For one time a blog from someone else. I am Inge de Leeuw and I am working with Gertjan on the Forget Africa project as researcher and producer. Scheduling a programme of this size is very hard and even Gertjan can’t be in two places at the same time.... so I went to Rwanda together with American director Pia Sawhney.
In preparation of the trip Pia contacted almost every person in Rwanda (she even met the very supportive Ministre of Culture) and hired a local crew, consisting of Fred Muvunyi, journalist at radio station Contact FM and Rwandan filmmaker Edouard Bamporiki.
After picking me up from the airport, Edouard brought us to Almond Tree Films. This group of young filmmakers started their production company after working with Lee Isaac Chung on his film Munyurangabo. These guys breathe cinema; pre-production to editing, shorts, docs, music video’s, features and giving workshops to aspiring filmmakers; everything is possible and everyone has a special skill that they use for 100%.
Filmmakers not only live in the capital, Kigali, but also in other cities. The oldest university is based in Butare, which is also called the ‘intellectual’ city. We decided it was worth checking out and we took a beautiful two hour drive there. In Butare we met with filmmaker Jean Claude Uwiringiyimana and his crew. He showed us what an inventive person he is.
The next day Jean-Claude invited us to attend his class. Besides being a filmmaker he teaches script writing at the Butare University. All the students were very interested in filmmaking and we were asked many, many questions.
After this first week of research, Tim McLaughlin, Pia’s cinematographer arrived from the US. No jetlag recovery for him... we had to be in church the next morning to attend Fred’s son’s communion (and of course to shoot stills and record sound) !!!
Everywhere we went, Tim was having lots of attention. This Mzungo with a camera…..how interesting!!
Cinema in Rwanda is very alive. A lot of young people work in cinema and I feel privileged to have met a lot of them. Many films are made for local audiences to deal with their recent history. All these filmmakers have a story to tell and they have an admirable amount of motivation. There are not so many cinemas in Rwanda, films are shown in giant football stadiums, video halls or from dvd. Ed’s first feature film was shown during the commemoration day in April in a fully packed stadium.
At the time we were there, the young filmmaker Yves Nitongyabo was editing his short film to enter into a competition held in the US. This competition is annually held for African filmmakers and they can ‘win’ support for their first feature film. Yves was working day and night on his film, but he could still make time to cook us a real Rwandan meal. Pia was so impressed by Ed and Yves that she followed them for her documentary.