i watched jonas d'adesky's kwibuka at the opening of a film festival where the minister of youth and culture gave what was in all other respects a completely run-of-the-mill film festival opening speech but in the middle of it said - i don't remember the exact words but something along the lines of: "to all the young people in the audience, beware of what cinema shows you, don't imitate what you see on the screen, use your judgement about what is true to yourself and to our traditional values" - i remember that phrase specifically, "traditional values". maybe it was supposed to be a platitude or a nod to some existing policy program i don't know about, but it felt frankly hostile; i've never heard anyone declare war on cinema like that in the opening speech to a film festival! and then we watched the movie and it's about the aftermath of genocide, and it's so polished, filmed like a promotional video for the tourism board, even more so than some other films in that tradition, and it's taking a line on the reconciliation process, a line that has the director saying in his video introduction that he plans to tour the country showing it to spread the "important message", a line that has the national development board and its international partners showing up as funders in the credits. the beginning and ending scenes show a meeting between a victim and perpetrator. and in the ending scene, there's a camera in the frame, filming their encounter, a camera which is part of the process. the perpetrator declares in song that his prison sentence will purge him of what he has done, while the victim puts her arms to the sides of her head, hands pulling at her hair, in agony. is she covering her ears? i don't know what to do with her expression, what she's doing with her hands. they sit there like this for a long time. the camera is saying, this is one in a series of successful reconciliations which will become the historical record of a healed and unified nation. her body is saying something completely different. why, at the end of this film, this film with a happy ending where families and friendships are mended by putting the past behind us, this scene? i am probably too quick to see censor dodging where there may be none, but i'm still thinking of the minister, i'm still thinking of the funders in the credits. i can't think of these bookend scenes as anything but a direct reference to grey matter, the first feature film ever made in this country, a film about being denied government funding for refusing to make a film exactly like this one, a film that begins and ends on these frames where the recording equipment sits in the exact same place as in that final scene, that ends, in fact, on a film crew surrounding a genocide survivor watching someone sing:
last month a week-long lgbt+ film festival was cancelled hours before the first screening for reasons the organizers never explained but everyone assumes were down to the authorities; the first screening was going to be gaël kamilindi's taxi moto, a short film about a filmmaker whose plans to film a gay love story get shut down by the government, the irony........ someone on letterboxd called kwibuka a téléfilm, and yes, it is, but it's also that final scene. i don't think i'm reading too much into it. this is a diaspora film; the incentive structure of its creators follows from that. you want to make something different, but given the circumstances and your own expectations and standards for your work you can "only" make this, so you make it and you put this scene at the end to say: remember why this is being filmed. it makes perfect sense. is what your careful complicity bought you worth it? i want to believe it is. at the end of the day, i have no reason to believe that the minister had anything against this particular film - if anything i think her statements were probably directed at the closing film of the festival, abba makama's the kids are ok, to which i can easily imagine her objections - but it was kind of surreal to be warned again and again, from both sides of the table, at a film event, not to trust the picture!
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