MATU

Matu is a Kenyan young boy with rap in his veins. His songs tell real life: his people’s wishes and the dreams of children like him. He’s singing one of these songs few minutes before everything starts: his rhymes wish that a white man would come at last, a white man free from any western rules, who’s willing to let himself be guided by the ancient African wisdom.
Davide (Mr David) is a forty-year-old Italian tea travelling salesman. He embodies all the clichés of the stressed European man; not used to facing unexpected events and always in a rush, Davide is in Africa for his tea plantations.
During an adventurous night journey, Davide’s car suddenly breaks down and stops so his driver, a local boy called Gatama, has to set off in the darkness and look for help. Davide remains alone, frightened by the darkness and its dangers; but tiredness slowly overcomes him and he falls asleep. The following morning when he wakes up Davide finds himself alone, his only company a lonely cow so, after some hesitations, he decides to move and look for Gatama. He soon reaches a nearby unknown village where he stops in a bar to recover from the heat and fatigue.
It’s in this moment that Davide meets Matu who’s just arrived at the bar during his daily milk delivery around the village. They start talking and Matu makes Davide follow him to tell him “the best ever told story” which Davide boasts about. In front of a group of enthusiastic and attentive children Davide tells the story of a Queen and her two sons: due to a magic spell the baby risks contracting his mother’s illness; to avoid all this the elder brother decides to set off to look for the magic potion which can rescue his brother. The child will come back with a magic cow whose milk will allow the Queen to grow her baby healthily.
There is sometimes more magic in real life than in a tale, so they discover that Mr David’s tale is Matu’s true story, Matu who, born of a HIV-positive mother, could grow up healthy thanks to the milk of a cow. At the end of the story Gatama arrives at last with the repaired car. Mr David and Matu sit down in the back of the pick-up, aware that their meeting has changed them forever.

THE FILM, TOLD BY CACTUS

Matu is the result of the cooperation between Cactus studios and the COSV (Committee for the coordination of voluntary organizations), an NGO operating for over 40 years in the field of the social solidarity in difficult geographical areas in Africa, South America, Asia, Middle East and Europe.
Since the very beginning of its realization this short film has had the style of a comedy: together with the COSV we have in fact decided not to insist on the evident drama of the virus, nor on the dramatic conditions of the patients, but we preferred to set off the beauty and joy of a project whose purpose is to pull many children away from a fate adverse from the very beginning of their lives.
How to describe a child’s happiness and hope if not telling his possibility of having a dream, maybe unlikely or difficult but that can give him the chance of a future?
The first thing western people think of a child’s dreams is that they belong to everybody, with no geographical or social distinctions. On the contrary, meeting the most difficult realities in many parts of the world we have realized that dreaming is a luxury belonging only to few.
Since the beginning it has been clear that the protagonist of our film, Matu, would have the possibility to grow up strong and healthy taking with him his projects about the future and its legendary enterprises: it was through the naïve rapture for life that we wanted to tell about the COSV big result.
Our Matu would have the possibility to have a glorious dream: to become an all over the world famous rapper.
We then thought to put aside him our point of you, that is the one of the Western Man, played by a fifty-year-old businessman, Davide (Mr. David), who arrives in Africa thinking he knows it as it has been described to him, through the clichés which live on in our opinions.
This meeting is explosive. It seems that the two, who have never met before, know about each other much more than what is possible: Matu evokes Davide’s coming and his African misadventures; Davide, on the other hand, will tell Matu’s story, how Matu could grow up thanks to the COSV programme to help his family.
The two parallel universes soon get in touch and mix together thanks to their capacity to tell about themselves and above all to listen. The wall of reality is knocked down to become a dream-like tale almost an initiation rite of each one to the things of the other, a meeting tale.
Thus the cow and the milk, important symbols of the project, have a salvific meaning, characterized by a magic timing thanks to which they are in the right places at the right moment, ready to give the plot its turning points.

THE PROJECT

The project purpose is to set off a new COSV challenge in the county of Murang’a, near Mount Kenya, about two hour driving from Nairobi.
Realized together with the cooperation of the local association SLICO, it has as main purpose to reduce the HIV transmission risks and to improve life conditions of those families affected by the disease; the prevention programme focuses on real needs and on the urgent need of a change in their behaviours.
COSV has given a cow to every HIV-positive pregnant woman so that she could wean her baby from the cow’s milk .
This simple thing has avoided the transmission of the virus from mother to child, and has also allowed to sell the remained milk thus becoming a little but steadily income for the family: the project is in fact addressed mainly to single women (often forsaken by their husbands after contracting the virus) who are often in a very difficult financial situation.

FILM FEATURES:

Title: Matu
Country: Italy
Year: 2009
Genre: Comedy
Time: 22 minutes
Directed by: Luca Mariani

Starring: Matu: Stephen Maina
Davide (Mr David): Francesco Migliaccio

Produced by: COSV

Plot: it is the story of the meeting between a Kenyan child whose dream is to become a famous rapper and a western businessman Davide, from this meeting there will be the opportunity to know Murang’à ‘s reality and the NGO Cosv project.

Written by: Vincenzo Ricchiuto
Photography by: Roberto Barbierato
Sound engineer: Paolo Benvenuti
Director Assistant: Erica Gianesini
Edited by: Romina Bagatin

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