Friday, August 1, 2008

August 3, 2008 Colonial Misunderstanding/Le Malentendu Colonial

Producer/Director: Jean-Marie Teno

From the IMDB films database:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0474246/synopsis

Teno's film looks into the complexities arising from European colonialism in Africa, focusing on Namibia and Cameroon in particular. He illustrates the role of missionaries in colonizing, interviewing modern historians and professors to dig to the bottom of this deeply rooted issue in African history that has shaped the way of life in many formerly colonized nations.

The film shows the complete disregard of local traditions and beliefs by the European colonizers, along with the supplication of their own ideals and values. Teno asserts that Europe needs to change the modern approach, and one of the first steps to this is the acknowledgment of their wrongdoing in the first place.

"Teno has been making a series of eloquent documentaries about the African legacy of colonialism. In this most recent work, Teno tells the story of the devastation of a continent with wit, irony, and historical passion."
Linda Williams, University of California-Berkeley

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Interview with Mweze Ngangura



I’ll tell you all about my life, but my life is not a movie....

Ousmane Sembene’s Mandabi is the first African film that had an impact on me. It showed me that the realities of my daily life in an African city were movie material. Until then, I had imagined that movies took place somewhere else, with people who did not look like me, living realities which had nothing to do with me. With Mandabi, I could relate to what was depicted. That was a first motivation for me to become a filmmaker. But in everything there is always a mix of chance and will. Two of the Jesuit fathers teaching in my school were interested in the cinema. Father Beyens organized many screenings for us, and Father De Wilde had us write essays about the films. I became his assistant projectionist and my schoolmates started to call me the “filmmaker.”

Another stroke of luck was that I had applied for a scholarship to go to Europe, and in my city of Bukavu I was the only one selected. I was required to study something which didn’t yet exist in my country. So, I applied for the study of cinema, not knowing anything about the differences between a filmmaker, a camera operator, a director
of photography, an editor, etc. My friends said that I had enrolled in a hippie school, but I never regretted my decision.

The beginnings of cinema in the Congo were driven by the missionaries. Apart from the Sembene classic you mentioned, were there other films during that period that motivated you even more to take up cinema and maybe correct these images?

Apart from Ghana which had an official film unit, Congo — it was “Belgian” Congo at the time was one of the rare countries with a cinema for an “indigenous” audience. They showed us how to acquire the traits of European civilization. But they [the missionaries] gave people the opportunity to see movies made for them instead of only Western and Hindi movies. Screenings were in the open. A sheet was spread in the main square, and when dusk set in, we gathered for these silent films. A white host explained in a microphone what was happening on screen. I have good memories of that.

Before you left Congo to study in 1970, were there any local filmmakers that you
worked with?

No, the profession did not exist as such. At the time of independence in 1960, when the missionaries left, this cinema automatically stopped.

Describe how your work has evolved from the documentaries to the first fiction
film and then the latest film. What were some of your influences?

I consider myself a “traveler.” I was born in a city but returned to my grandparents’ village with great joy every year. Then, in Europe, I tried to explore the society, not as an exotic African but as a human being discovering other human beings, who were at the same time strange and interesting — this is something that transpires in my films.

I returned from Europe to Kinshasa and discovered a big African city. I think of myself
as a filmmaker of the Diaspora. I feel at ease everywhere I go. I have known both colonial and post-colonial Africa. I live in Brussels, but I am still one of the closest advisers of our traditional Chief in the village.

I don't like to think in intellectual terms; I am very observant but I don't spend time boring people with my observations. I am very interested in politics but do not enjoy long political discussions. I keep informed about what is going on, but I have no specific topic of interest. When I started filming, I was more interested in fiction. But circumstances compelled me to make documentaries. I had just shifted from the status of student to that of an assistant professor in the National Institute for the Arts (INA) at the University of Kinshasa. I came from Bukavu, which is in a different time zone, east of the capital, and I was fascinated by Kinshasa. So, I started to make a documentary about the city. The idea came after I made a short film about
Chéri Samba the painter, who has a sharp vision of the city. Kin Kiesse was my own
subjective perception of the city.

So, the documentary that you did on Chéri-Samba influenced Kin Kiesse.

Yes indeed, from Chéri-Samba to Kin Kiesse there is almost no difference. Actually, it is Chéri-Samba which convinced the French Ministry of Co-operation and the TV channel France 2, who co-produced the film, and also Congolese Television that I could make a film on Kinshasa.

At the time, they wanted to create a series on African cities seen through the eyes of African filmmakers. But in the end only Kin Kiesse was made. Let me follow that thread from Chéri-Samba to Kin Kiesse. Then you come to La vie est belle which is also about the city. Yes. The documentary is the best school of fiction that exists. A documentary gives the opportunity to look at things, to understand reality, to make reality accessible, tangible, and, at the same
time, your personal view of it. So, Kin Kiesse and Chéri-Samba were like a rehearsal before La vie est belle.

As you will see, when I made Pièces d’identités, there were also documentaries that had laid the groundwork for it. Changa-Changa was about the cultural mixed of music in Brussels. Then Le roi, la vache et le bananier [The King, the Cow, and the Banana Tree] reflected on our traditional royal system in the modern world. Pièces d'Identités further developed these themes. Then, Lettre à Makoura: les dernier Bruxellois [Letter to Makoura: The Last Inhabitants of Brussels] which is a video letter to a cousin who has never left the village.

In Pièces d’identités you observe Europe’s many levels. You portray the diversity of the white community in Brussels. When Mani Kongo gets away from the hotel where he first lodged, he goes to what could be considered a lower-class neighborhood and really becomes part of the community there. You showed the nature of that community, the humanity of those individuals.

One of the best compliments I received was from an African in Milan who said that my film was like psychotherapy for Africans who live in Europe. Perhaps I made the film to cure myself. I wanted to say, OEI am a normal human being. Stop looking at me like an exotic object.’ Some of my Belgian friends didn’t like the film. Although the film had already been widely screened to international acclaim, the Commission refused financing; they said it was not good. I had already written the screenplay for Pièces d’identités before I made all these documentaries. I made them as I was looking for financing. But in the end they were the opportunity to thoroughly rehearse before I made Pièces d'identités.

You don’t believe in a political cinema, yet your films bring out many political issues.
Would you characterize La vie est belle as a political film?

In a way. Kin Kiesse was filmed under a regime where every public expression had to be official. Yet in my film you do not see the governor or hear important party members or any political cant. A young painter, not very well known, did the commentary. Everything gave the impression that I was doing a counter-revolutionary film against the party and the state. La vie est belle, being a continuation of Kin Kiesse had a corrosive edge. I portrayed a marginal social milieu in Kinshasa, the world of shoeshine boys and boys who fend for themselves. It was not the official image. It was political as it showed daily realities. It is true that the film doesn’t give a clear idea of the repressive, anti-democratic regime under which we were living, but I went quite far, given the circumstances. Remember that it was forbidden to even walk around with a camera and take pictures. And I was filming an overcrowded bus that was about to break down.

The film does not make any political statement, but it talks about politics in ways that people might be able to decode.

The film is meant for people who might not have the opportunity to see it, as it could be censored. Political language that is too close to caricature has no credibility. And if the caricature is too strong, it lacks sensibility, and people do not feel like seeing it. You do not talk about famine for an hour and a half to some one who starves. You do not talk to someone who suffers under dictatorship about his problems. Politics is only a part of our desire to express our vision. Beyond politics, there is philosophy, love, humor.

There are many elements which will appeal to people. If you reduce it to one dimension, people fail to feel close to you, because you present a distorted world.
Cinema is entertainment, and you don’t want to discourage people from going to
the movies or encourage them to turn to Hong Kong films or Westerns — a filmmaker is not a journalist. There are elements of the oral tradition that influence your style, your structure, the language that you use in your films. And as Congo is a center of African music and Papa Wemba is one of these recognizable, familiar representatives of that kind of music, what is the importance of those elements— music, oral tradition, and musicians like Papa Wemba?

Papa Wemba is from the city, but he respects tradition greatly. He said to me: ‘If I was not a musician of contemporary music and if I had lived in my village, I would be a griot.’ And truly his voice sometime is reminiscent of a “griot.” Oral tradition is the most typical expression of Africa. Writing was introduced later. It was a great trauma, this so-called Gutenberg era. Even today, sixty or seventy percent of the population lives in villages and still relies on the oral tradition. Perhaps technology, like digital TV or electronic calculators, will bring us back to a world that is very close to the oral tradition. You find mothers who do commerce and do not know how to write but know how to use a calculator. You find people who cannot write a novel but can use a digital camera. Digital technology is a liberating force....

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Mweze Ngangura was born in Zaire in 1950 and studied at the Institut des Arts et Diffusion (IAD) in Brussels. From 1976 to 1985, he taught at the Institut Nationale des Arts (INA) and the Studio Ecole de la Voix du Zaire in Kinshasa. His short film Kin-Kiesse was selected as the best documentary at FESPACO in 1983, and Identity Cards won the Grand prize at FESPACO in 1999. His first feature film, Life is Rosy, featuring music star Papa Wemba, was one of the all-time popular hits of African cinema.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER
Mbye Cham is Associate Professor of African Studies at Howard University. He has published numerous articles on African film and co-edited Black Frames: Critical Perspectives On Black Independent Cinema (MIT Press, 1988), Ex-Iles: Essays On Caribbean Cinema (Africa World Press, 1992), African Experiences of Cinema (BFI, 1996).

Copyright © African Film Festival, Inc. All rights reserved.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Coming up on July 6th: Pièces d'identités (Pieces of Identity)

A brief history of the Congo and the film courtesy of California Newsreel:

When the European powers carved up the African continent in the late 19th century, the Belgian King, Leopold I, and other Belgian notables claimed the vast, mineral rich lands of the Congo River basin as their own. Even by the abysmal standards of colonial rule, the Belgian regime was unusually callous and brutal; thousands of Congolese died working under slave-like conditions in Belgian mines and plantations.

Belgium abruptly granted independence to Congo in 1960 and Patrice Lumumba was elected its first president. He was felt to be too independent or "pro-Soviet" for Belgium or U.S interests. After just a few months, Lumumba was deposed in a coup led by Joseph Mobutu and murdered, possibly with CIA involvement, in January 1961. For the next 30 years, Mobutu, a steadfast ally of the U.S., pillaged the country which he renamed Zaire. During his rule, he accumulated several billion dollars in personal wealth, a sum equal perhaps not coincidentally to the entire national debt of Zaire.

When Mobutu's health deteriorated in 1996, the country erupted into a brutal civil war pitting central government forces against a number of guerrilla groups. The situation threatened to flare up into a regional conflict since each group received support from a different neighboring African state. Eventually rebel commander, Laurent Kabila, triumphed and installed himself as the new president. He has proven undemocratic and unpopular himself so civil war continues to smolder throughout the country. As an example, the African portions of this film had to be shot in Cameroon because it was too dangerous to take a crew into Congo.

Filmmaker Mweze Ngangura made this film to speak to those whose families, migrated from Africa to Europe and now find themselves with questions about their origins. He hoped that this film would help them with these concerns.

About the Film:


Mani Kongo (Essomba), the venerable king of the Bakongo (in Congo), sets out alone on a quest for his long-lost daughter, Mwana (Mesa), whom he sent to Belgium to study medicine many years before. As soon as he arrives he finds his identity challenged by the attitudes of the Westerners, both black and white, with whom he comes into conflict. At the airport the custom officials want to charge him duty on his royal “fetishes,” mistaking them for objets d’art. In Brussels he is robbed of his money and papers, then evicted from a church-run hostel. Circumstances finally force him to pawn his royal regalia, symbolically stripping him of his identity. In this modern fairy tale, the uprooted king is an Everyman forced to endure the crime, corruption, decadence and racism of European life in order to save his daughter from a potentially soul-destroying rootlessness. In the end, everything works out for the best. Kongo returns home with his daughter and his new-found friend (and love-interest of Mwana) the mulatto, Chaka-Jo (Daulne).

Friday, June 6, 2008

What You Missed on June 1st: Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death

As part of the African Film Series at the Parkway Theater in Oakland, we are glad to bring to you films that reflect the experiences of people of African descent.

Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death
Director: Peter Bate
100 minutes-Documentary
English/French/Dutch with English subtitles

This true, shocking, astonishing story of what the Belgians did in the Congo was forgotten for over 50 years. Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death, describes Leopold II, King of the Belgium's private colony of the Congo between 1885 and 1908 as a gulag labor camp of shocking brutality. Leopold posed as the protector of Africans fleeing Arab slave traders, but in reality, he carved out an empire based on terror to harvest rubber. Families were held as hostages, starving to death if the men failed to produce enough wild rubber. Children's hands were chopped off as punishment for late deliveries. The Belgian government has denounced this documentary as a "tendentious (biased) diatribe" for depicting King Leopold II as the moral forebear of Adolf Hitler, responsible for the death of 10 million people in his rapacious exploitation of the Congo. Yet, it is agreed today that the first Human Rights movement was spurred by what happened in the Congo.

For further reading on the subject, check out:
King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Here is the opening clip of "Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death" courtesy of YouTube: