Daring to make an impact

Madonna’s awakening to the crisis in Malawi – an impoverished African nation where one million children are orphaned by AIDS – had many consequences.

She adopted one of those orphans, her 3-year-old son, David. She is building a school there.

And she has told Malawi’s harrowing story in her documentary, “I Am Because We Are.”

With an audience thus far limited to isolated theater screenings, it will be aired for everyone with its TV premiere today – World AIDS Day – at 9 p.m. on Sundance Channel (cable channel 505 in Spokane).

The feature-length film was written, produced and narrated by Madonna (directed by Nathan Rissman). It consults experts including President Bill Clinton and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The film’s real power is its images, which are often dismaying but, here and there, reflect hope and a remarkable will to survive.

“I had many goals,” Madonna said during a recent phone conversation from her Manhattan home.

“I did get to a point where I thought, ‘I’m being overambitious, I’m trying to say too much, I’ll never accomplish it.’ But I feel proud of the fact that I did get to make all my points.”

Among her points: an insistence that any crisis comes with solutions, however hard-won and piecemeal.

The film offers its audience a menu of constructive responses.

“If all you can do is live life in your world in a way that shows you are responsible for the people around you, that’s a course of action,” Madonna said. “People can be of service in large ways and small.”

On the eve of a new presidential administration, Americans seem set on a more idealistic path, she said, however alarmed they may be by economic threats along the way.

“People really are going, ‘Wow! I can no longer ignore what’s going on around me.’ There are changes in the air,” she said.

Madonna’s busy schedule continues apace. But the artistic life that drives it “is a world you create and you inhabit, to express yourself, and to inspire and reach out to other people,” she explained.

“It’s also a consolation, a place you go to protect yourself,” she added.

That’s particularly true now given her highly public split with Guy Ritchie, her husband of eight years, which she described as “not easy, I’m not going to lie.”

Her agenda includes interviews with prospective head mistresses for the girls school she is building in Malawi.

“We’re all going there together at the end of March,” she said, referring to David, 8-year-old son, Rocco and 12-year-old daughter, Lourdes.

As she makes return visits with her children, she says, she wants them to gather insights into the plight of the world’s underprivileged.

“And David’s always going to understand where he came from, and what his life could have been like,” Madonna said.

Meanwhile, she hopes her film can spread the message to millions more.

“It has an impact on the people who see it,” she said. “The more people, the bigger the impact.”