Six Films, from Rwanda and Beyond: last day
Join us on e-flux Video & Film for the last day of École du soir, a six-part program of films, video works, and interviews from Rwanda and beyond put together by Christian Nyampeta as the inaugural program in the online series Artist Cinemas.
École du soir has featured films by Kivu Ruhorahoza, Rahima Gambo, Philbert Aimé Mbabazi, Amelia Umuhire, Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa, and Wanuri Kahiu; with interviews with the filmmakers by Natacha Nsabimana, Ogemdi Ude, Aïcha Diallo, Yasmina Price, Andros Zins-Browne, and Shariffa Ali.
For this last day, all films in the program will be available again through Wednesday, June 10, 11:59pm EST for a special repeat screening.
Stay tuned to Artist Cinemas with a new program of films and interviews starting next week, organized by Oleksiy Radynski.
Artist Cinemas presents École du soir: Six Films, from Rwanda and Beyond
Kivu Ruhorahoza, Matière Grise (Grey Matter), 2011
101 minutes
With an interview with the filmmaker by Natacha Nsabimana
Rahima Gambo, A Walk, 2018
13:47 minutes
With an interview with the filmmaker by Ogemdi Ude
Philbert Aimé Mbabazi, Keza Lyn, 2017
27 minutes
With an interview with the filmmaker by Aïcha Diallo
Amelia Umuhire, Polyglot Ep. 2: Le Mal du pays (Homesickness), 2015
10:41 minutes
With an interview with the filmmaker by Yasmina Rice
Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa, Promised Lands, 2015–2018
20 minutes
With an interview with the filmmaker by Andros Zins-Browne
Wanuri Kahiu, Pumzi, 2009
21:52 minutes
With an interview with the filmmaker by Shariffa Ali
Excerpt from the interview with filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu by Shariffa Ali:
Shariffa Ali:
In this world, Asha’s divergent behavior is punished by military-like figures of authority who destroy her possessions and sentence her to manual labor. When I think about this, and when I reflect on police brutality in South Africa, Kenya, and even in the USA, I wonder what thoughts you have on this kind of enforcement of law and order?
Wanuri Kahiu:
Well, I think that marginalized behavior is already punished by tying people to manual labor. Prisoners in Kenyan jails are forced to do manual labor. So, it wasn’t much of a stretch in Pumzi to envision punishment as, supposedly, a way to help create a better world. In the film, the utilitarian manual labor is a false ideal enforced upon individuals, and mirrors how punishment is effected in the world today. The idea here is that such punishment makes other people’s lives better, and that the same people who supposedly made life “uninhabitable” become enlisted to amend life. I thought this was a curious thing, and I believe this is actually how prison systems work already. I wanted to try and create, or recreate this differently, in a way as a movement from the punitive justice described above and more towards something like transformative justice, as advocated in the work of Mariame Kaba. Because, of course, law enforcement as we know it, as we can see, has no humanity in it. And the only kind of law enforcement or behavior modification that the world should be thinking about now and in the future has to look like transformative justice. Obviously, that’s not what’s happening at the moment…
Read the full interview here.
About the program
Presented a week each, the six films in École du soir are not direct points of comparison to the current crisis but reflection devices that draw from localized specificities and historical events, in order to make a linking with the pandemic. The sense of isolation, alienation, and despair felt today finds echoes in these films, as their makers navigate the afterlives of the crises that still shape their present. Effectively, although the geographic and economic scales of the current pandemic are unprecedented, the films bring home the fact that some members of the societies in which the films are located feel or have felt as though their existence is a form of quarantine, characterized long before this moment by trans-generational trauma, the disappearance of habitable environments, exile, and even genocidal brutalities that take away the ability to mourn. Each film is accompanied by a newly commissioned dialog that loosely relates the film to the ongoing pandemic.
About the series
Artist Cinemas is a new e-flux platform focusing on exploring the moving image as understood by people who make film. It is informed by the vulnerability and enchantment of the artistic process—producing non-linear forms of knowledge and expertise that exist outside of academic or institutional frameworks. It will also acknowledge the circles of friendship and mutual inspiration that bind the artistic community. Over time this platform will trace new contours and produce different understandings of the moving image.
For more information, contact program [at] e-flux.com.