Article about the filming of "Sometimes in April", a movie about the events of the Rwandan genocide whose tenth anniversary will be commemorated in April.
One of the many challenges faced is to retell the story without resurrecting the ethnic divisions which fuelled the conflict in the first place.
Since 1994 Rwanda's Tutsi-led government has sought to wipe out the ethnic labels that divided the country. In the past Rwandans were required to carry identification cards that classified them as either majority Hutu or minority Tutsi. Now even talking of the labels could land one in jail as a "divisionist."
But Mr. Peck's movie had to raise the ethnic labels that were such a part of the events of 1994. His staff recruited schoolgirls at Kigali's most exclusive private school, but most appeared to be Tutsis. Hutu girls were signed up on the streets.
"Sometimes in April" is being directed by Raoul Peck who also made the film Lumumba about Patrice Lumumba, the Congo's first post-colonial prime minister.
Posted by alokem at February 17, 2004 10:04 AMHow in the world would anyone glorify a man directly involved in the massacres of the Luluas in 1960 in Luluabourg/kananga and the death of 450 belgian men, women and children in the Stanleyville/Kisangani church? And many others! The atrocities fomented by Mr Lumumba and Mr Mulele know no paralels in the history of colonisation and de-colonisation of Africa! (except for the whites of South Africa). The facts are there! I am the son of a man who was deeply involved in the evacuation of all belgians and other foreigners out of the Congo in 1960. My father knew personally and very well Mr Lumumba prior to him being the Prime Min. of the Kasavubu administration! My father facilitated his coming to Luluabourg during that very same evacuation when he promised the anxious crowd of Belgians that he'd garantee their safety, while ordering the massacres all around the Kasai prov. and in Stanleyville! Shortly after my father met him very in Stanleyville, staying at the airport "guesthouse", surrounded by Soviet flight crews, who were getting drunk on vodka in adjacent rooms, singing "Kalinka", while the Tupolevs and Ilyouchines transport planes where idling day and night ready to take off and take Katanga.....Mr Lumumba is no hero! He has commited crimes against humanity and I have photographs to prove it...Let's be honest for the sake of historical truth! It is time also today to denounce the goings on of the Belgians and the Frenchs, who today are kissing baby Kabila and his cohort of Lumumbists and Mulelistes asses! Many of us kids from the Belgian Congo whose childhood where decimated and uprooted by the historical forces in play at the time, deserve more than the glorification of a racist murderers...i.e Lumumba and Mulele! Need photos? I'll be glad to share them...with anyone interested in the truth! Interestingly enough, after my father's death in 2002 (right after the Belgian "apologized" for Lumumba's assassination),I could not penetrate my fathers house (near Arcachon) for about six months...a lot of documents were stolen including the information that, many years later, things had not changed in the region! In fact the Tutsi genocide was directly perpetrated by the French [Jacques or (Michel?) Foucart], with the direct help of Boutros-Boutros Ghali, Gen. Sec. of the UN, who personally gave the orders to a Canadian Officer who sent a french Paratrooper officer to disarm the Belgian paratroopers in charge of the presidential palace and vice-president security, while a Belgian on the "Radio des mille collines" called the Hutus to start swinging theitr machete! Why the French..? For one and single reason...."La Francophonie" is seriously shrinking in Africa with the coming of a new generation of leaders who are mostly educated in America. In fact, the Hutu-Tutsi government of the time, moderate and highly educated was pro-american! Why didn't Clinton do anything about it? Maybe one should ask Christiane Amanpour of CNN, whose husband was assistant State sec./ under Albright...I'm drawing a blank with his name at the moment. Happy rantings!
Posted by: Eric J. Claessens at March 11, 2004 12:43 PM