Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Tue 30 Oct only
Alrick Brown / USA/France/Democratic Republic of the Congo / 2011 / 100 min
It’s estimated that close to 800,000 people were killed in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Some reports have claimed that around 20% of the country’s population were massacred in no more than 100 days. How one explains and documents such tragedy, as an outsider let alone a Rwandan citizen, is almost impossible. Recovery is a slow, gradual and transformative process taking years of forgiveness and understanding, communicating states of total grief and mourning.
Alrick Brown has embarked on something monumental with Kinyarwanda (the film’s title originating from the Bantu sub-branch language spoken across the country). He has tried to tell multiple stories, from perpetrator to victim, child to adult, Tutsi to Hutu, intertwining accounts of Rwandans who lived through the massacre. It’s an intelligent way of narrativising the context, turning away from linear structures to allow for numerous journeys to be seen on screen. Using elements of documentary film, Brown has strived to remain culturally sensitive and factual, and while this is successful, there is a dependence on Hollywood techniques which is misplaced. Action sequences and camera effects have brought over-dramatisation and filmic indulgence to a delicate subject, instead of driving even harder at the way these stories can be told. It is a noble project which delivers the unknown accounts of Rwandan torture, but is occasionally lost in overproduction.
Showing as part of Africa in Motion Film Festival 2012.
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Comments from Africa in Motion:
The screening is kindly sponsored by the Rwandan High Commission and the Rwanda Scotland Alliance and will be followed by a discussion with a representative from the Rwandan High Commission. The discussion will be preceded by the screening of a pre-recorded message from the director of Kinyarwanda, Alrick Brown.
After the screening there will be an opening of an exhibition of Rwandan visual artists at Out of the Blue Drill Hall, Edinburgh.