the world are not so important anymore because everybody has their own struggles that they're trying to deal with to put food on their table. So perhaps the it's more difficult to find empathy when you have your own challenges.
Salim Amin:And I think this is trying
Merry:to achieve in this Sadly,
Salim Amin:what society has what has become of the
Merry:world post COVID. I mean, in senior
Salim Amin:post, there's political
Merry:I'm certainly
Salim Amin:split Impact. Splitting of of people.
Merry:And it I think it will influence people. I have to ask you both, though, on the film side, were there any unexpected moments or revelations during filming that you made that made you rethink what you thought you knew about the subjects and the whole issue of what occurred there. Can you both take a stab at this?
Salim Amin:Hi, Bobby. As I said earlier, I was just finding some of that footage and and seeing some, you know, Harry and Ken and others, you know, in Ethiopia and and having that. I didn't know we had it. So, you know, discovering some of that footage again was quite a revelation in that way. Harry's interview was was quite, you know, quite amazing because he struggled.
Salim Amin:You know, he was he was kinda going all over the place a little bit, and but he told us some fascinating stories about life and and and and things that he had done that nothing related to Ethiopia, but but just, you know, some really interesting things. It was watch ship about three hours, that interview, three and a half hours. There was a lot of really interesting stuff in there.
Cathy:Say who Marcia.
Merry:Yes. Marcia Tom. I mean,
Salim Amin:Marcia was quite a a revelation in the film. I mean, you know, she comes across really well. She really explained a lot of things very, very well. And Claire, as we've said, is sort of the unexplored. Marcia Thomas is the executive director of USA for Africa and has been for the last, I think, probably thirty five years now.
Salim Amin:She wasn't there right at the beginning, but she joined shortly after the song was released and and has become a huge part of that movement and the organization. And at this age, she's now in her late, I guess, seventies. Now she still goes to the continent half a dozen times a year to go and see the projects and oversee it. You know, learning about this stuff that all is really very interesting to me.
Chip Duncan:I much about
Salim Amin:though I knew the story very well, I didn't I didn't know it that well. You know, I I I found out a lot of
Chip Duncan:things but I didn't know
Salim Amin:it before making the The
Cathy:way
Chip Duncan:media and distribution happens for television today is it's counter to the film that we made. And by that I mean, if you when we were pitching this project, and it didn't matter who we were talking to. So let's say you're at Apple, you're at Oprah, you're at Obama's company, wherever you are pitching this Netflix. If you if you go in with this project, what what you're essentially saying is we wanna talk we wanna do a film about great acts of philanthropy, where artists come together and successfully go help people. That is not a good pitch for this media environment.
Chip Duncan:If you're looking for a good pitch, you're talking about The Last of Us or The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones or, you know, none of those are anything like this film. And so what we what we don't have is the big media support, the the machine that you see with the networks from Disney percolating down or Netflix percolating down. Because it's like, okay, you think about the story of We Are The World. Well, you got Harry Bel afonte calls Ken Cragen, and then they bring in Quincy, Michael, and Lionel, and they generate a hundred million dollars to go help feed people. That's not the drama that the networks are looking for.
Chip Duncan:And so are they willing to put money into that kind of story? The answer we found out is no. But in fact, what the world really needs are stories about people like Claire Berchinger or like Belafonte or like, you know, the and it's and we you can do the story of Mohammed Amin because he's so versatile. It's an episodic tale, but it's like he is in the thick of Black Hawk Down and Idi Amin and Emperor Bukassa. He's in the thick of it as a journalist.
Chip Duncan:But this film, it it flies in the face of the media environment in which we live in. And so for me, that was probably the big surprise. Oh, you want to tell a story about successful, generous, empathetic people? It's like, no, it's kind of contrary to the media environment. So that was
Merry:Well well, have to say when you win your Oscar for it, I think a lot of people will wanna air it.
Cathy:Well, I still but that chip what you described is a very unpleasant surprise. It's not at all what you thought you would be hit with, an unpleasant surprise like that.
Merry:And we've touched on this From your
Salim Amin:lips to God's ears.
Chip Duncan:They like celebrities, so we had that. We did have celebrity, but it's not kind of, you know, good news story that you would typically see. It is inspiring, though.
Cathy:Yes. Mhmm. And we touched on this quite a bit already, so we can maybe gloss over this question that I had. But, Salim, you were very young when your father, the late great Moamin, was out there shooting the famous footage of the famine and a lot of war footage. So how do you feel this impacted you?
Cathy:Do you feel you've covered that already? Mhmm.
Salim Amin:Yeah. I I mean, like I said, I do you know, I was not aware of the significance of the work that he did at that age. I was a teenager and, you know, really had more important things on my mind, you know, like partying and, you know, what else to do rather than, you know, realizing the what he was doing. And it was always like, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Salim Amin:He helped make We Are the World, and do they know it's Christmas? But I didn't really understand the importance of that work until until after he died, to be honest. You know, it's when I when I made when I started, you know, going into his life a lot more, when I made the documentary Moe and Me on on his life, that's when I started understanding the impact of what he did and the impact of the archive that we have. And yeah. So he was significant.
Salim Amin:He was a significant person in the history of this continent. But often you know, but it's been thirty years since he died, so people forget. And we try and keep that memory going, but people do forget, and people move on. Mhmm. These days, you know, I mean, it's it's you know, you're lucky if you get not even fifteen seconds of fame.
Salim Amin:You're lucky if you get three seconds of fame when you go. You know? And and so, you know, the fact that people still do remember
Chip Duncan:I'll add to that by just saying that both
Salim Amin:thirty years later is And it's a nice thing. It's it's nice household names. It's heartwarming that people do remember the one that he contributed.
Chip Duncan:Somewhere north of 60,000,000
Salim Amin:people in that
Chip Duncan:country will,
Salim Amin:you know, bring it
Chip Duncan:back to hundred million. They know who these guys are. And Salim and I have experienced this personally. If ever in doubt, you go to Washington, D. C, and you will never pay for a cab ride if your driver happens to be Ethiopian, because the minute you bring up Mohammed Amin, everybody knows who Mohammed Amin is in Ethiopia and in Kenya.
Chip Duncan:I mean, both.
Cathy:He's so gratifying.
Chip Duncan:He's credited with saving millions of lives. That footage I mean, if you think about it, here's something your listeners and viewers will relate to. If if there had not been a camera photographing George Floyd, that story would not have taken on the the power that it did and changed, you know, the the whole Black Lives Matter movement here in The United States. It all traces back, and then you look at the same thing in the continent. Moe's footage saved millions of lives, and you can't dispute that.
Merry:Just the impact of that statement. It's powerful. And it the film, in relation to what Kathy asked you, Salim, you must have been emotionally impacted, and you must still be every time you see this footage or discover new footage. And also on the same note, Chip just working on stand together of one stand together as one must have changed your I wanted to get that right. It it must have changed your personal view on social activism and social issues.
Merry:Did did it not?
Chip Duncan:Well, I I for me personally, I've I've worked as a photojournalist in a number of these very similar places and covered with Salim, Northern Ethiopia a number of times. But I've also worked on a lot of humanitarian projects around the world. So this has been, for me personally, the film is very much in sync with the mission of our company and very much in sync with the kinds of films and books that I set out to write forty years ago when we started the company. So I think it represent in a way, it's like a pinnacle of what I think is important. It's a visualization of I'm just talking about our own work here, but the kinds of things that we've done in Colombia, Nicaragua, Ghana, Ethiopia, Myanmar.
Chip Duncan:It's very much in sync with who we are and what we do. So I really love seeing this story about Moe and Ken and Harry come out and and Claire, all of them. It's so it's so important for people to see what's possible and then participate.
Merry:Yes. What's possible.
Cathy:Yeah. We thank you so much for this. Is there anything else either of you would like to share with our audience that we haven't touched on yet?
Salim Amin:I think you guys have covered pretty much everything. I mean, you know what? The obvious question is, you know, where can people see the film and and, you know, where where you know, how is it out? As Chip has touched on, we're we're working on, you know, the distribution side of it. We're working with with a to get it out there.
Salim Amin:There is going to be private screenings and university screenings happening, you know, for the rest of this year, film festivals as well. It's just premiered at the Milwaukee Film Festival this last week, and there's one more screening, I think, on the May 7 in Milwaukee as well. So there will be other festivals. We hope to come to Newport Beach. Is it Chip in in in October?
Salim Amin:We'll be at Newport Beach, or the film will be there. I don't know if we'll be there, but the film will be there. And and so we're hoping that people will be able to catch it. And if we can get it on we we are hoping that it'll be on public TV as well in the fall.
Chip Duncan:And out of
Salim Amin:Final The US, so it'll be it'll we'll hopefully have it on public that we're all aware of and So that millions of people can look at it and
Chip Duncan:A man with a chain being trying
Salim Amin:to move and inspired by all
Chip Duncan:of those programs, and in particular USAID. When USAID goes away, literally millions of people on the continent now no longer have the resources they need through the PEPFAR program. So if you're HIV positive, if you have nutrition issues, you name it, all of that changes. But I wanna maybe, from a personal perspective, close with a story from a screening I did of the film in Budapest in January. So I spoke and screened the film downtown Budapest, and usually when you're done with a screening, there's a handful of people that wanna come up and talk about their own experiences or give you feedback on the film.
Chip Duncan:And after two or three people were in line, and finally a guy walks up toward the He was the last guy in lane. He walks up and he was in, I would say, his early fifties, and he had a very dour look on his face. And I looked at him and I thought, is this gonna punch me out? I mean, what's going on? And I said, how can I help you?
Chip Duncan:And he said, well, I just wanna tell you. Because obviously you know how to make a film, it's very powerful, and I really wish I hadn't seen it. And I paused, and I said, okay. And he said, because now I have to do something. And this is almost verbatim of our conversation, and then of course we got into what that means and how he interacts in the city of Budapest, etcetera.
Chip Duncan:But he admitted to me that he had never helped anyone. Mean, he literally said those words, and I thought, hey, if this film inspires you to do something, whatever that might be, and the examples are many of things that we can all do, then we served our purpose. And I've told that story in front of audiences, and he, I'm sure, has gone on to do things to help other people.
Cathy:Beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you for sharing that.
Merry:Way to sum up. Thank you both. It's been really exciting to talk to both of you. Our guests on Late Boomers today have been Salim Amin and Chip Duncan, the filmmakers with a new documentary called stand together as one, the famine, the music, the impact. It's been a great privilege to have both of you here.
Merry:Thank you.
Cathy:Thank Thank you. And, yes, thank you. And for thank you to our listeners for listening to our late boomers podcast and subscribing to our late boomers podcast channel on YouTube. And listen in next week when you'll meet life coach
Salim Amin:Addison. Great time. Thank you both.
Cathy:You can listen on any podcast platform, and we do appreciate you. Please follow us on Instagram at I am Kathy Worthington and at I am Mary Elkins and at late boomers. Thanks again so so very much, Salim Amin and Chip Duncan.
Cathy:Thank you for joining us on late boomers, the podcast that is your guide to creating a third act with style, power, and impact. Please visit our website and get in touch with us at late boomers dot biz. If you would like to listen to or download other episodes of late boomers, go to ewnpodcastnetwork.com.
Merry:This podcast is also available on Spotify, Apple Podcast, and most other major podcast sites. We hope you make use of the wisdom you've gained here and that you enjoy a successful third act with your own style, power, and impact.
