Eric Kabera, a young filmmaker who has nurtured this festival into its 6th incarnation, MC’s the opening night at the swanky Serena Hotel in Kigali city centre.
Kabera, an attractive man dressed in an impeccable suit, conveys an open integrity and a passion for the creative arts. Like so many of his compatriots, he is admirably trilingual and all evening he translates comfortably between French and English.
His own credits include genocide documentaries and drama and he has advised on genocide related films such as Hotel Rwanda, but tonight he speaks his hope that Rwandan filmmakers have moved to other topics.
I am not so sure.
The first of two shorts, both by young Rwandan women barely out of their teens, is described as a comedy and features a man having a very bad day. He is late for work, he loses his job, his car is stolen, he discovers his wife in bed with his best friend, and he retreats to a bar where another friend drinks his glass of alcohol. Unfortunately the drink was the man’s suicide drink and the film ends with his friend dying, falling face first into a birthday cake.
The second short begins with a dissipated young man who is kicked out of his rental home because of his filthy, piggish behaviours. But he haunts the young couple who move into the house; he peeks through cracks, hides in closets, tiptoes into their bedroom. The couple eventually flee but the film ends with a new couple curling lovingly happily into the marital bed, unaware of the continued haunting of the house.
Poison and haunting. Poison a longstanding Rwandan method for ridding oneself of undesirable neighbours and visitors. Poison is rumored to be the reason why Rwandans are reticent about visiting in each other’s houses. And a haunted house, a haunted country. In the film dark passageways, mounting fear, fleeing but no resolution. In the nation, everyone wondering how deep the roots from the veneer of safety and peace that covers the land.
The feature film, a rambling documentary exploration of globalization on mineral rich Congo by a French director, revolves around copper and cobalt mining in the Katanga region. The cast includes Canadian industrialists, poor Congolese diggers, a charismatic district governor who fights corruption and supports the workers but only to a certain degree, Chinese industrialists who acquire a majority interest in a mine and bring road crews to Katanga, corrupt border officials and truckers who export undeclared ore across the border into Zambia, rebellious diggers striking for better conditions, Congolese police in full riot gear rapping their batons rhythmically on their shields, a man in hospital with grenade wounds from the clash between police and workers.
The movie sprawls this way and that like the dead barren hillsides that have replaced the Congolese jungle (a proud manager speaking of how one mine site was forest only nine months ago) but the images are compelling and the conclusion is inescapable: a people and a land held hostage to the expressed needs of international money.
The opening night is perhaps (generously) two thirds African, the rest white folks, muzungu. The westerners are mostly casual while the Africans are dressed smart, the women in very high heels and tight dresses, the men in suits or tailored shirts and pants.
The festival is weeklong and we attend two evenings of screenings at Shokola, a restaurant where muzungus hang out for the free wireless and the good expensive food. It’s an attractive place, the screen set in an outside courtyard edged with greenery. The audience is small and probably 80% muzungu.
The films are erratic in quality – a Zimbabwean documentary, a Kenyan drama, a Ugandan fiction about a child soldier, a maid and a breakdancer (whose lives never actually intersect) – and all seem fluid and dreamlike, without narrative drive. A Zimbabwean documentary about a band of disabled musicians has the strongest storyline and fabulous music.
One afternoon Phil and I see Eric Kabera, now in a long sleeved black cotton shirt, sitting on a bench outside the memorial centre. He has brought the Congolese musician who will be performing at the gala closing. The musician has a Rwandan mother but has not before been in Rwanda and he insisted on coming to the memorial centre immediately on arrival.
We introduce ourselves to Kabera and chat. I ask Kabera how he feels about the film festival and he says, it’s a lot of work! He says, from the inside it is sometimes difficult to see the successes.
I am generous in my appreciation, because film viewing is not rooted in Rwandan culture and even in Kigali it is difficult to find a night out where one can watch a film or listen to a book reading or view a dance performance.
He describes a slow, small but positive change in the growth of Rwandan filmmaking and an accompanying audience.
I tell him I liked the choice of ‘Katanga Business’ for the opening night because it wove together interconnected global issues. He nods, his hands moving to show that interconnection.
“The genocide will always be who we are,” he says, “but I want to make other movies.”
His upcoming full-length drama, to be released in October, features three Rwandan children making a long trek to South Africa for the opening of the World Cup. They encounter life in all its forms; the promo says “hippos and heists, find new friends and face up to such issues as AIDS and child prostitution”.
Watch for it.
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