Anyone else seen it?

If you get a chance to see it, I would recommend this film as an unsettling look at how Westerners "help" poor people in Africa. The thesis of the film is that "poverty" in Africa is a resource that Western interests - namely aid organisations and the media - exploit consciously or unconsciously so as to garner a living. The money provided by charitable sources and governments to aid agencies, for instance, mainly goes back to Westerners via wages and use of products made in the West.

The film is made disturbing by the fact that we, the audience, are made to understand that the suffering of Africans in places like the Congo is, in effect, a product we consume on the nightly news. It is clear from the journalists interviewed that "good news" from Africa does not sell.

Nor does the filmmaker spare himself. He admits at one point to being vulnerable to the same "moral vanity" that he sees as motivating other Westerners seeking to improve the lot of impoverished Africans. His efforts to install neon-light artworks in poor Congolese villages is a powerful metaphor for the weird mismatch of African needs and Western solutions.