The fourth edition of Brussels' African Film Festival brings Africa closer
to Europe with stories about Kinshasa's electricity problems or the
organisation of a community of squatters in Mozambique.
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM (APRIL 18, 2008) REUTERS -
The cinema hosting the African Film Festival is located at the heart
of Matonge, a neighbourhood of Brussels with a great concentration of African
shops.
Matonge is also a neighbourhood of Kinshasa, the capital of the
Democratic Republic of Congo, a former Belgium's colony. The story says that
one of the first Congolese emigrants arriving to Brussels called his shop
'Matonge' and the name then spread to the whole area.
For the first time, fifteen documentary films will compete.
The jury presided by a Samba Felix N'diaye, a Senegalese film director,
is composed of six students from Belgian and African cinema schools. It will
reward the 'best documentary' and the 'best hope documentary' with Africalia
Prizes.
Born in the Katanga province in the Democratic Republic of Congo in
1982, Clarisse Muvuba is a graduate in biochemistry. Because she didn't find a
job in that sector, she turned to journalism and graduated in theatre
direction from Congo's National Arts Institute.
'The wires of life and death' is her first film. Shot in Mont Ngalufa
borough of Kinshasa in 2007, the film tells about the disrepair of the
Congolese capital electric network. It shows how the recurrent cut powers
affect the daily life of the inhabitants and how the bad condition of the
electric wires can also be dangerous.
When she had to live without electricity for an entire month, Muvuba
decided to make a film.
''The idea of the film comes from there. One time, my friend, my
colleague, Monicova who lives in Belgium, came to stay at my place and when
she arrived, the electricity was messed up and we had to live in darkness
during one month, until her departure. It made a strong impression on me. I
made this film to look at the reality, to make us look at the way we live. The
are wires just about everywhere, it's death, it's dangerous,'' Muvuba said.
Muvuba said she is proud that her film has been selected next to the
ones from more experienced film directors.
''It's a great pleasure to bring my film here to compete with important
film directors who have been studying cinema. I didn't studied, so for, me…I
believe in what I do,'' Muvuba said.
The film 'Night Lodgers', one of the documentary film in competition,
describes the daily life of Mozambican families inhabiting a former luxury
hostel in Beira, the second largest city of Mozambique, on the India ocean
coast.' The Grande Hostel', inaugurated in 1953, was a chosen place for
African white people's vacations. It was abandoned after the colonial period
which last until 1974. Nowadays, about 3,500 people, occupying the basement,
the corridors and the rooftop of the establishment, live with neither water
nor electricity. Some families have been living there for 20 years.
The film director underlines that even if the living condition are
precarious, the small community has established regulation and systems such as
an intern tribunal which rules neighbourhood conflicts.
"The most important is that in a precarious situation, in absolute
poverty, there is always a good communitarian organization; because people
always think that where there is such poverty, there is no organization but
there it a social live really established with really accurate rules'"
said Azevedo.
It's 14th film of the Mozambican film director, Licinio Azvedo. He has
worked at the National institute of Mozambique on experimental projects with
the French director, Jean-Luc Godard and was rewarded with international
prizes.
Licinio Azevedo explains the people keep a certain 'joie de vivre'
because of the colonial war which last from 1961 until the independence of
Mozambique from Portugal in 1974.
"It's because we already live such horrors of the war in
Mozambique that nowadays, people have the joie de vivre, you see" said
Azevedo.
Manou Gallo, born in 1972 in Divo, a small city in the center-western
of the Ivory Coast, gives the opening concert of the African films festival.
With her group made of Agna, a Sweden violoncellist, the French guitarist,
Supernova and Fabrice Thompson, drummer, she plays for the first time her new
showcase called 'Accoustic women Band'.
At the age of eight, Manou Gallo played music in front of her first
audience sobbing a drummer during a funeral.
In 1997 she joined the Belgian group Zap Mama as a bassist. In 2001,
she starts to write lyrics, mixing French, English and Dida languages and
created her own with musician band with friends, 'The Djiboi'.
In late 2002, Manou recorded in Brussels, her first CD ,
"DIDA" which was inspired by African polyrhythmic with blues, funk,
groove and rock. The second album called 'Manou Gallo' came up in 2007.
Manou has given about hundred concerts in the European festivals such
as the International Africa Festival in Wurzburg in Germany or the Topicana
World Festival in Bregenz in Austria, in United States at the International
Festival of Louisiana and also at the Ollin Kan World Music Festival in Mexico
City.
Other films will be presented from directors such as the Aminata Diallo
Glez from Burkina Faso or the Ugandan Carol Kamya until Monday (21 April) and
the prices will reward the best documentary and the best hope documentary .
