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Synopsis
filmed and directed by
Hubert Sauper
artistic collaboration,
film music by
Zsuzsanna Várkonyi
journalistic advice
Christian Schüller
produced by
Nikolaus Geyrhalter Vienna,
Hubert Sauper, Paris
translation
Bertrand Brouder, Miryjam Brough, Laurent Delage
sponsored by
BKA Vienna, Ovni Paris,
Land Tirol, Land Kärnten, HMDK Vienna
thanks to
UNHCR, UNICEF, Bazair Kisangani, Yaakov Bar-On,
ORF, DR, YLE, Polska Televizja SA, TVE.
DolbySR
© 1998 by
Hubert Sauper |
Along an overgrown railway track south of the Zairen town
Kisangani, ex-Stanleyville, an expedition of the UN,
together with a handful of journalists discover “lost” refugees.
They are eighty thousand (!) Hutus from far away Rwanda,
the last survivors of three years of hunger and armed
persecution that transpired throughout the vast Congo
basin.
The film traces those refugees into the heart of the rainforest,
follows the hopeless attempts of help. It goes to enigmatic
places where massacres had happened only the night before.
All along the way there are bodies and half-dead side by
side. Nobody knows who was shooting.
“
A whole people on the run at the end of the road...”:
World news headlines.
Some humanitarian aid arrives, slowly. The Hutu-refugees
leave the forest, gathering in two gigantic camps (Kasese,
Biaro). Even though hundreds of refugees die every day
from diseases and malnutrition, new hope arises among the
victims of this forgotten war. The Rwandans are being promised
repatriation with airplanes out of Kisangani.
But only four weeks later, the unprotected UN—camps
are again machine-gun attacked. Deliberately massacred
by parts of the rebel army (AFDL) of today’s “Democratic
Republic Congo Kinshasa” (quoted from a UN—report
from June 11, 97).
During the night of April 25, 1997, eighty thousand men,
women and children disappear again, without leaving a trace,
back into the jungle.
short historical background
Between the Great Lakes (Victoria and Tanganyka), tribal
differences and genocides have a very long and sad
tradition—and they were not only accepted, but
often opportunistically spoiled by the European colonialist
politics.
This is a brief illustration of the latest part of that
history:
When the Rwandan President, a Hutu, died in a plane
crash in April 1994*, Hutu extremists carried out a plan
to eliminate the country’s ethnic Tutsi minority,
killing at least half a million people (Tutsi, moderate
Hutu, and Twa) in a matter of weeks. Then the Rwandese
Patriotic Front returned (many from Ugandan exile), sending
millions of Hutu, fearing vengeance, to neighboring Tanzania
and Zaire. In Goma, eastern Zaire, the world’s
largest refugee-camp ever was site of the on-going tribal
war, many refugees also died through diseases.
In 1995, “the Hutus came home” to their
countries Rwanda and Burundi in front of running TV-cameras.
The military commander of the Multi National Force relief
mission, Colonel Maurice Baril, soon pulled his security
soldiers out of the region. He declared officially to
the world press that there were no more Rwandans in Zaire—and
if so “only few refugees in little pockets—and
that they are in not in urgent need of assistance.…”
This was not true, since there were some 300.000 to
700.000 men, women, children(!) who had fled further
west into the equatorial rainforest, pushed and surrounded
by the Zairan (Congolese) civil war, which was co—financed
and more than welcomed by western realpolitik.
Some one hundred thousand of the “forgotten people,” the
ones who survived, showed up 500 miles west of their
home, where Baril said he’d found no traces of
refugees. They were “re-discovered” by the
UNHCR, dying along the overgrown rail—track between
Ubundu and Kisangani.
The unspeakable story of this documentary film begins
on the very same day, just before Easter 1997.
One hundred years of darkness
This is a strangely ironic and frightening detail:
A friend gave me Joseph Conrad’s famous novel
Heart of Darkness—a book that long afterwards
became tha base of Francis Ford Coppola’s film
Apocalypse Now. Orson Wells had also tried earlier,
but his project had failed. Anyhow, Joseph Conrad’s
experience, his obscure “dive into a green disaster” ended
a hundred and nine years ago after an almost deadly
malaria fever—a hundred miles south of Stanleyville
(today: Kisangani), the very same place where my camera
captured these horrifying images. Conrad had gone there
on a Belgian mission, to choose wood for the construction
of the railway track that is permanently present in
the film Kisangani Diary.
To the last century writer, who also unwillingly witnessed
massacres and unbelievable scenes of “colonial
butchery”, this place meant the Heart of Darkness
of our world, and I quite share his opinion.
On the book’s back cover is printed: “...for
Joseph Conrad it was also a discovery of the unknown
within our proper existence, a journey into the shallow
surface of half-consciousness, penetrating the dark
labyrinth of lie and guilt. Conrad never recovered
from his sickness and his traumatic African memories
for the rest of his lifetime.”
Maybe this is not so important to anyone, but personally
I was more then scared when I read the book. Conrad’s
story threw me back to that stinking, boiling jungle
of nightmares and it made me realize how the dark truth
never really changes, not in a hundred years.
Hubert Sauper
English textlist original
languages: French, Kinerwanese,
Kiswaheli, English
Festivals
In competition Awards
St. Petersburg 98 (Message to man) “CENTAUR” for
best full length documentary”
Paris (cinéma du réel) “Grand
Prix du meilleur court métrage”
New York Film and Video EXPO 99 “Best Documentary
Film 1999”
Nuremberg Human rights Film Festival 99 “Grosser
Preis, bester Film 1999”
Karlovy Vary 98 (international FF/cat.A) “Honorable
Mention of the international jury”
Crakow/ Poland “Don Quichote special Prize” 98
London (One World 98 Award) “2nd best international
documentary 98”
Montevideo (internationalFF Uruguay 98) “Mention
Special de la jury internationale”
Geneva/ NY/ LA. (InternationalHuman.FF) “Best
international documentary 1998”
Amascultura (Port.)
In the program
BERLINALE, 48th international Film Festival (“International
Forum of Young Cinema 1998”)
Amsterdam IDFA 98—(“Reflecting Images”)
Vancouver international film festival 1998
Edinburgh/GB 1999
Seattle international film festival 98
Bruxelles ‘98 “filmer à tout prix”
Ft. Laudadale/Florida 99
Sheffield /GB 99
Sao Paulo/ Brazil international film festival
Lisbonne (“Amascultura 98”)
London, Vienna (International ECHO award 98)
New York/ Museum of Modern Art/ New Documentaries
1998
Tampere Finnland—special program
Munich (internationaldoc. film festival ‘98)
Tel Aviv ‘99
Fribourg /CH
Bruxelles “50eme des droits de l’homme”
Saarbrücken (Max Ophüls Prize ‘98)
Budapest Magyar Film Szemle ‘98
Györ, Hungary (Mediawave 99)
Graz, Austria (Diagonale 98)
Lubliana 1999
Thessaloniki 1999
Tel Aviv (1st edition DocAviv) …and 30 more
festivals
TV broadcasts
(on national television 1999)
Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Denmark,
Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Austria, Finland, Poland,
Switzerland
(on Satellite + Cable) Canal+ Spain, Planète
France/Belgium.
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