LUMUMBA (2nd American Film Festival, 1993)

When someone announces something as a "true story", he fears that no one will believe him. "This is a true story", says the opening credits of Raoul Peck's film LUMUMBA, and a narrative voice picks up the mildly pedagogical duct. "Don't tell the children everything", says this voice, "they wouldn't understand". Raoul Peck takes no detours to show what has been kept from "the children" for decades. Two men in uniform saw up the corpse of a man wrapped in cloth. You can see his blood-encrusted face; he is black, those who remove him are white. They dissolve the body in acid, burn the clothes. Nothing should remain of Patrice Lumumba, not even a grave: "Even dead I scare them." When a character comments on his own assassination, true stories in cinema become more bearable. (Christina Bylow in: Die Zeit, 12 July 2001) At the Berlin Conference in 1885, Europe divided the African continent among itself, and the Congo became the personal property of King Leopold II of Belgium. On 30 June 1960, the young Patrice Lumumba became the first head of government in a new, seemingly independent state. He was to remain in office for two months until he was assassinated with active support from the USA and Europe. He was succeeded by Colonel Joseph Mobutu. Patrice Lumumba became the symbolic figure of democratic dreams. "More and more it became apparent that Lumumba did not just make promises, as other politicians were wont to do, but he began to politicise the people, out of attachment to the people. This made him popular and established his myth. Lumumba fell victim to the Cold War. That's why he was called a communist, because everything that wasn't for the Belgians was for communism. The Congo should not fall into the hands of the Soviet bear." (Reginald Kessler, Dominican, contemporary witness and companion of Lumumba) As if the connection should have been made visible, dictator Kabila was killed almost forty years to the day after Lumumba. Kabila was Lumumba's henchman. Kabila took root as a revolutionary in the weeks after independence when turmoil broke out in Katanga province, and from then on he too spoke often and fondly of the new Africa before becoming obsessed with power. (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 16 February 2001) Raoul Peck: "What does independence mean in a world where economic and military blocs confront each other? What do democracy, unity, nation, law and justice mean when conflicts between people and ethnic groups have replaced public debates? How did it come about that Lumumba ignited such brutality, such anger? Why was he, of all people, shaved from history by all the leaders who had marked their sphere of power all around? Lumumba disturbs, he raises questions about past and present mistakes. (...) For 18 months, I served as the Minister of Culture of my country, Haïti. So I experienced harsh, merciless, political squabbles, in a country still wavering between hegemonic populism and democracy, marked by a development in which the word 'democracy' never went beyond an abstract idea. After this experience, which was as enriching as it was tense, I returned to my Lumumba project. It was a way to get beyond my pain, my sadness, my anger. LUMUMBA is not concerned with local events, it is the story of a tragedy that never ends, that echoes in all known tragedies in Africa as in Europe, from Rwanda to Yugoslavia." Raoul Peck was born in Port-au-Prince in Haïti in 1953. As his father took a job in the former Belgian Congo, the family lived in Kinshasa for a few years. Raoul Peck studied at the Film Academy in Berlin. (Compilation of texts: Helmut Groschup)